Pragmatic Manager Email Posted
In July, I sent out the Pragmatic Manager email newsletter: 90% Done is Not Almost Done. I have finally posted it. Enjoy!
Stickyminds Column Posted: Schedule Games and the Portfolio
My most recent Stickyminds column is up: Are Your Pants on Fire, or Do You Suffer from Split Focus?. There’s also a podcast on that page. You can leave comments there or here.
Schedule Game column is up
My Eliminating the 90% Done Schedule Game Stickyminds column is up. Enjoy! For those of you who remember the schedule game series from a few years ago, yes, this is one of the games. I added several more and wrote more in Manage It!.
Codependent Schedule Games Posted
My Stickyminds column, Codependent Schedule Games is up. Enjoy!
Schedule Game #11: The Schedule Tool is Always Right
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 …
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Schedule Game #10: We'll Know Where We Are When We Get There
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 …
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Schedule Game #9: Schedule == Commitment
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 …
Schedule Game #8: Pants on Fire
You’re a project manager. Your project is proceeding fairly well. You’ve had a few bumps, but you’re making progress. You come into work one day, and there’s a message to meet with the Big Cheese. Big Cheese says, “Stop working on that project. Start on this one!” Not only does this happen once, it …
Schedule Game #7: Schedule Dream Time or Happy Date
Sometimes, I work with organizations where there’s an implicit agreement not to discuss the schedule. I’ve seen this in two flavors: the first is Dream Time, where the project team and management believe the schedule, especially if it’s in a scheduling tool with lots of graphs and different colored lines. The other is Happy …
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Schedule Game #6: Sweep Under the Rug
A few years ago, I received a call to help out a project in trouble. Unsurprisingly, when I was reviewing what had been done and what still left to do, the PM explained there were many half-implemented features. (The team had not been implementing by feature, but instead by architecture. Each architecture group had …