Today’s Financial Times notes

2% make it to the cinema and perhaps 1/3rd of those are profitable. Those are long odds.

There are likely 3 rules of cinema

1) Make something you, or someone else has already done (hence why we see so many remakes and sequels … Toy Story 4, endless Marvel movies)

2) Produce a film with people you’ve worked with before (which is why proven directors and actors get repeat work)

3) if you’re going to do something completely new, start small and don’t risk a lot (hence low budget independent films)

Projects, which have perhaps the same, or maybe even a worse, success rates, have the same rules

1) Do what someone else has already done and stick as closely to the script as possible (cloud technologies and configurable apps versus custom projects)

2) Keep the same team around you, as long as they have been successful, because you know how they work and they know how you work; trust the team to solve the problems they know how to solve … bring in new people to keep things fresh but don’t go for wholesale swaps

3) If you really want to do something novel and different, start small and don’t spend a lot of money … especially if you’re working with people you’ve never worked with before

Those 3 rules, a version of which I wrote on this blog many years ago, could massively boost your project success rate.

Original source – In The Eye Of The Storm

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