Don't do anything without a clear purpose

You shouldn’t do anything unless it has a clear purpose. Imagine two parallel worlds where everything is the same except for the thing that you’re considering doing: How different would those worlds be? Is the difference worth the effort to do that thing?

If you don’t have a clear purpose in mind and are only doing something because everyone else is doing it, or everyone says that it’s important to do it, then

• it may not have a real benefit in your case, and therefore you may not get anything out of it; or
• it may still have potential benefits in your case, but because you don’t have the purpose in mind, your way of doing it may not help realize the benefits.

For example, PRINCE2^® says you need to have something it calls a highlights report. You can download a template from the Web and fill it in every time and send it to the people it tells you to. Would that be enough, though, or does it remind you of the Cargo Cult we talked about at the beginning?

Instead, you can read PRINCE2 to understand what the purpose of a highlight report is, and if you believe it makes sense to your project, create a document that can serve that purpose. When you’re done, take a look at the templates, and if there’s a difference, consider why it is so. If you can’t see the reason why, simply ignore it for now.