The Berkun Blog
Management, design, and the making of good things.
Pms vs. Programmers (This week in pmclinic)
April 3rd, 2006
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:
- How do you know the right ratio of PMs to programmers for a team?
- What level of technical skill should PMs have? CS degree? former programmer? C++ for dummies? Or none at all?
Quality is job #15 (This week in pm-clinic)
March 27th, 2006
This week in the pm-clinic discussion forum- Quality is job #15:
Here’s this week’s situation:
We just shipped v2 of our project - but few are cheering. To meet our dates we dropped quality on the floor (reliability, usability… you name it) and everyone knows it. There’s already talk about what commitments we have for v3, but no one has articulated what we’re going to do about raising the quality bar.
How do you (successfully) argue for time for higher quality? Has anyone worked on a project where quality was really job #1? How did it happen? Who defined (and defended) quality?
- Quality is job #1
This week in pm-clinic: Plan for the plan
March 20th, 2006
This week in the pm-clinic discussion forum- Plan for the plan:
I work at a near v1 release start-up - we’re mostly industry vets who’ve worked together before, but we’re growing fast (7 new hires in the last month - 20% of our staff).
Some of us feel we need to write down something about how we do what we do - style guide for code, an outline for how feature decisions get made, you know - high level process stuff. It can be short and sweet, but we need a reference point.
Others feel it’s a waste of time, it never helps, and we should just be figuring it out as we go. No need to be all goody-too-shoes and orderly: we’re smart enough, as a small org, to work tight without documenting foofy things like processes.
How do you know when you need a plan for the plan? Who should write it? And how do you do it, especially for small anti-process teams, so that it’s beneficial in some way?
- Considering a plan for the plan
This week in pm-clinic: the “poof” of concept
March 13th, 2006
This week in the pm-clinic discussion forum- preventing “poof” of concept:
For months I’ve been pushing my VP to fund a project to enable our websites to produce and use RSS feeds (including newsreader like customization) - I was turned down every time, until yesterday. He’s given me the green light and assigned my team to someone else, but I only have a month, of a single programmers time, to prove to him the value of my idea.
He’s given me no direction on what he expects to see in a month, or what I need to do to convince him and other VPs to finish the project. I’ve never managed a short term, high profile, proof of concept project before and I’m thinking now I should have just kept my mouth shut (yes, I’m scared).
Now that I’ve bought the ticket, how to make sure it’s a happy successful ride?
- Avoiding “Poof” of concept (POC)
This week in pm-clinic: the boss who won’t listen
February 13th, 2006
This week in the pm-clinic discussion forum- The boss who won’t listen:
Months ago I informed my boss of my concerns for a project he was managing. He didn’t seem to be aware of the issues, so I mentioned them in our mutual best interest. He told me, polite but firm, he didn’t want me to inform him of such things: it’s not my place and he didn’t want to me to be so unsupportive of his efforts.
Last week I discovered some bigger issues in another one of his projects. These problems (missed requirements, secretly slipped schedule) will impact my team and others if they’re not nipped in the bud.
Do I raise the issues anyway and hope he’s not angry? Do I suck it up? Or should I find a quiet/secret way to inform his team of these issues?
- The boss who won’t listen
This week in pm-clinic: managing our time
February 6th, 2006
This week in the pm-clinic discussion forum- Managing our time:
Dear pm-clinic:
I’m a recovering Getting Things Done (GTD) addict. I tried the popular book/method/cult/flagellation by Dave Allen for awhile, but I’m not the kind of person capable of the religious type A behavior much of the system demanded. So I’m in need of something else before my team figures out how disorganized I am.
I’m hoping to learn timeworn tips and personal tactics people on the list have used to stay on top of their own hours and days (rather than their project’s).
How do you organize your own time against multiple projects? What tools (software or otherwise) are your favorites and how do you make use of them? What tricks have you learned over the years that have made a difference? What approaches do you recommend for people who work for you?
- Mr. Embarrassingly disorganized
This blog: weekly situations - yay or nay
February 1st, 2006
I run two discussion mailing lists - one on design and usability (uxclinic) and one on project management (pmclinic).
Question: In the past I’ve posted the weekly situations here on the blog. Sometimes people post comments on ‘em, but often they just sit there taking up space.
I’m thinking now that if you’re into the situations, you’re on the list and don’t need me to annoy you with them here. I did it before to help promote the lists, but they’re off the ground now.
So if you do want these situations posted, speak up now. If I don’t get a few votes for doing it, I’ll stop.
This week in PmClinic: Help a randomized team
January 9th, 2006
This week in the pm-clinic discussion forum How to help a randomized team:
“My team is trying to transition from being purely an integration and maintance team into having real customers with problems, feature requests, complaints, etc. There is a customer support organization but they’re often slow and don’t understand enough about the details to be efficient in exchange information between us and the customer.
The primary problem now is we’re drowning - we have figured out how to simultaneously deal with the ongoing maintance work, while also doing planning and customer work for the next major version. The team is frustrated, decisions are slow and everyone is losing patience. In short, we feel randomized and I don’t know what to do to stop it.
Someone in my org suggested having a escalation response team or process to help shield my team from unnecessary interruption, but I don’t know enough about that to know if it’s right or how to put it into place.”
- Signed, Mr. Crispy (Burning at both ends)
PM Clinic: Nominations for think-week
December 12th, 2005
This week in the pm-clinic discussion forum we’re building a think-week reading list. Here’s are details:
One smart thing I picked up at Microsoft was think-week. It started as something that Gates did: he took a week off a year to read all kinds of interesting papers and thoughts that he typically wouldn’t find time to read.
Not being Bill, I’d shoot for a think day. And tried to get my team to do the same: take an afternoon off at the coffee shop with the goal of reading items from a special “think-day” stack. (A good tip for any team).
So: Lets build the first ever pm-clinic think-week list.
Rules:
1. Nominate an essay, paper, or blog post that you think is important, and probably under-read by your peers on the list.
2. Books are allowed, but smaller units of reading preferred. Go for things that strike unusually deep at important problems, come from unexpected domains (film direction? building architecture?) or take an interesting approach.
3. A good think-week pile is highly diverse, challenging and fun to read.
Looking forward to seeing what you think belongs in the pile.
If you’re not on the pm-clinic list, you’re invited to make your nominations as comments - thanks.
PM-Clinic: Where to put the business folks
December 5th, 2005
This week in the pm-clinic discussion forum: Topic #56 - Where to put the business folks.
Welcome to the last month of the year - here’s a situation for you:
I manage a team of five PMs. Another manager runs the (large) production team of designers, programmers, QA. Folks on my PM team draw resources from his team to assemble project teams. Sometimes my PM team brings in Business Analysts (BA) to help with planning.
So, the other manager recently quit. His right-hand guy is acting manager. Day 3 on the job he invites me for coffee, and proposes to take over the BA positions. having them report through the production area to him, and not to the PM team. Just sign here, OK? No way, I said.
Where is the right home for business analysts or product planner types? What is a sound way to make arguments for where they should live? Does placing a role in a specific part of the organization necessarily stack the deck in a negative way? Or is this simply a political play by the acting manager for more power?
(Extra credit: same question, but with marketing or design).
Signed, The Prince
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