Hal posted his take on creating faster cheaper projects. (See Creating Faster Cheaper Projects.) I see that I did not make my assumptions clear in my original post. Hal had three problems (at least!) with my post: Fewer people increase the length of the project. The longer the project, the more the requirements will change […]
Performing projects faster and cheaper seems to be the holy grail for most organizations. Here’s the secret: If you really want to perform projects faster and/or cheaper, start them earlier. When you start projects early, you can assign fewer people, so the costs start off lower. When you start the project early, you can
Last night at my SPIN talk someone came up to me at the end of the talk. I’d discussed earned value and inch-pebbles in my talk but hadn’t specifically discussed how to avoid the dreaded “percent complete” reporting problem to management. The percent complete problem occurs when you have to report progress to management as
It’s fall conference season, and I’ve been quiet because of the travel and final preparations for sessions. One of my sessions at the AYE conference is called Predicting Project Completion. I decided it was time to explore how to predict the end of a project when I encountered two clients this year. One made
Hal asks a fascinating question in Variation is an Enemy Enabler of Project Success: How can we take advantage of serendipity rather than forcing an outcome in our projects? (paraphrased) One technique is to observe and listen to the project. When PMs observe their projects, they look at and listen to: How people work together.
Hal’s post about the meaning of project management got me thinking about accountability and how we use it in organizations. In the last three weeks, I’ve heard these definitions: “I want to know who’s accountable. Who do I get to fire if they screw up?” “The testers/project manager/management team is accountable for the bugs.
In his comment to my previous post, Babu said, “unqualified project managers quickly sink a project which would’ve otherwise fared better.” (Keith, I’ll respond to your next comment in another post.) I’ve had the pleasure of meeting great project managers, and some not-so-great project managers. Here’s my list of necessary skills for great project
It’s worth taking a quick listen to Commentary – Overtime’s not good for your health. The folks from University of Arkansas actually have data that says overtime is ok and doesn’t reduce productivity. Hah! I wonder where their data came from. On the other hand, Joe Robinson’s commentary makes perfect sense to me. Here are
I had a lovely dinner with Brian Marick and our spouses Saturday night. (Now that he’s blogrolled me, I can’t tease him about that. Thanks, Brian!) Two things made me reconsider the way I manage people while managing a project: things we discussed at dinner, and Brian’s recent posting about the explicit role of the
When we think about manufacturing work, we measure labor productivity as the ratio of the output of goods and services to the labor hours devoted to the production of that output, output per hour. (See U.S. Dept of Labor) Remember the discussion of Project Constraints and Requirements? That’s where I said the project requirements were