Focused Attention

This is Part 4

Part 1     Part 2     Part 3    Part 4     Part 5 
In the context of practicing a musical instrument or a sport, the student can Practice, Practice, Practice all they want, but if they are mindlessly practicing they will not achieve the same level of proficiency as when they are focused towards achieving specific goals.

A few years ago I worked with a client where the IT group was very consistent in their delivery. Unfortunately, they were consistently late on every major initiative. I attended a meeting two weeks prior to the scheduled launch of a newly developed system where the team was discussing basic requirements questions. On another initiative the testing plan was first being discussed as the team was preparing for final data conversion and system launch. I watched other project teams fall victim to delays because of partially allocated resources. And the list goes on.