One of the books I’ve been reading is an old engineering manager’s book called Peopleware. Specifically, there is a chapter on introducing chaos to motivate the creation of order. Several approaches are thrown out on how to do this, but one in particular stands out: pilot project.

Why?

The pilot project provides a way for the team to come together to test out new concepts. The team gets to learn something new offering up variety while the company could benefit from new expertise and a challenging of assumptions to help move smoother in the future.

This gains the most benefit when you focus on only one item: language, tool, framework, process, etc.

The reason being that your team can and will be distracted by the new things, the project will go well beyond the time you would think it could normally take, and ultimately there is the question on how to integrate the experience back for others.

When you are acquiring a company, you are already working with a multifaceted project.

Why would you use this as a pilot project to trying something else new?

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