Other Posts Archives - Page 5 of 21

About startups and time machines

Yesterday I met with a very dynamic team working at making their startup succeed. The partners, Gabriel and Samuel, were full of that enthusiasm young entrepreneurs have when they believe anything is possible.

Websystems started like that, eight years ago.

When your company is still in the nursery stage, the sky is the limit. There is never a conversation about things being technically impossible. No sentence ever starts with “we can’t do that.” There is no technological debt to live with. Just dreams and hopes and energy.

Which made me think: why does this feeling stop? As the company grows, why do things become less possible?

Ease of change is proportional the resources invested in the project

Small teams, like small companies, have the ability to turn around much faster. Likewise, when we are at the beginning of something – company or project – it’s much easier to change everything. It seems as time goes, it becomes harder to change our minds. We are blinded by the sunk costs. Sunk costs represent what we have invested already in something. […]

By Daniel Raymond|2009-09-16T12:42:00-04:002009-09-16|

Follow up: project management is about humans, not processes

Earlier this week I posted a piece about keeping in mind that we are working with people, and as project managers we should not become obsessed with the processes and methodologies.

The post created such interesting discussions on Linkedin I’ve decided to share some here:

Paul McKelvey wrote:
“Reward is another thing humans like. It may be cash, but it can be recognition. We call it the “psychic paycheck.”
Peter Michaelson wrote:
“The team is a must for project success and the component of the team are the people. Each one has unique personalities that the project manager must understand and be able to work with.”
Ajaya Gupta wrote:
“Doing things right and the right way is a hallmark for success”
Ned Robins wrote:
“Teams are like families. They grow. Good leaders are like good fathers. Occasionally they dish out a spanking. More often they give a little thanks and praise. But they ALWAYS care. A lot. About every member of the team. “
Maria Puntel wrote:
“We can have the best tools, excellent processes in place, but without a good team you will not get the results you […]

By Daniel Raymond|2009-09-11T12:50:00-04:002009-09-11|

Project management is about humans, not processes

With the Agile methodologies gaining momentum, there is a lot of talk about process. How projects should be managed, how to implement methodologies in an organization, which method is best to achieve project goals on time and on budget.

But what is project management really about? Is it about processes and forms and reports?

It’s all about humans

Project management is about a group of people working together to achieve a common goal. It doesn’t matter if it’s a house, a piece of software or a book. None of it can happen if the humans don’t work together.

The best processes can be thwarted by a key team member who suddenly becomes unavailable for the project or a project manager who leads like a dictator. The best project management methodology will fail unless we convince the team to accept it.

Five things to remember about humans

Humans have feelings. We may not always show it, but we are driven by emotion. It’s important to take your team’s reaction into account when choosing how to present a decision.
Humans like to feel good about themselves. This […]

By Daniel Raymond|2009-09-09T14:15:00-04:002009-09-09|

Give unto Caesar…and don’t steal his spotlight!

What are you? Are you a technical specialist? What’s your specialty? What about your team: what’s their specialty?

How would you feel if your team members tried to manage the project in your place? How would you like the software engineer trying to replan the project to meet the deadline?

I bet you would not like it. Not one bit.

Yet, how often do we do this to our teams? How often to we try to be specialists in their own discipline?

It’s one thing to want to be helpful and to makes suggestions. It’s another to assume we know better than they do. After all, we’re the project managers because we are good a managing. She’s en engineer because she’s good at engineering.

Project Managers: we don’t need to know everything about everything

It’s ok to defer for the technical expert in your team. It’s ok if they answer the question and not you. They don’t get to do that often.

If they fix an issue, they should be rewarded for it. If you fix a team conflict, that your accomplishment.

It’s […]

By Daniel Raymond|2009-09-01T17:59:00-04:002009-09-01|

When does “sticking to the plan” cross the line over to inflexibility?

During my vacation we traveled to Europe. We originally planned to stay one week in Paris and a second week in Madrid. After 4 days in Paris, we realized we would get bored if we stayed the whole week. We had two options:

Stay and be bored.
Pull a map of Europe and choose a place to visit for a couple of days.

We chose to take the train and visit Brussels.

Project plans should allow for flexibility

While it’s important to have goals and to know how we will achieve them, it’s also crucial to remember that the one thing that is certain about your project plan, is that it will change.

It may be tempting to stay with the plan at all costs. The plan was thought through and approved. It’s the path that was chosen to get complete the project.

However, as time goes, what you and your team know will improve, and that will change how you see completing the project. One’s aversion to change should not be an obstacle to adjusting the plan.

As @threew […]

By Daniel Raymond|2009-08-28T12:36:00-04:002009-08-28|

Project management and firefighting

Background on this post

This post started from a tweet that resonated with me. I realized that if we spend all our time managing emergencies, we leave the project at a standstill, without a leader or a vision.

Project management and firefighting

One thing most bloggers won’t admit to is how
they often find inspiration for their posts: in other blogs and tweets.
Anywho, I found my inspiration for today’s post from this Tweet: “Why do so many professionals say they are project managing, when what
they are actually doing is fire fighting? – Colin Bentley” from Greg Cimmarrusti, PMP

Firefighting is a management style not only used by project managers. When someone spends all their time putting out fires, they look very busy, and they have a great sense of purpose.

Why so much fire fighting?

It’s a vicious circle. It’s difficult to think long-term when fighting fires. And not thinking further than the immediate will create problems in the long run.
Planning is hard. It’s much easier to fix issues as they occur than the […]

By Daniel Raymond|2009-08-26T12:51:00-04:002009-08-26|

Take the risk of trusting your team

Background on this post

I wrote this post as a bit of a manifesto. I often have the impression from project managers that, while they expect their teams to trust them, they are not giving the trust back to the team. And it occurred to me that this really was about taking a risk, and managing that risk in the project.

Take the risk of trusting your team

From the part of the person who gives it, trust is hard. It requires
a leap of faith. It requires that we believe the person we trust is
worth it.

From the part of the person who receives it, trust is energizing. It
means that someone was willing to take that leap of faith for us. It
means we are worth it. Trust also carries responsibility: if we want to
keep that trust, we must prove the giver right. This means delivering
on that trust.

Project management requires a high level of trust

The project manager must trust the team to do quality work on time and on budget.
The project team must trust the project manager to lead them […]

By Daniel Raymond|2009-08-19T12:51:00-04:002009-08-19|

The fisherman’s take on project management

Background on the post

I wrote this after a fishing weekend. A bad fishing weekend. As it turns out, there are a lot of project managers that also like fishing! This post was the starting point of several very interesting discussions on LinkedIn about risk management!

The fisherman’s take on project management

I went fishing last weekend. It was a beautiful (yet a little cold) weekend in the woods. We were on a good lake for fishing: our quota was 15 catches per person. That’s a lot of fish!

We were thinking: if the outfitter allows 15 catches per person, there’s got to be a lot of fish in this lake. And there was. As we arrived the Friday night, we could see the bass jump at flies on the surface of the lake. We were stoked for a good day of bass fishing on Saturday!

Well, it was not a good day of fishing. We caught a total of 10 fish between the three of us. This was underwhelming.

Here’s why we didn’t get the fish we were hoping for

The fish was jumping at the flies, […]

By Daniel Raymond|2009-08-12T12:51:00-04:002009-08-12|

Summer reposts: Project metrics: earned value management with a 6-function calculator

Background on the posts

I wrote these two posts because I got tired of reading how complicated it was to compute project metrics. Project metrics are NOT complicated, it’s simple math! So I thought if I wrote my understanding of those metrics, it might help some people.

It turns out these two posts are the most popular ones on the blog!

I hope you enjoy them 🙂

Project metrics: earned value management with a 6-function calculator

Project metrics have a bad reputation. Things like Earned Value and Schedule Performance Index are presented as complex calculations that only experts can master.

Nothing could be further from the truth

Actually, most project metric calculations can be done by anyone with grade-school math skills. The challenge in project metrics calculations is not in the formulas themselves, but in mixing project management concepts with mathematical operators.

Still, these concepts are basic to project management. Every good project manager should understand them.

Start with the basics: Earned Value, Planned Value, Actual Cost

These three are not really formulas. They are the three figures project metrics use to create all the other ones, like the Cost Performance Index […]

By Daniel Raymond|2009-08-05T12:51:00-04:002009-08-05|

Making project decisions: Guts or data?

We make decisions all the time. As project managers, we make decisions not only for ourselves, but also for our project teams, stakeholders, and sponsors.

There are two ways that people make decisions: they trust their intuitions (their guts) or they analyze the information available. Analytical people (those who trust data) and intuitive people (who trust their guts) are often not very compatible. Analyticals feel intuitives make decisions too lightly. Intuivites feel analyticals get lost in the details of data and take to much time to decide.

There’s two sides to this coin

Both analyticals and intuitives have a point there.

	Strengths	Weaknesses
Analyticals	Always know the facts. Understand the consequences of their decisions before they make them, every time. Never base a decision on impulsive emotions. Usually take time to think about their decision before they make it.	Tend to be more reactive than proactive. Decision-making can be a lengthy process. May suffer from analysis paralysis – when too much information actually prevents decision making.
Intuitives	Make decisions fast. Have a keen sense of unquantifiable information, like non-verbal language. Firmly believe in their […]

By Daniel Raymond|2009-07-23T11:48:00-04:002009-07-23|