Software Production Management

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great congresses or events related to PM, but here in Colombia, even the PMI Colombian Chapter sucks -even the name is out of date.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.

At the beginning it was pure calm. Junior developers do not have to do a lot more than coding, and to be clear it is about coding something that probably someone else have been already designed. Those days when I started coding remind me when I was a kid at the school. I didn’t have a lot of responsibilities and of course, the life was easier than now.

Then I became senior programmer, and then architect, and then system designer (Oh Dear God). Why? It’s probable because it is a natural process to grow up and get experience, knowledge and, obviously because it also means.. most of the times… a salary raise. But then I noticed that my whole perspective about software development had been changed. At that point I wrote the first draft of the Pee Paradigm. Please take a minute to read and understand it – you can also leave a comment.

When you are a programmer and you have to pee, you can just leave your desk at any given moment with one or few problems pending to be solved. Some minutes later -depending on your personal needs of course- when you come back to your desk you can be sure that 99.99% of the times it will be the same set of problems -nothing have been changed. And to make it even better, it is possible that while your were doing “your stuff” you came up with a solution to those problems! Amazing!. In contrast, assume that you get additional responsibilities including management tasks and you have to “pee”. So it comes the time when you have to LEAVE YOUR DESK and even when you will have a small set of “pending things” to solve or do, you can be absolutely sure that once you come back you will have additional items. And maybe you can solve things during your “reduced personal time off” but it will be certain that instead of solving things you will remember additional stuff.

Few months ago, when I was Production Manager for a huge project for one of the most famous brands in the world, I used to received more than 250 emails every day. Can you believe it? It was a mess. Obviously it was a failure inside the communications plan but it was true. So I created few rules to colorize my emails assigning colors depending on the recipients list. Let’s do some simple maths to clarify the situation:

250 emails x 1.5 minute reading
= 375 minutes
= 6.25 hours.

At this point I didn’t send an email, make a call, o even received it. I didn’t went to bathroom or do anything else than open my email client.

Could you imagine somebody asking about an specific email like “did you checked the Fulano’s email about the X situation?” – while my reduced set of neurons tried to evaluate and solve the question, another even more reduced set of neurons where thinking something like “Ah? Blah? What are you talking about? Was my name at the beginning of the email content or as the email subject?”

Since then, I wrote the Pee Paradigm and decided not take drinks at the office. Also I feel really concerned about have to pee during my working hours

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.

As part of a meet-us-now-face-2-face Colombian fever / frenzy, there is another initiative around charity! -charity: water Few months after the Facebook events fever now we are facing the Twitter invitations frenzy. However I spent few lines commenting about Twestival Bogota, because it deserves it. BTW: I will not assist due to previous personal engagements.

Any who wants additional information feel free to visit the Twestival site.

Con el motivo de la VII Jornada de Gerencia de Proyectos, se presenta la VII Encuesta de Gerencia. Los interesados pueden en responderla aquí.