Looking for improvement, growth? Overwhelmed reading productivity tips, emails, RSS subscriptions? Me too. How to distill avalanches of fantastic content into something consumable, applicable, simple daily repeatable practices?
Here is my take. Reverse engineer what software engineers do, adopt and adapt their Software Development Lifecycle to Personal Development lifecycle. The principles are the same, the techniques too.
by Pixelsior
From Software Development Lifecycle to Personal Development Lifecycle
Software development lifecycle (SDLC) has several chronological phases (software folks, I know there are many schools but I am sure you agree on the following core phases below):
- Inception. That is the phase where the vision is created and coarse grained requirements identified. How to identify your vision? Find your strengths, values, and purpose. Here is an example:
- Planning. It is the phase where detailed requirements identified and specs - architecture and design - are in place. Plan your life architecture and design:
- Implementation. This is the phase when programmers write code according to the specs from the planning phase. You are your life programmer, apply proven best patterns and practices for life programming and implementation:
- Testing. This is the phase when something tangible created and can be tested. Test it!
- Deployment and maintenance. This is the phase when rubber hits the road. ROI time. Does the software we created really get us a return on the investment? Does it get us close to the vision we created in the inception phase?
Agile or Waterfall?
There are plenty SDLC schools. What I witness in the field is that there are mainly two that dominate - Agile-ish and Waterfall-ish.
From wikipedia:
The waterfall model is a sequential software development model (a process for the creation of software) in which development is seen as flowing steadily downwards (like a waterfall) through the phases of requirements analysis, design, implementation, testing (validation), integration, and maintenance.
Agile software development is a conceptual framework for software engineering that promotes development iterations throughout the life-cycle of the project.
So what is the difference? The answer is simple:
- Agile looks like Tim’s mini-retirements.
- Waterfall looks much like 401K plan
I wonder why Agile is getting more and more popular…
What is your choice?
Become the architect, the designer, and the programmer of your own life. Create your own Matrix, plug in and live your dream life. How to start? Start With Something Simple, something that you know.
15 comments ↓
Very interesting, Alik. Though on the surface, what I’m doing does not resemble your method, it is similar since I’m just ’starting with what I know’. As a scientist/engineer, I know experiments. I know how to use them to get results. I know they can be applied to move systematically from the unknown to the known. This is the idea behind blogrlab.com. My approaches for the various experiments are blend of waterfall and agile. I suggest that this is a sensible way to manage a entrepreniurial portfolio. It works for our investments, why not our life goals
Experiment 1 and 3 is waterfall. Experiment 2 is agile. Experiment 0 (my blog) is a mix of agile and waterfall.
blogrdoc, I just loved how you put it - “move systematically from the unknown to the known”. That is the essence of the post. Just loved that. People get too often into dogma wars, while the better and more effective way just starting getting results by starting off doing somesthing, better off systematically. I am not trying to defend agile or waterfall, i am trying to defend lifecycles and iterations
I like your mix of approaches. I guess you improve over time with it since these approaches are systematic and iterative, that is why you get results.
The other, even bigger point, is that life, achievement, and personal development can be viewed as a project. You apply Agile (mini-retirements) or Waterfall (401K) schools to it.
Alik,
Great post. As an Engineer, I’ve worked on software projects and have been involved in the life cycle management. It’s interesting to compare that with personal development life cycle. Your analysis is very astute and to the mark. I am impressed.
Shilpan
Shilpan,
Great to hear you loved the post. To be honest I am pretty flattered by your comment!
The question here “is this analysis practical?” or what should be added/changed/removed to make it practical? How to make it daily practice? Daily practice of personal development.
I am really interested to hear your comment on this?
thanks
alikl
Hi,
I like the way you creatively mapped it to “real life”. I never thought of it like that.
I hail from the software industry as well and know too well about the life cycle
Very inspiring post.
Thank you
Shamelle
Shamelle,
Good to hear you liked it. I am on my quest of reverse engineering software engineering back into life.
There is no reason men engineered such sophisticated machine like computer cannot engineer her/his own life a bit better and achieve results and great performance
alikl
Very cool post alik. And I of course love watching the clip from the Matric (for the 50th time probably!).
I think you asked and others mentioned, this approach is quite practical with personal development. One more thought on this though is relating how a lot of software projects fails because that first step is never done well or with the proper understanding or people. The same goes for people starting a life development plan for real, they often skip that reasons why and don’t ever really think about their passions, reasons and requirements for developing them selves, so they jump into something quick, have problems and give up feeling worse than when they started! The practically of the model should help steer people through this!
I think you could use this as a real guide from your site here alik, keep adding to this and use it as the basis to guide new users! I think that would be very powerful. Especially since you obviously have a lot of software developers and engineer style of readers.
Mike, I was waiting for your comment on this, buddy!
Your insightful comment gives me a lot of confidence.
Following your recommendation I’ve added the post to the side bar on the right – notice Personal Development section on the sidebar. It starts to look like software spec doc/blueprint: Vision, process, architecture, design, and implementation. That is exactly what I am trying to achieve – collect useful practices and convert it into consumable guide for repeatable achievement.
To add to your point of why projects fail…*sigh*,,, there are way too many reasons, I agree, but what I witness most is either unrealistic goals or lack of it and lack of process that everybody stick to. Same with life I think – no purpose, no goals, lack of simple daily/monthly/yearly/life time discipline leads to frustration and self un-realization.
Thanks!
No problem alik! I was slow to catch up from the last few days of being sick. It seems that there is quite a lot of value in making these types of connections from regular work areas to things applied to our personal development lives. I love how you’ve found this one!
I guess its easy to make the connection since we get so connected to our work, its simpler to understand in that same type of lifecycle!
Alik,
Nice correlation. You have a keen mind. These guidelines can be used as the basis to achieve any type of goal.
It’s funny how things seemingly non-related, ie. software development and personal development share the same aspects necessary to be successful in both.
Why? Because the whole of life is a movement towards an end, a purpose or a goal. Therefore, in order to master life, one must be able to master the art of achieving a goal. Be it software, personal, spiritual, physical, relationships, financial, or educational. We are all trying to achieve our own goals.
Tola
Tola,
Happy to hear it resonated with you.
“the whole of life is a movement towards an end, a purpose or a goal” sounds like waterfall SDLC style (think 401K), l like agile-ish short iterations more (think Tim Ferriss’ mini-retirements).
In any way, we both agree on “cycles” thing.
See this guy who approaches his life end but still does short meaningful iterations (thanks go to JD who shared it with me – JD’s blog is here http://thebookshare.blogspot.com/ )…
http://video.stumbleupon.com/?s=ithct48cqw&i=ufcchmyxqsuj9vwsemax
alikl
Just great - got me hocked
Adlai, great to hear you liked the angle.
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