Will They Kill My Project?

January 31, 2009 at 12:11 am | In General Project Management | 2 Comments
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I have just read an excellent article: 10 signs that your project is about to be cut, and I have to say I enjoyed reading it, mainly because it relates to current crisis.

Mainly the signs that your project is about to get axed are the following:

  1. Project sponsors and stakeholders disappear
  2. Changes in management are rolled out
  3. Money woes abound
  4. Your project is a “black hole”
  5. Management keeps discussing project cancellation
  6. Your project becomes a tool of office politics
  7. Poor leadership casts a shadow on the project
  8. The project is successful, but the product fails
  9. Your project has low visibility
  10. It truly is a bad project

In most of the cases I’ve seen, #10 was the culprit. How about you?

Are You a Good Project Manager?

October 11, 2008 at 5:38 pm | In General Project Management | Leave a Comment
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I’ve just read this post about what a good Project Manager should be able to do: The Project Manager should be able to say “No”, “Make a deal not simply negotiate”, among others. I think you probably noticed that the word able is italics. The thing is sometimes, and let’s face it, we’re not able to “Say No” or “Make a deal”. As Project Managers, sometimes we are expected to make decisions that are not ours and we do not agree with, and sometimes we have to say “Yes” when “No” is much more appropriate. But why do we do that? Is it always lack of self-confidence? Or is it sometimes because we’ve had a series of unfortunate events (not the movie) in our project, and now we’re willing to do anything and to commit to anything to save our job and restore our reputation.

I think in these times, where no job is really safe (we all hope that this storm will pass by), “Saying No” might not be the best answer on the short run, but will it be on the long run? Will you always hide behind false commitments? And how long can you do it for, and at what expense? If you feel they want you gone, then you’re gone, if not sooner then later…

Agile vs Waterfall: Who Won?

October 5, 2008 at 8:33 pm | In General Project Management | 3 Comments
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No doubt this subject is beaten to death… But what was the outcome anyway?

I was reading an article on Tom Von Lamoen’s blog, about team responsibilities towards clients, the comments on this article diverted the subject to Agile vs Waterfall (mainly pro-agile), Alexander Arendar even suggested that Waterfall is dead.

But is it really dead? I’ve heard this comment multiple times, either in the blogosphere or face to face. Are big, non-IT, projects right now using Agile? I doubt it. Most people loath waterfall because of its inflexibilitiy, but is Agile really the replacement? Can the client be involved at all stages in any project? Can we have iterations in any project until we reach complete satisfaction?

Again, I doubt it.

I don’t think Waterfall is dead, nor is it struggling, it’s probably even growing, as Project Management is growing, and Project Managers are being hatched everywhere, with the word Waterfall in the back of their head…

Deep into Project Planning

September 10, 2008 at 10:26 pm | In General Project Management, Management, movies | 1 Comment
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Currently developing the Project Management Plan (nice sets of articles on the subject) for a project I wish the company didn’t undertake, while watching Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, for the 100th time.

The nice thing about this movie is that risk is not really a factor in the Project Management Plan, failure is not permitted, nor possible. If they fail then the movie will end in the first 5 minutes when Barbossa and Lady Swan meet the pirates in Singapore, they get killed, and end of story.

Unfortunately for me, I have to take care of risks and everything else in between in my plan, I cannot hope for things, hoping without planning is a recipe for failure.

Btw, after watching this movie for quite a lot of times, I think it’s excellent, it’s much better than the second one in my opinion, and I’m still not able to decide on whether or not it’s better than the first one. I like the treachery part of the movie, where everyone’s tricking everyone else to get what s/he needs. I highly recommend it.

What are you doing? Go buy this movie!

Annoying Functionality Testers

August 1, 2008 at 8:52 pm | In General Project Management, Management, Musings about Work | Leave a Comment
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Sometimes, testers (functionality testers) can be quite annoying. The problem is that they think they have the authority of asking for new features, and this does waste a lot of time during meetings.

Functionality testers are just there to check if something is right and logical from the user’s point of view, and not suggest new ideas and delay the project. Sometimes they do have good suggestions, but such suggestions should be considered after the project/functionality is live.

Never have one of these people in a status meeting (otherwise, you’re just asking for trouble).

Friday Afternoon

July 4, 2008 at 8:53 pm | In General Project Management | 3 Comments

OK, here goes. I had an just had too much of PM goodness.

Craig Brown writes about Project Management 2.0 saying that the focus in PM 2.0 will be on Agile Development, I think Agile is part of PM but it will never be PM. My personal opinion is that PM 2.0 will lean towards PPM. Ummm…

Thomas Cutting talks about the Falkirk battle (between the Scottish and the English, where some of the Scottish nobles betrayed Wallace) in a PM context. Thomas said:

Treat everyone with respect, even the difficult ones. I’ve been asked to be a reference for people I did not enjoy working with. Evidently they were clueless that I couldn’t stand working with them.

Well, I beg to differ. Such people know that you can’t stand them (and probably they can’t stand you), but they also know that you’re a professional, and subtly blackmailing for being one…

It’s Sunday, and I’m working, well, sort of

June 29, 2008 at 8:37 pm | In General Project Management | Leave a Comment
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OK, it’s a Sunday, and I shouldn’t be at work, but hey, here I am. Well, honestly I love coming here in the weekend, I still have the luxury of not having a wife and kids (or is it not)? Anyways, I read a few Project Management articles and here’s what I liked:

I noticed an excellent collection of articles that can help in creating a project management schedule. The thing is I’m not exactly the best at scheduling so I read as much as I can on the subject. Anyways, it’s not bad…

What else, I read an excellent article on Herding Cats (God I love the way this guy writes), the article is entitled Doctor, Doctor, it Hurts…, and it’s mainly about the following concept: if you play with time, the cost, or the quality, then you’re increasing the risks on the project. Understanding the impacts and communicating them to the customer is always the key…

Better showing than telling!

May 30, 2008 at 7:06 pm | In General Project Management | Leave a Comment
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Well, since it’s Friday near the end of the day, and I still have tons of work, I figured I should call it a day and start reading some project management posts out there.

One article that drew my attention today is “Show, don’t tell“: an excellent read about how showing things the concrete way is better than explaining them as abstract notions.

I read some other few articles but this one definitely caught my attention!

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