In examining the need for a project lifecycle having to have an element of self-examination, borrowing heavily from the ideas of the evolutionary process and compounding it back on itself gets you into a rather recursive idea of the need to be a lifecycle of change to … well … the project lifecycle. If a project lifecycle is to maintain itself then what does it need … a system by which that change is carried out. This by definition can cause problems, both in sanity and practicality, but in looking deeper into it bring another opportunity in defining the concepts involved.

Simply put at the base level a project lifecycle exists to fulfil a purpose. This purpose can be anything and there can be any number of project lifecycles existing in … um … project lifecycle-space … (apologies for that definition). If you go through the loop of how any changes to any of these projects can come about and keep going you eventually hit the singularity, the defining project, in essence what I am trying (rather obscurely you might guess) to achieve here. A SuperProject (again apologies and disclaimers for any foggily thought out definitions that appear here – I mean no harm to definitions in general, it just happens) is the exact process by which any project must follow.

Actually this idea suits me fine because it really encompasses a goal of how to achieve anything of scale and I personally have one application for it later with an idea I keep going back to at ‘Beyond One World’. A SuperProject will be defined by what has to be done in any project, anytime, anywhere. In this sense is probably useless in itself because it exists only as a kind of generic template but one that contains them all. My attempt at applying it to the lowly but interesting area of Internet marketing I think has a few qualities that enable testing it all out. The area and environment is always undergoing change, quite often totally new paradigms appear, the area is global and the project is in competition with every other system that exists now and in the future, it encompasses people, the fuzzy world of marketing, technology, physical quantitative and subjective qualitative decisions and finally most importantly, its success will bring in resources to ensure its future and on-going development.

Strangely enough the SuperProject is the one project that has no physical purpose but for ensuring that any project that is structured within it fulfils its purpose. It may be thought of as the definition for the ideal system and so the questions begin. What are the features, characteristics and principles behind achieving an ideal system? These will all be contained in the SuperProject, along with all of the functions to create, maintain, destroy and run any of the projects based upon it.

So what are these factors? What makes an ideal system or ideal project lifecycle? Is it simply to fulfil its purpose using minimum resources and maximum gain?

This whole journey of looking into the creation of a system, examining and comparing it to the most effective system known brings us to the point where we know we have to consider at least two more factors. Research and documentation have been identified as being important. This has brought us to the point of now considering the whole process to akin to a project lifecycle. However, considering the point where we started we can still bring in the point of evolution to the idea of having a lifecycle and ensuring that it follows this original process.

A project lifecycle tends to be a single focused set of many processes connected up relying on dependencies and magnitude to achieve a single or small set of goals. The project lifecycle may in fact include innumerable different tasks or processes within it but the final outcome is generally well defined, even though amusingly in reality all these definitions may have been changed from what they were first planned to be. It is a fact of life that the larger the project lifecycle is, the larger the change and slippage that occurs within it. Though I have seen and sadly been responsible for complete changes to original budgets, timescales and resource costs that have completely thrown a project plan out of the window, some of my less proud moments occur in there somewhere, but … hey … experience always comes at a price.

Whether this will be called a project lifecycle or not as we go on there is a fundamental difference and to achieve it lets use a software paradigm of class. Let’s think of a project lifecycle in evolutionary terms. The success or failure of a lifecycle, or any part of it (and that is important) depends upon its ability to achieve its goal(s). Not only does the set of tasks and processes change that lies within it but also the structure and type of project lifecycle. The lifecycle itself must also go through a form of evolution, taking on any shape or structure that works most efficiently with the type of goal within it. So it is important that a project lifecycle be developed that checks itself and goes through a cycle of test and review – somewhat like a sense of self-examination.

Now this now sounds like it is entering new ground, so I hope someone more knowledgeable than I can guide or point to existing project lifecycles that can change their own structures to meet the demands of it. In a sense if it was a quality assurance program, then think of this extra function as the process of change management.

This whole line of thinking now is turning into an interesting challenge.

We have seen how the most effective life giving process in the universe, Evolution, even from a fundamental understanding of the system involved now needs to … well, what can I say … Evolve.

Documentation is needed.

Evolution gets round this fact by maybe the paradigm of the documentation is in the source, but unless we have a system that can effortlessly change innumerable factors instantly and constantly we need to actually learn from the mistakes that are made. Also we are an outside observer controlling the path or goals of the system so we need some way of describing how each part works. That age old horror of documentation appears to be the answer, coming with it a danger of being swallowed by mounds of it and actually bring any evolution firmly and chokingly to zero. Methods of documentation need to be devised that detail the process; allow it to be replicated elsewhere and with someone else other than the originator. Also to learn from what worked and what didn’t and with any degree of intelligence, work out ‘why’. So … not only do we need a process we need something that describes it.

Research is needed.

Unless we have a few hundred years to try out every possibility, by which time everything will have changed anyway we need to include a degree of research. Now that research can be considered really just the random fluctuations of change that is predominant in an evolutionary system, but with obvious focus on a particular area or environment but mostly it means learning from others that have succeeded in this very area. Now the best research ever is the kind you do yourself, as it is obvious that not everything put out as useful information on the Internet is actually of use to anyone, save filling the wallet of the person who produced the content (drivel). So there has to be a means of selecting the research and testing for oneself as to its effectiveness. The other problem in the area of research is the sheer noise that is being produced. The volume of information that is available on the Internet is enough again to clog up the whole ability to get anything done.

Both these area need closer examination and defining but they do evolve our original evolution model to something new … something akin to a Project Lifecycle. Project lifecycles defined in Information technologies include at their very basics a form of documentation, though strangely not all include the access to the information in the first place, research.

Leaving changes to random tests of the environment as in evolution does have a drawback, it needs to be done quickly without using too much of any resource. This often means to us the effort of planning and making the changes (unless of course a different method can be used?). Research is often the quickest method of finding the necessary changes you should make to optimise a system, thus speeding up the whole effectiveness of evolution. But research brings with it a number of extra processes to deal with and a matter of risk against time and money spent.

If we include research as part of the whole process (which in an already complex environment tested by others then you must) it can speed up the process but let’s consider the costs.

You would need to create a balance of research against actual work. Ideally, the two should be combined as much as possible but normally this isn’t possible. If I were to draw out a factor from instinct I would place something like 75% work against 25% research but how would you quantify such a thing.

If you enter a totally unfamiliar environment then perhaps the total initial time should be research, but how do you know how much time to spend on this. A personal mistake of mine is to spend so much time in the research area that I find after too long that nothing has got done, so the value of what I have done is very questionable.

On the other and if you have a process that works and you continue to use it without researching for new methods or new areas then you run the risk of the environment changing and the process failing. Say for example, years ago in Internet marketing if someone were to take advantage of the then very lucrative income gained from Google AdSense and remain doing it without changing their process then without any doubt their system would have by now started to fail, if not failed completely. Change is constant so research, or some evolutionary equivalent of the change process, needs to be done constantly and consistently.

The other weakness in any area of Internet marketing is also the length of the chain of work needed to accomplish any goal. It is getting longer and longer as more things need to be included to ensure your progress is effective. The biggest example of this that I can think of is in the Social web, where the use of Web 2.0 properties and systems has taken over the old simpler process of just content and linking.

The process of evolution takes place through a series of fluctuations and changes to a process, quite often in a random manner. The reason it really wins out is by making these changes the failures are weeded out and the more successful ones are identified, or at least manage to survive to continue in the process.

If this were a sales process this would be like testing out multiple changes and seeing which ones are the more successful, which changes actually bring in more sales? Amusing to think of this common practise as an example of the billions of years old process of evolution that has survived innumerable changes to give us the variety and incredible complexity that exists today. Now any one of these processes are in competition with millions of other processes at any particular time, quite often though in completely different environments and giving different results, indeed the current state of life is incredibly more complex than that of a sales process, but the idea of competition is certainly valid. Some of the processes are extremely successful and users of them continue on in existence developing a blueprint and some commonality according to the environment they are in, but quite often these changes are really just noise and rehashed processes built upon what existed before. See this in the sales world as a successful method that has had a little tweaking or personalising here and there, possibly adjusting to new technologies or applications on the web, essentially the evolution environment.

In reality it can be safely assumed that many of the successful process in the sales processes are being hidden and guarded by the ones who are gaining from them and although a true process of evolution would find them out it still comes down to a degree of research, to help this evolution along. In this one idea is a break from the system of evolution which needs to be looked at deeper. In the sales processes, certainly the state of the Internet at the moment, there are many who freely, or often for financial gain, hand out these techniques, ideas and knowledge on a regular basis and this implies a degree of availability to direct any efforts you might make.

The downside of the brute force of evolution then is that in a random, or without knowledge of the physical forces behind the changes apparently random, changes would be slow going, more suited to having practically unlimited resources and time. So the question arises, how much, and when do you rely on either of these processes.

Continuing on in my look at how looking at the process of Evolution can help in designing an efficient system, then applying it to the world of Internet marketing. Let’s look at control.

The changes in evolution will produce a result and the effects of this result will determine the survival of the particular pattern (or life) that hosted it. Many of these results are failures at any particular point in time depending upon the environment, but given the right circumstances previous failures will flourish. There is no knowledge of this though in the system, if something fails it disappears from the timeline and that is it, no record is kept. Of course the effect that that particular pattern had on its environment may endure, much like the fossils of dinosaurs preserved in shapes within the earth. Or possibly the remains of the instructions lay dormant in the DNA that produced it, never again used and silent, or possibly overwritten by in places by later changes. Evolution carries with it essentially the results of its latest successes and there is no learning ability, it doesn’t appear to have any control over it or any real record detailing its changes.

Of course the paradigm of ‘the documentation is in the source’ comes to mind and certainly something I excused myself with a few times in my programming days but I see now that is not the case at all. Of course if we think of DNA as the source then that can and will create a whole organism with the patterns detailed inside it, so you could think of that as the document. But the documentation is the process by which the DNA is engaged in, what particular part of evolution has enabled the DNA to store the information and what physical and material processes it can accomplish in the environment. The process may be something that can be applied to another kind of object, though maybe in this respect the qualities of the chemicals involved may make that impossible in this universe. However, I would find it an interesting exercise to see if the same kind of information could be stored in another medium. Possibly on a lower quantum level or indeed based on an entirely different set of physical compounds.

So without looking too deeply at the consequences of evolution we can easily see the processes involved could possibly be a quality assurance nightmare – there would be no quality standards, no management at all. Isn’t it wonderful that our most highly regarded methods for handling large scale complex projects are completely thrown out by this more efficient process?

Failure is a bad word. Failure is what we all strive to avoid. Failure is the opposite of success.

Failure is really having a bad time of it at the moment. It is easy to consider being a failure if you focus on certain specific events and exclude the rest of your life.

So it is time to let failure off the hook for a while, stop being ostracised and welcomed in. “Come on in failure, chill out and have a nice cup of tea” – Yes – I’m English – How could you tell? Without poor old failure we would not have any results at all. Failure is simply a specific result compared to a specific goal. Even when – and if – you consider any person you know, or know of, as a failure if you used a different set of criteria you would find them successful at something. This means as a result of an event, or even any number of events, a failure is very time based, measured usually by the most recent of the events.

So how can one of the most powerful systems of creating and recreating life be such a failure? In any state of change in the biosphere, the system we would refer to as evolution has probably the most amount of failures that any system can have. The result of all these failures though are fascinating and innumerable.

I am not a student of evolution so I have not got any academic restrictions to stop me treating the whole idea systematically. I found I am in danger of looking too deeply into the subject of evolution now considering what might stop me from using it. One such systematic idea is that any change is reversible and reverse evolution is not commonly held, but then again there are always logical and physical restrictions to a system to think of like dropping a plate, once broken the likelihood of all pieces being return to a previous state is unlikely. So I will stick with the systematic view for now unless later some comparison highlights possible asset to it. One such idea was a situation in the mitochondria, in areas of high risk of permanent (think plate dropping) change, that systems have evolved that protect them – a kind of disaster recovery test in the systematic view.

So failure as a result has to be accepted as part of the process and there are clues as to why ensuring it does take place and often is very important.

Failure – my long term enemy, under test conditions will become my friend.

It is a great concept because any system behind the very fact that this symbolic noise being packeted along fibres and blasted at you is a good thing to focus on, especially if you actually understand some of the thoughts that originated it. For if some fundamental part of what is called evolution wasn’t there then this very event would never have occurred in the whole of eternity. The fact that life has found a way and organised itself into form of intelligence to allow that event to occur is of immense fascination to me. Not to say that I totally agree with what the complete definition of evolution really encompasses the whole thing – but maybe that is because I do not really have a full understanding of it.

I will not enter into it being the cause of the life in this sense here. I have always felt it hasn’t and some yet to be understand and fundamental presence is more behind that. Maybe the day we connect our highest ideals and emotions to something other than the vibration of some mass in the universe is the day we finally understand those principles. Life may indeed be much older than our current solar system would allow anyway, possibly older than our current galaxy, that hosts the remains of many other ancient stars, even planets, that existed in the ones that lived before.

My interest in it is purely from a systematic viewpoint. In the physical world there is definitely a process of change that occurs that enables the driven system to live on and take advantage of its environment. Through some method that has sustained life here, that has been through so many eons of testing of this environment through making subtle changes to its process.

This process has allowed life to exist in the most unimaginable places. It is curious though that it is the very same process driving these formerly unknown species that exist here in the mundane, if not interesting, everyday forms of life that we are accustomed to.

It is a system that works in both a constant and apocalyptically changing environment. It diversifies, it tests, it multiplies, scales up and essentially in the end flourishes.

What are the core rules of this system that allows it to do this?

If you were to create a system in an environment that was constantly under change and your goal was to maximise its efficiency and effectiveness within that environment wouldn’t you think that evolution might be a concept to investigate when creating it?

I must add at the beginning of all this that I am by no means an expert in evolution. I learned a little at school, I learned a bit more when I did an open degree in the sciences that intrigued me. So what I say here about the theory of evolution is plain conjecture build upon a little knowledge and a lot of imagination.

I guess strangely enough I am just simply a product of it, that quite by some quirk of the systems and patterns existing in the universe that this product is actually is trying to understand the rules and systems that created it.

The created questions the creation mechanism, or is it the creator? Is one part of the same or simply the product after it? Where does the creation begin and the universal principle end?

You can tell I have had a lot of pointless inward but universally focused questions haunting this machine. This biological machine that at this time is writing about something not entirely unconnected from all the deeper and philosophical questions that religion should have out straightened out before this product’s very own memory of existence.

Ironic isn’t it, in the true sense of the word, not like the Allison Morrisette definition of oddness in ‘Isn’t it Ironic?’, but in the true sense of irony that we find ourselves in.

Again, what has this got to do with Internet marketing…

Well, ringing back to the one successful system that rules them all, a ‘child of the shire’ is keen on learning the power of this system and using it for his own ends. Not quite as a system to rule them all, but again, nicely ironic I think, for the system to destroy the system of ‘rule’ once and for all.

Evolution has a few keys from my simple view of it that opens up how a system should really work if it needs to survive anything. It is the one method that has sustained life here that has been through the testing of the environment for millennia through a process of making changes.

Not just change without care in a sense, but changes that must ensure that the system continues on no matter what the universe throws at it. The creating or discovery of a system not needing a plan to survive, but a process that creates in the end the ultimate blueprint.

However, a contantly changing blueprint that recognises above all else that ‘testing’ accomplishes evolution.

Evolution is a very successful process. It has produced innumerate life forms in forbidding and hostile places in the universe and in itself seems unstoppable. It seems now the phrase ‘life will find a way’ appears to be so true as we discover more about the universe only to find life teeming in the most unlikely of places. Now whether we fully understand the process behind this or not the theory of evolution goes some way toward explaining why this occurs.

What on earth has this got to do with Internet Marketing – I see myself type?

Well, ‘dear words that appeared’ probably absolutely nothing at all, but it seemed a good idea to throw in. As most ideas do.

Actually, it is here because I have a feeling that in the theory of evolution, or some idea of the processes going on in the real world associated with evolution, is the key to a really great idea. Especially when you are considering how you might create a system – a system that works. Why not when considering such a thing, take a close look at the most effective systems you are aware of, take time to look deeper to see how you might recreate it.

I am not thinking of creating life …

Well for one I wouldn’t be the first, it has already been done, so unfortunately, not a great achievement in itself after all. Considering also how most women on the planet have actually achieved this miracle on a semi-regular basis then again this is not an area where I think I can add anything.

Well that last sentence may be taken another way – but my intention when writing it didn’t involve sex in any way, shape or form. Maybe though talking about it may add a more interesting element to this writing that I had not originally intended, the actual act has been used in evolution so we’ll see if it comes up in applying it to Internet marketing.

I realise that ‘comes up’ may be another unfortunate way of describing the process so I’ll end that line of thought here.

Where is this going?

I am interested in systems and processes and what they really mean in making changes for a future idea of mine. The future idea is essentially how a centralised system can be used by everyone equally to accomplish our needs, the question is how can this system be created. This idea however at the moment relies on accomplishing something first … a system such as this requires communication on a scale never seen or imagined before and Internet marketing is really going deeper and deeper into this territory – really. The essentials within Internet marketing is actually something that needs to be done effectively by anyone in the current world to communicate globally.

So I decided that the one thing I must do is get good at Internet Marketing.

I guess if there is a relationship then my original idea did involve some concept of saving the world and the idea of using Internet marketing was really a way of saving myself first.

Indeed, lies in here, an argument that Internet marketing can save the world.