I was reviewing for my Prince2 exam when I suddenly thought of how my parents purchased our first home. I was in the chapter where the author was talking about the start up process. In the start up process, you have a project mandate and first 2 appointed key people - project executive and project manager.

My parents didn't come from a well-off family. When they got married, they were still sort of in the same position. Hehe. They wanted to provide their kids a good future. Their first vision for the family was to buy a house where we could live in. So in case the business doesn't turn out to be that good, we will still have a place to stay. They realized this dream after 10 years of being married. It is one of the family's biggest accomplishments.

(Side note: We only lived their for 1 summer the whole time we owned it as my parents needed to stay in my uncle's factory compound to manage the operations side of things. Talk about 24 hour stand-by work! Besides, my parents were already used to living right next to the factory. Commuting looked like a monumental tasks for my dad. Haha ^^)

Relating my parents experience to Prince2, the project mandate was to purchase a property. The 2 key people were my mom and dad. If they didn't have this goal in mind, it would have probably taken them longer to get one.

Reflecting on this thought, I think in everything in life, we need to have a direction where we want to go. So even if we're sidetracked along the way (scope creep!!!), we still know where we're heading to and can make appropriate decisions along the way.