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Johanna’s Books
Monthly Archives: April 2004
Create Deliverable-Based Milestones
I’ve noticed a common theme among the projects in trouble I’ve encountered over the past few months: functional milestones without deliverable milestones as a part of the functional milestone. Here are examples of functional milestones: “requirements complete,” “code complete.” … Continue reading
You Always Have the Option of Firing Non-Performers
Now that I’m back from vacation, I’m catching up on my reading. I enjoyed David Anderson’s Management versus Leadership on ‘The Apprentice’ which prompted me to think about what I would have done in Kwame’s place. It took me a … Continue reading
Decreasing Project Time, Parts 1 & 2
I publish a monthly (most of the time) email newsletter, The Pragmatic Manager. The last two issues have dealt with decreasing project time, before and during the project. Clearly, I don’t remember to post notices of the emails every … Continue reading
Art of Timeboxing
You’re a project manager. You have too much work to fit into a project (scope) and not enough time to do it. What do you do? Timebox. Timeboxing is a technique to fit what you can accomplish (some of … Continue reading
A New Generation at Work?
Because I work for myself, I frequently miss things like Secretary’s Day or Boss’s Day. This year I almost missed Take Our Daughters And Sons To Work day. When the Ms. Foundation started Take Our Daughters to Work day, many … Continue reading
Posted in management, women
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Bret on the Blackout
Read Bret Pettichord’s How Did the Blackout Happen? to see how cutting yourself off from data can damage your ability to perform your job.
Posted in measurement
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Milestones and Handoffs
James’ comment and Eric’s comment asked good questions about why I differentiate between milestones and handoffs. Milestones can be a collection of events (handoffs) that culminate in one milestone. Let’s take the milestone “code freeze” or “code complete.” The … Continue reading
Handoffs: The Reasons Behind Interim Milestones in Schedules
In the last couple of years, I’ve worked with some project managers who thought the reason they made schedules was to know when the milestones would be met. They thought if they knew when “design complete” or “feature freeze” … Continue reading
Optimization and Capacity, Reprise
Oh dear. I was not sufficiently articulate in my last post. Both Frank and David in their comments asked about capacity, the output of the organization over time. That will teach me to post when I’m tired. (Maybe.) Let … Continue reading
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