This is such a common phrase that you hear in all the large organisations. Most of the people in these organisations come from big places and have pre-determined ideas as to how things should work. In any discussions they refer to a past project and say “That’s what we did in the last project and it was a success”

Where they and most of us go wrong is we mix facts with interpretations.

Let’s analyse

Statement – I implemented custom testing automation framework and the project went live on time.

If we break this statement then we have 2 facts a) Implementation of custom testing automation and b) Project going live on time

We don’t know if they are linked or not. Now my interpretation of this is that they are linked. Where as it is absolutely possible that the only biggest issue which they had for go live was this custom testing automation

This is where we need to be very afraid of  “I have done it in the past” people. Every client is different. So we should analyse and differentiate between facts and interpretations.