I perform project and process assessments as part of my consulting work. During one assessment, a senior manager took me aside, and said, “I want you to tell me what you think of our testers.” “All of them?” “Yup.” “Ok, why?” “Well, the developers meet all their milestones, but the testers don’t meet any.” Hmm. […]
© 2005 Johanna Rothman. Some project managers considering moving to iterative, incremental, or agile lifecycles, stumble when it comes time to move to rolling wave planning. They aren’t sure how to start it, how to continue it, or how to see where the project is without using a more traditional Gantt chart and planning the
The last few times I’ve taught project management, I’ve explained that multi-project context switching wastes time. The project managers agree with me. But then they ask the question, “How do I explain this to my management? They refuse to believe me.” Managers, especially senior managers, don’t believe context switching wastes time because all they do
© 2005 Johanna Rothman. So you’re managing people and projects around the world. It’s not easy, and it seems to be the norm these days. I’ve worked with global projects for the past 15 years, and here are three of my tips to making them successful. Define Clear, System-Based Milestones One of the biggest problems
© 2005 Johanna Rothman. This column originally appeared on Stickyminds.com Summary: Every manager has a story to tell. Find out how one management professional tackles a fictional dilemma. The story may be made up, but the solutions are tried and true. In this installment, Johanna Rothman recounts the tale of a wayward project rescued by a
I’m excited to announce that Roy Osherove’s interview with me is now posted on IT Conversations. Here’s the link to the interview. Roy interviewed me about the hiring book, and of course we segued into project management and management issues. Enjoy!
Originally published in Computerworld. This time of year is loaded with resolutions, predictions, and anticipation of great things to come. In that vein, let’s celebrate the New Year with how a project manager might fit new words to an old tune. ‘Tis the season to be humble Fa la la la la, la la la
In my project management class today, one of the students asked about how to schedule interdependent sub-projects. The scheduling tool he uses doesn’t deal well with pieces of one sub-project having dependencies of other sub-projects. It’s difficult to see the critical path, and to know what’s really going on. (It’s too easy to have
Clarke Ching’s Multitasking MAKES YOU STUPID is another great article. But when I teach PMs or coach managers, they say, “I need to multitask to get things done.” Or, they say, “I’m ok with multitasking.” Even smart people think they can do a couple of things at one time. Maybe they can. But the more
My PM students are articulating insights about projects that I’m happy to see. One project team said this in their charter, “The value of the product is moving the paper successfully across the room. The value of the project is in the journey, not the destination.” Some projects exist to see if the project