I am writing this morning on two recent and unrelated observations in my PM life (Maybe three, as I am writing this the morning after being the volunteer software guy at our kid's school's annual fundraising auction, chaired by my wife).
1) What good is project management without any mandate to use it in the business? I am posting a lot on Gantthead.com, and someone saw my writing there and contacted me offline to chat about her current project management situation. She left a big consulting firm with lots of mature and rigorous PM practices to join a very small firm with virtually none. Her frustration is that, although she is charged with implementing better project management practices, the company management is offering no support, and her boss basically won't let her talk to anyone without filtering it through him first.
What??? You hired an experienced project manager, want to have "better project management", but you are going to offer no support and let the PM's boss muzzle her?? The sad thing is that this is descriptive of too many companies of all sizes and verticals. I offered some tips on developing tools and practices, but I also counseled this person to consider whether the fight would be worth the effort and risk to her job it would take to make any meaningful progress. I'm not sure how she landed where she is, but I am afraid getting out is the best course of action for her.
2) Sometimes the only way a project will ever get done is for the boss to set a date and say "get it done." My boss did this last week on my huge never-ending project. It required a change of mandate and mindshift for the project team. The team had previously been of the understanding that we would test until we were sure that every single bug was caught. My boss had recognized all along that this was unrealistic. We finally conveyed to the team that it was time to finish: Fix the current bugs, test one more time, and, unless there are absolute showstoppers, release the new website.
The team embraced this idea, and with one more burst of energy dove in to the final three-week push. As I have observed many times, project teams driven by quality (not schedule), need someone else to set a date for them, or they will never be done enough to complete the project. This can't come from the PM - it has to come from the sponsor, who updates their definition of what quality is and lets the PM and team know they are confident in the quality of the deliverable as is and wants to be done.
3) Charity auctions can benefit from project management (duh). After observing one committee on the auction my wife co-chaired almost run away with the auction, it was obvious that clearly defined roles, scope definitions, schedules and other things that project managers do automatically would have helped this bash. It was a success, but the runaway committee caused a lot of pain for the co-chairs, and to a lesser extent me, as I tried to keep them corralled into using the software the way we needed it.
Maybe next year I'll convince someone to call the top job the Auction Project Manager. Although if I do that, I might end up promoted from software guy to Auction Project Manager...
2 comments:
As the wife of a Project Manager and a charity auction guru myself, I take offense at your suggestion that the co-chairs somehow allowed the other committee to "run away" with this "project." As we are all volunteers in these situations, some times there are not clearly defined roles or past leadership that can be relied upon. Sometimes we are flying by the seat of our pants and are doing the best we can to act maturely and cooperatively. Sadly, because we are all volunteers, some people take these things as ego trips, not charity events. Perhaps you should volunteer next year, if not at your school, perhaps at another.
"As I have observed many times, project teams driven by quality (not schedule), need someone else to set a date for them, or they will never be done enough to complete the project." This is very true and I've seen this all the time and I felt i when I was a developer. Most team members enjoy perfection, but they're usually oblivious to the business factors behind finishing a project (they are getting paid on time, and they're doing what they love). If at point you don't compromise on quality to release the product, then the testing iterations will be infinite.
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