When I started working on projects, we thought we could use a serial/waterfall approach to project management and product development. While we were wrong, one very good thing happened in the 1970s and 1980s: We took the time at the end of each phase to do a little retrospective. Yes, even for a serial approach, […]
I’ve been working with teams that feel a ton of pressure. On top of the pressure, a senior manager says these words: “Failure is not an option.” When managers say that, they ignore all the possibilities for success. They put their heads down, ignoring ways to manage risk. When managers don’t collaborate to manage risk, we
With a little common sense and some dependable metrics, you can banish the “bug bucket” and keep the dreaded rework monster under control by creating a reasonable prediction of your project’s end. A reader recently asked me, “When planning a project phase, how do you account for the bugs that you know will be created?
© 2000 Johanna Rothman. You’re not going to meet schedule. Maybe requirements have taken longer. Perhaps in the middle of implementation, you uncover something requiring redesign. Maybe the developers haven’t met one milestone yet and you’re worried about the test time. What do you do? The first slip is the initial indication that something is
Project management can be described as the activity of bringing all participants from within a department to successfully complete a product deliverable. Iterative planning and tracking are techniques used by some project managers to avoid having to choose between reducing the number of features or extending the schedule. Abstract Project management can be described as