Things my mom didn’t tell me about project management

Published on May 6, 2009 in PM Community and Personal. 0 Comments
There are several things nobody told me before I became PM. Most of these things are deeply related to my background knowledge, but probably, even if you do not work on the same field I work, you will find these tips useful.
  1. Project Managers are responsible for all the work they do not execute. WTF? Back in the school you could say: Hey! I didn’t do it! It wasn’t me! – But now you are forced to assume any responsibility of the work that has been done by others -on your team of course! “Solution doesn’t work”, “There are several bugs”, “It doesn’t fulfill the client expectations” -It doesn’t occur often if you do your homework, but, it happens at least once so you have to be prepared. Fail is natural to human condition. Are you prepared to fail? Are you ready to get over it and assume the responsibility for others code? -from a coder perspective it could mean kill someone!
  2. Project Managers should say client Yes/No and When. Coders aren’t forced to do that -that’s why PM’s estimate. Does it sounds familiar to you? “I’m doing ok with code, it will take like, uhmmm, uhmmm, uhmmm, -then silence- then a value plus extra time for them”.
  3. Project Managers will use email clients, office productivity tools including spreadsheets -a lot of spreadsheets- over the lovely IDE -oh man, that sucks. Even the useful textedit… how I miss you?
  4. Project Managers will have to say at least once “No” and get mad with their bosses while they are Gold-Plating the clients. The awful thing is that once bosses do that, PMs will have to assume again the responsibility to deliver the new extremely-simple-to-do addition while also have to listen the complains of the team.
  5. Project Managers will solve problems between team members. I do no like democracy (democracy is for small cities and countries where  their ability to decide and vote is supported by a deep and clear perspective of the community and its future). PM is only one guy, he/she listen, process and decide -NICE!!! no voting, no democracy.
  6. Hands-on Project Managers will also deliver the projects. It means most of the time, deploy to servers, and do a “lite-end-user qa”.  Not your case? YOU ARE SO LUCKY!
  7. Project Managers will receive more money -it is not always the case, but here in Colombia, IT IS the case.

If you have any additional thing your mom didn’t told you about PM, feel free to post it as a comment.

How to choose the right project management software?

Published on March 20, 2009 in Framework and Tools. 3 Comments Tags: , , .

To choose the right software is not a simple process, and to choose the right project management software is then an even more complicated process and decision. Below you will find few tips and proposed procedure to reduce the risk inherit to this decision.

Tip #1

To choose and implement a PM software tool is not the same of implementing a PM process. Many organizations try to implement a software tool expecting a nonexistent-unnatural process improvement. If you do not have a formal process, or even if your process is not working you have to stop thinking that automation will fix/improve/solve your problems. Automation should be used to reinforce a process and minimize the weaknesses.

Tip #2

Every software implementation process includes at least the following steps -of course every company has its own natural process. Public companies have also additional restriction and evaluation/validation processes that will extend the suggested process:

  • Identify needs
  • Define selection criteria
  • Create a list of options
  • Create the request for information
  • Evaluate responses
  • Reduce the list of options
  • Ask for demonstrations or pilot programs
  • Choose one

Tip #3

Try to isolate your needs by using the following dimensions to measure the products you are considering:

  • Scale – how big the change will be?
    • Simple: are you going to organize your projects?
    • Personal: are you going to automate estimation and planning on you projects
    • Collaborative: are you going to support a team? are you going to share information? do you need to centralize team communications?
    • Enterprise: are you affecting the whole company? are you going to bill to your clients using your projects’ data? do you have virtual teams all around the globe?
  • Management Paradigm – do you and your team follow a traditional or agile approach to project management?
  • Process Maturity – how formal/strong is your process?
    • Chaotic: No evidence of documented processes or best practices
    • Active: Documented processes carried out, but not formalized
    • Efficient: Consistent discipline started
    • Responsive: Ubiquitous and measured
    • Business driven: Provides data and information to drive business decisions
  • Implementation model – are you going to buy the product and support it by yourself? are you going to adopt the SaaS model?
  • Budget -

Tip #4

Set your goals – do not expect to do everything better and to include any improvement during the first phase (or the initial implementation cycle). Prioritize to get faster results. Below you will find a list of possible goals that you could address with a PM software tool

  • Improve project reporting and tracking
  • Improve estimating and scheduling
  • Reduce cost or speed process up by automating workflows
  • Improve resource assignments
  • Improve project communication
  • Improve project team collaboration
  • Improve overall project process

Every goal will impact different functional areas within an organization. You should plan your implementation to impact those areas and improve those process that will add the most value.

References:

About the 7th IT Project Management Conference -Bogotá, Colombia

Published on March 17, 2009 in PM Community. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Tony Johnson and I

Last week I was participating of the “Jornada de Gerencia de Proyectos de TI” – IT project management conference. It was great. Probably in other countries it’s usual to have great congresses or events related to PM, but here in Colombia, even the PMI Colombian Chapter sucks -even the name is out of date. It is not about find great PMs here in Colombia, you can find PM Gurus as weel, but they fail on their limited sense of community, and it’s inability to set a decent conference or even as a non-profitable group.

ACIS, the Colombian Association of Systems Engineers -and other professionals around informatics- have been leading this conference for the last seven years. It is not the most popular event ever, but it is great. It was my first, hope not the last. I met a lot of PMs who work for big IT companies like IBM, HP and Dell. I listen experienced PMs about PM tactics and techniques, tips and how to deal with people – most of PMs and PM methodologies do not take care about people because it is competence of the PM to handle people to keep the project on its way. But, is it true? Should be the PM who handles all the “human” side of the project? Probably it is, because almost all the times, PMs are the bridge between the senior management (and their necessity of results), and the team (and their personal needs).

The bonus of this event was the unexpected visit and presentation of Tony Johnson, the CEO of Crosswind - He talked about Program Management, its difference with Project Management, but also, he talked about Agile and how PgM works Agile. I was shocked, to hear a guy who works helping people to get its PMI Certifications talking about Agile. Wow! The presentation took no more than 45 minutes, and I was amazed about Tony’s ability to link PMI and Agile -while most Agilist seems to feel offended with the PPM framework of the PMI.

BTW, I did my part too, doing a short presentation about how to choose the right PM software tool for your company/team/project.

Congrats to Martha Ardila, Beatriz Caicedo and the whole team behind the event. It was great.

The Pee Paradigm

Published on March 5, 2009 in Personal. 0 Comments Tags: , .

At the beginning it was pure calm. Junior developers do not have to do a lot more then coding, and coding something that probably somebody else already designed. Those days remind me when I was a kid at the school. I did have a lot of responsibilities and of course the life was easier.

Then I became senior programmer, and then architect, and then system designer… Oh Dear God… why, probable because it is a natural process to grow up and get experience and knowledge and, obviously because it also means a salaray raise -at least most of the times. But then I noticed that my whole perspective about software development has been changed. And then, I promote the Pee Paradigm.

When you are a programmer and you have to pee, you can leave your desk with one problem and then, when you come back, it is the same problem. And guess what, it is possible that while your were doing your stuff, you can come up with a solution.  However, when you get additional responsibilities, including management ones, and you have to pee, you leave your desk with a set of problems and then, when you come back to your desk, it is sad, really sad, you got additional elements to your set. So it is useless to try to solve them when your were doing your stuff.

Few months ago, when I was Production Manager for a huge project for one of the most famous brands in the world, I got 250+ emails every day. Can you believe it? It was a mess, it obviously was a failure inside the communications plan. But it was true. So I created a rule in my email client to assign colors to emails depending on if I was on the “To” or in the “CC” or in the “BCC” or even if I was the unique recipient. It was sad and scary, but fortunately for me, I do not get those emails anymore!

Simple Maths: 250 emails x 1.5 minute reading = 375 minutes = 6.25 hours. At this point I didn’t send an email, I didn’t make a call, o even received a call. I didn’t went to bathroom, I didn’t do anything else than open my email client. Could you imagine when somebody called me asking if I read an email from somebody else where I was CC? Ah? Blah? What are you talking about? Was my name at the beginning of the email content or as the subject?

Since then, I do not drink water at the office – and I feel concerned about have to pee during my day

Team Building vs. Labor Climate

Published on February 22, 2009 in Methods, PM Community and SW Development. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Few days ago I had a conversation with one of the most active Bloggers I had ever known: Bas de Baar about project management in Colombia.I’m not the most experienced project manager here in Colombia, but probably I had worked for few companies that provide me with a very well understanding of what is going on with project management in Colombia.

Project Management isn’t new in Colombia. At least for IT and software related companies Project Managers have been there forever (due to the nature of the IT and software development processes). But, there is something missing about PM here in Colombia: Team Building.

I do believe that Labor Climate and Team Building aren’t the same. As I said to Bas, almost all Colombians -good, not so good, and bad ones- will try to be your friend. Colombian people is really appreciated because of their willingness and attitude of service and camaraderie (did I write it right?). However those are two different things: try to be your friend, and be a good boss, project manager or director.

And that’s why Labor Climate seems to be amazing on Colombian SW development related companies even when “team building” is not a priority. And it could be good, because of its impact on the organizational behavior, improve the labor climate will probably  boost the team efficiency and collaboration. But, not to perform team building activities will be bad for long-term employee & employers relationship, because “personal” friendship isn’t necessarily based on the idea of personal and professional growth and career development.

Furthermore,  SW developers, designers, and architects, and IT project managers, prefers to have project-based relationships with their employers. And for those who know, contractors, even if they are good doing what they do, increase the probability of certain risks to occur -example: dependency on people because there is no knowledge spread opportunity.

To conclude. there is a big difference between “having a great time with amazing people at the office” and “having a great work experience”. It should be a balance between labor climate and team building to ensure a short-term motivation, but also a long-term relationship between employers and employees.