This week in the pm-clinic discussion forum:

I’m a project leader in a research organization - as in a hard core blue sky R&D future thinking lab. We loosely organize around projects but our goals are the inverse of typical software: it’s the IP and the concepts we invent that people pay us for, not feature sets or code quality. Our releases to clients are vehicles for our concepts and research, but nothing more.

What I’m looking for are ways to apply project management skills to blue-sky, big think, projects. Can we improve the quality of our process and scheduling, or get more mileage out of the concepts we invent, but with a minimum impact on our ability to experiment, change directions, and go after big powerful ideas? What do things like specs, exit criteria and status meetings mean for a 100% proof of concept project?

- Flying in the blue sky

Posted in PM-Clinic | 1 Comment »

This week in the pm-clinic discussion forum:

I’m a lead programmer on a web 2.0′ish startup. Our team of 7 released an alpha version last week and we’re planning the final release, and need to make partner date commitments for launch.

Our biggest debate is buffer. All of our experienced programmers have pet philsoophies about buffer and I’m looking for someone to dispell the myths and give real advice on: Should buffer be used at all? When? why? Where do you put it in the schedule? Do you tell the team? And what are common stupid things arrogant leads do with buffer that shoot themselves in the foot and how can we avoid?

thanks,

- Wannabe buffermaster (WB)

Posted in PM-Clinic, Software/Web development | 5 Comments »

This week in the pm-clinic discussion forum:

Times have changed at my company and I’m looking for a management role. I was hired as a software developer, but have picked up some project management work through promotions. Since I have no experience either interviewing potential PMs/managers or being interviewed myself, I don’t know what to expect in seeking out a FT management position.

What are three questions you ask of any project manager you interview? What is the minimum criteria to get a hire? How do you deal with ambiguities of assessing management skill, compared to something more easily demonstrated in the interview, like programming or design knowledge?

Posted in Management, PM-Clinic | 5 Comments »

This week in the pm-clinic discussion forum:

I have just joined as a Project Manager at a software house employing 130 people, 90 of which are involved in software. The engineers are talented but number of PMs is low and failed projects is high. CEO is technical, but sees PM is a discipline he has neglected for too long. Hence the board have hired myself and one other PM to help.

Many engineers are anti-management and believe they don’t need managing, but after 3 weeks I see major problems of out of control work, lost budgets and late schedules. Some engineers fear I’ve been hired to cut headcount and are anxious (though I anticipate that the opposite may be true).

My preliminary moves to add structure to projects has met great resistance: some engineers refused to attend a weekly team meeting.

How can I bring order to the chaos without resorting to the stick method? How can I get engineers to buy in to the Project Management ethos? I already feel I’ve alienated some by my job title, and I don’t want to do more damage.

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This week in the pm-clinic discussion forum:

In the company I work for, we have personal development discussions between manager and developers twice a year. One part of the discussion is goal setting for the next half year period, and I’m a new manager doing this for the first time.

Obviously, we want the goals to be measurable, realistic, specific, and all that. I am not that interested about general properties of good goals as I am confident (ok, arrogant :) about those. Instead, I want to see real examples of goals that have worked well or well written goals that failed. Not team goals, but individual goals.

The whole personal goal thing is shrouded in mystery - no one ever shows real examples from real reviews for real people, and I hoped pm-clinic might have some people willing to anonymize goals from people on their team, prior teams or share some of their own goals.

I realize that goal setting is dependent on context and I don’t expect that looking at other people’s goals would be transferable as such. Instead, I hope to get new ideas and food for thought in this subject that is new to me, and for that reason good and bad examples (with light commentary) would be valuable. Thanks.

Posted in Management, PM-Clinic | 2 Comments »

This week in the pm-clinic discussion forum:

I’m a development lead in a high powered web development company. We beat competitors on speed and quality technology, and engineers like me do the closest thing to project management. We avoid specs and docs, working in small enough teams that fast communication is pretty easy. There is a strong anti-management vibe in the company, as well as a hyper proactive “do it now and fix it later” mentality, but those attitudes have served us really well - our company has been super successful.

The problem is that our organization has grown from 100 to 2000+ people in a handful of years. Many engineers work on several projects at a time, including lots of remote programmers. We have a high number of virtual teams and a super flat hierarchy - things that are liberating, but are suddenly annoying at times. The consensus driven approach we have isn’t as speedy as it was.

My dilemma has two parts:

Tactics: I’m more willing to try changes than many of my peers and reports. So how do I add in more management-y things, a little more structure and clearer division of ownership, without rocking the boat and being called a weenie? (Our lingo for fuddy-dutty management types). I fear it’s a one way ride: These things I’ll add will never be removed and it’s a downward spiral of over-management (And my team of engineers fears this too).

Strategy: How do you work to shift the culture the company was founded on and take pride in, when it’s not working as well anymore? I can’t say I’ve worked anywhere that handled this successfully - either the success ends, or people leave, whenever leaders try to mature the culture.

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This week in the pm-clinic discussion forum:

As a break from situations, for this week here’s a PM puzzle that never fails to surface astonishing pet theories and assumptions:

Since a 100 person-day project cannot be practically completed in 1 day with 100 people, it’s safe to assume it cannot be completed in 2 days with 50 people. But the question is, assuming the total amount of work is known (e.g. 100 person days), how should you estimate how many people you need, or how much calendar time it will take?

Posted in PM-Clinic | 9 Comments »

This week in the pm-clinic discussion forum - The softer side:

I’m working at my third tech sector start-up company. This one is a web 2.0 type shop (consumer facing web service) comprised of me and four other programmers. We divide up the work to avoid conflicts, giving each programmer great autonomy and minimizing the need for any kind of manager role. It has been good so far, but we’re fast approaching bigger decisions (e.g. financial, strategic) that impact all of us, and I fear our anti-management/consensus approach will eventually be a burden.

So how do you know:

1. When is it time to create a dedicated manager or PM type role? Is it defined by the # of people you have? Other factors?
2. How do you transition from a totally organic model to one with defined roles?
3. Or do we even need to worry about this at all? Most of my peers think we’re successful because of our lack of any formal management knowledge or structure whatsoever.

- Signed, Start up management

Posted in Management, PM-Clinic, Uncategorized | No Comments »

This week in the pm-clinic discussion forum - The softer side:

(Note: please remember that just because I post these situations, I’m not their author: these things aren’t happening to me, but folks on the pm-clinic list. I get mail now and then that assumes all of these situations are *mine* which I find quite entertaining, but worth clarifying).

How do you keep the middle talent on your team motivated? I manage a team of 10 and I find the stars and the low performers easy to manage: it’s clear what i should do and how to do it. But the middle third is tough: i can’t reward them as well the top, and I’m not inclined to manage their performance like I would a low performer: the result is they get less attention from me. I’d like to push them to compete with the top, but I’m not sure I want my team competing with each other too much - so how do you manage for a happy middle talent pool on your team?

- Managing the middle

Posted in PM-Clinic, Uncategorized | No Comments »

This week in the pm-clinic discussion forum - The softer side:

Most of our PMs have some type of technical or business background, and the area of growth most pressing for us is softer skills - things like collaboration, leadership, negotiation, conflict resolution. My question for the clinic is: how are these skills best obtained? How do your organizations value/reward/grow these types of skills (or are they not valued much at all)?

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This week in the pm-clinic discussion forum- Mutiny:

Mutiny

This is one for the history books - I have quite the situation on my hands. I’m the PM for a 15 person team. My peer is the lead developer, who manages 6 programmers (of the 15). We disagreed on a major project decision, brought it to the VP, and he went my way. But since then, the lead developer has stopped talking to me. I mean, he won’t even answer my questions.

Whenever possible he tries to backfill the decision, directing his team towards the outcome he wanted, despite the VP directive. At first this was just frustrating (for me and the team), but now it makes me look incompetent and puts the project at risk. Morale is dropping, as we’re like a family where the parents have stopped talking to each other and programmers are taking sides.

Help?

Posted in PM-Clinic | 8 Comments »

This week in the pm-clinic discussion forum- PMs vs. Programmers:

Welcome to April (If you’re in the USA, time to get your taxes done).

Here’s this week’s situation: The raging debate in my corner of the world is PMs vs. programmers. Our management just agreed to hire another two PMs for our organization, instead of hiring another two programmers.

Most of us (the other programmers) think it’s a mistake: our biggest needs are team bandwidth and productivity, not planning, client management or crisis management. We’re afraid of the ratio of PM to programmers spiraling us down into unproductive misery. Most of the PMs around here are non-technical and can’t help much in technical decision making.

Two part question:

1. How do you know the right ratio of PMs to programmers for a team?
2. What level of technical skill should PMs have? CS degree? former programmer? C++ for dummies? Or none at all?

Posted in Management, PM-Clinic | 2 Comments »