When I do assessments, I ask for lots of project documents and data. A few years ago, I was working on an assessment for a very large system, so I asked for an architectural picture. I was surprised–this million plus LOC system had no picture at all. No wonder it was so hard for the […]
At a recent project management workshop, a participant asked was “I have responsibility but not enough authority to do what I need to do as a PM. How do I get things done?” I can’t remember feeling as if I didn’t have the authority to get things done as a PM. I decided long ago,
When I teach project management, I teach people to know what success means, and to know what done means (release criteria). One of my students recently emailed me: At work recently, we’ve come upon a scenario where we have no success criteria (or more accurately, success criteria that we can measure in any way).
I’m working with a group of people who are new to iterative development. They’re doing more of a staged delivery lifecycle than an agile lifecycle, but they are releasing about once a month. They don’t like it, because they say they’re releasing too frequently. The problem is that their planning and releasing take too
I’m catching up on my blog reading, and Udi Dahan’s Programmers don’t make projects fail is a keeper. Make sure you read to this part: My philosophy is followed with an operative task: If you ever have to do more than 2 hours of overtime in a week, let me know. I understand the 2
We talk blithely about the “crisis” in software development or IT. But most of the time, that’s just projects over schedule, over budget, and under featured. Real project crises are about people. I heard that one of my clients died today. She was a young-ish project manager. I’d never met her in person (she
It’s been a tough week, and it’s only Wednesday morning. We’ve had a bunch of family illnesses — nothing deadly, but difficult to diagnose with long term effects. A very old friend of the family died. And because it’s June, the kids have a gazillion things with school and sports. I’m not quite back
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
A few years ago, a senior manager called me. “We have a project in trouble. We started off hopeful, but now it looks impossible.” I asked a few questions, and discovered they had never done a project like this before. It was bigger, in a different language, on a new platform, with a shorter
Student Syndrome occurs when the person with the task waits until the last possible moment to start. Some people spend their entire academic career waiting until the night before a project is due and then starting it, pulling an all-nighter, and getting some (hopefully adequate) grade. Student Syndrome isn’t for me, but I know lots