I’ve ranted about certifications before. But I recently encountered another job description with a certification that I just don’t understand. For a Quality Manager (not a Director or VP), the description asked for PMP. (The PMP is the PMI’s certification for project managers.) Here’s why I think requiring any certification is nuts: all the certification […]
Months ago, Debbie asked this question, “Do you have any comparative analysis on the disciplines (project management and program management) that you would like to share?” To me, program management is the ability to take a project or a series of projects and manage those (see Program Management: Multiple Projects With Multiple Deliverables) in the
I’m having an email conversation with someone who’s trying to hire some developers. He said, “For some reason, I think that developer who is comfortable in Lisp can take on any project, because I do know Lisp, and I feel that I can take on any project :)” Unfortunately, I don’t buy the transitive property
I’ve learned about schedule games from lots of people and projects. Here is the list of acknowledgements, as I remember them. If I left anyone off, please let me know. We had a discussion of schedule games on the AYE wiki, which helped me remember just how many games there are. I’m pretty sure I
You’ve probably gathered by now that I’m not enamored of project scheduling tools. And since I most often do rolling wave planning, I don’t normally need a scheduling tool. But, here’s another true story. I was coaching a PM in an organization where the execs only understood the waterfall lifecycle. They thought iterating was a
One of my clients claimed he had ADHD. He had trouble keeping projects focused on one goal. I’ve known him for a while, and he didn’t have this problem when he was a project manager. Nope, he made sure that each project he managed had a goal, and beware any senior manager who wanted to
My colleague, Will, has been attempting to hire developers. He’s a bit frustrated. Take a look at Explaining the tech job market. Will is frustrated with the level of competence he’s seeing in candidates. That prompted him to discover Parnas’s Law of Hiring: Parnas’s Law: The more incompetent developers you hire, the more you need.
You and I know that the schedule is an estimate. The project schedule is your best guess about when the project team will reach which milestones, and when the project may complete. But a schedule is not a prediction; it is a guess. So when I meet senior managers who want a project team
For some unknown-to-me-reason, more and more hiring managers appear to be attempting to do their own recruiting. While I do encourage hiring managers to network and constantly be on the lookout for candidates, especially passive candidates, I can’t see how a hiring manager can effectively perform the management job and recruit for candidates.If you’re in