Hey You - There's a hole in your side of the boat

This post contains many great links, one of which is There's a hole in your side of the boat from Simon Baker at Energized Work. The image says it all..

There's a hole in your side of the boat - Jeff Patton

This is the best quote I've heard in a long time. Basically, it doesn't matter who's fault it is, we're in this together. - Simon Baker

Link: http://www.think-box.co.uk/blog/2007/11/theres-hole-in-your-side-of-boat.html

What a great image! In fact - wouldn't it be awesome to have a poster-sized version to hang in the office?


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More PM Insights: Good Info On Managing Project Metrics

Another good post with great info: Good Info On Managing Project Metrics, this time from raven's brain:

The folks over at Journyx Project Management blog referred me to some excellent information on metrics via Max Wideman's article managing project metrics. Wideman provides a solid definition of the term metrics - ""Metrics" are nothing more than "A theory or system of measurement" and isn't that what we are supposed to have been doing on projects all along?"- and discusses how often in project management we need more info and get lost in what to look for. Wideman suggests we track things such as:

• Scope containment

  Quality of deliverables

  Duration

  Cost

  Risks

  Effort

  Productivity

  Stakeholder involvement, including project team
  performance

Read more Raven Young's post: http://ravenyoung.spaces.live.com/Blog/cns!17376F4C11A91E0E!4123.entry

Read more of Max Wideman's post:http://www.maxwideman.com/musings/metrics.htm

PM Insights: Getting the task dependencies right

PMThink! has a post called Software Innovation Time which includes a video of Google software engineer discussing their concept of "twenty percent time".

Direct Link: http://www.pmthink.com/2008/02/software-innovation-time.htm

Thoughts on Tasks, Projects, Programs

Good post over at Anticlue called Tasks, Projects, Programs. Here's an excerpt:

As the development of a methodology persists for a PMO, there is a vagueness surrounding the conceptual differences between a project, program, and task. For the project description, simply having a temporary unique endeavor with a beginning and an end is almost too general and simplified. At times, I believe the disconcerting part is that the realization everything is a project comes to light. Projects are large, medium, small, and tiny. As clarification occurs, realization that the manual running of the report every day at 8:30 am really isn't a project, those additions of doctors to the doctor master, really isn't a project. In my experience, the difficulty embracing the concept derives from something deeper.

Read more of this great post here: http://www.anticlue.net/archives/000870.htm

Project management search engine

Elizabeth at A Girl's Guide to Managing Projects posted a quick review on a new Project management search engine:

If you are new to project management, or just don’t want to wade through pages of irrelevant search results, try Jack’s latest addition to PMConnection.

The project management search engine searches around 80 dedicated project management websites and blogs, like Gantthead, PMHut, Projects@work, Raven’s Brain and of course, this site.

Read more here: http://www.pm4girls.elizabeth-harrin.com/

PM Insights: Why Are PMs Such A Miserable Lot?

Craig Brown has a guest post over at Project Shrink, the Blog that's worth reading - Why Are PMs Such A Miserable Lot?:

Are they really? Probably not everywhere and probably not all the time but there
are force at work that keep our project mangers scowling.

Other people’s money: Dealing with that responsibility can be stressful for many people. It’s good practice to treat your client’s money as if it were yours, but really, if you have $5 million, would you waste it on a software project? No wonder our PM’s feel the pressure to perform.

Business is serious: That’s right. Our business is very serious and our stakeholders and shareholders are important people who we want to impress. The way you manage your project won’t make a blip on the stock market indicators, but you have to share some of our burden. As the project’s manager you are in charge, right?

Except for the following things: You rarely pick your team, you usually don’t get to choose the solution, or the project management approach. And your stakeholders, who all have history in the organisation and are probably playing politics 70% of their working life will not spare a second on screwing you behind your back if it suits them. Of course you like your job.

Read more here: http://blog.softwareprojects.org/why-are-pms-such-a-miserable-lot-142.html#more-142

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Skip Angel: The Case for Story Point Estimates

Here's an older post from Skip Angel that's great: The Case for Story Point Estimates

I have been a fan of story points ever since I attended a seminar several years
ago where Mike Cohn presented the concept. I never really trusted other
estimating practices such as function points and time-based estimates. Why?
Software development projects are rarely similar from project to project, yet
these practices focused entirely on past experience. Therefore, to get a
"reliable" estimate of time for every new project you needed to gain a lot of
experience. In other words, you have to figure out up-front how you will do the
work. Not only does this take a lot of investment up front, it also does not
account that the work you do later could change based on the work you do now.
The estimates assume that nothing will change in the effort of doing the work,
which is definitely not true in the Agile world. What I like about Story points
is the focus is on the relative size of "things", then how they will be
accomplished. As Mike would say, "Estimate size now, derive duration later".

Read more here: http://leanagile.blogspot.com/2007/05/case-for-story-point-estimates.html

Good stuff, be sure to check out the rest of Skip Angel's posts while you're at it!

Project Management: Making a Waterfall Project Succeed

Exploring Solution Spaces has an interesting post Making a Waterfall Project Succeed. Here's an excerpt:

Many moths ago, I read an informative and often amusing book called It
Sounded Good When We Started: A Project Manager's Guide to Working with People on Projects by Roy O'Bryan and Dwayne Phillips about (among other things) a waterfall hardware/software project whose management got disconnected from reality and the author had to take over project management to get the project back on track. Many of the techniques he used (putting the project plan on the wall as a frequently-updated information radiator, low-overhead daily updating of current and near-future planned tasks, avoiding delays between engineering activities andquality assurance activities) are also used in Agile projects.

Read more here: http://homepage.mac.com/keithray/blog/2008/01/27/

Great Quotes on The Majesty Of the Mystical Man-Month

Brad Appleton has an excellent post highlighting the continued greatness of "The Mythical man-month" and the lasting legacy of the book and m3Rule: The Majesty Of the Mystical-Man-Month. In it he provides a ton of links to online resources on all things MMM - articles, definitions, course lectures and, my favorite, classic quotes from/on The Mythical man-month book and concept:

“Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.”

“How does a project get to be a year late?... One day at a time.”

“Nine women cannot deliver a baby in one month”

“Plan to throw one away; you will, anyhow.”

"The fundamental problem with program maintenance is that fixing a defect has a substantial (20-50 percent) chance of introducing another. So the whole process is two steps forward and one step back."

"First, our techniques of estimating are poorly developed. More seriously, they reflect an unvoiced assumption which is quite untrue, i.e., that all will go well."

"Second, our estimating techniques fallaciously confuse effort with progress, hiding the assumption that men and months are interchangeable.

For more resources (a TON of links) on the Mythical Man-Month, please refer to Brad's original post: http://bradapp.blogspot.com/2008/01/majesty-of-mythical-man-month.html

Technorati tags: Project Management, Mythical Man-Month, Mystical Man-Month Rule, Frederick P. Brooks, Project Management Blog

When is a Scrum Master (or a PM) Not?

Excerpt from When is a Scrum Master (or a PM) Not?:

Here are some examples of the problems these nice folks have had:

“When I want to use timeboxes to focus the attention of the project team on the
project, my boss won’t let me.” — a Project Manager

“Our Product Owner can’t
decide on a backlog before the sprint starts. How can we possibly commit to
anything?” — a Scrum Master

“Our Product Owner thinks that reviewing the backlog and have a demo and retrospective every 4 weeks is too frequent, so our sprints are now 8 weeks.” — technical lead working as a Scrum Master

Read more here:http://jrothman.com/blog/mpd/2008/01/when-is-a-scrum-master-or-a-pm-not.html

From the great project management focused blog: Managing Product Development

Technorati tags: Project Management, Agile, Project Management Blog