You might have noticed I’ve slowed my blogging in the past few weeks. I’m fine. I’ve been a product owner/customer for our new-to-us house remodel. In the last several weeks, almost every single day, Mark and I have taken some time to go over to the new house to see the progress and provide feedback …
Did you see Dwayne Phillips’ post today, Adding People to a Late Project? Dwayne says: Adding people to a late project only makes it later. We have known this for decades. Especially in the article he refers to, it seems as if there might be no end to the number of people added. Did anyone …
I’m in Las Vegas waiting to get on a plan to Los Angeles to go to New Zealand for SDC. I led a workshop yesterday for real estate project managers about how to define success and manage some of the early-in-the-project risks. We discussed issues such as the Hudson Bay start, context-free questions, release criteria, …
Similarities and Differences in Project Management Read More »
Rothman Consulting Group, Inc. Vol 7, #5: 2010’s Small New Year’s Eve Tip: Start With Small Steps December 31, 2010 In This Issue:2010’s Small New Year’s Eve Tip: Start Small Thinking About Training in 2011? Manage Your Project Portfolio 2010’s Small New Year’s Eve Tip: Start Small I hope you are enjoying …
Summary: While managing a long project, it’s easy to lose track of progress. And, when that happens, how do you even know whether you’re still making progress? In this article, Johanna Rothman offers suggestions to help you take your project one step at a time and keep it under control. When I coach managers or …
Are You Making Progress or Spinning Your Wheels? Read More »
About a month ago, I spoke with a project manager who’d inherited a project in chaos. No one was making progress. He was stumped–he’d never worked on a project where the developers couldn’t do anything, the testers couldn’t do anything, and time was just slipping away. I suggested he try baby steps. What’s the first …
by, JB Rainsberger and Johanna Rothman, © 2008 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse …
It’s winter here in Massachusetts, and we’ve had lots of snow, ice, rain, snow, ice, snow, ice, rain. All that freezing and melting plays havoc with the roads. We have lots of potholes, and the local and state governments are busy doing emergency repairs all over the place. (For those of you who don’t know …
Here’s a common scenario I was discussing with a colleague last night: They’re at the end of a project. They used some combination of a serial lifecycle, becoming more incremental as they proceed through the project. But they still have a ton of open defects, and a few not-quite-finished features. My colleague was complaining about …
Getting Status at the End of a (non-Agile) Project Read More »
I’ve been teaching a project management workshop, and one of the participants said something brilliant: “If you estimate in days, you’ll be off by days. If you estimate in weeks, you’ll be off by weeks.” If you estimate in months, you will be off by months. Here’s why. The more you can break a big …