TI2011 Spring 2020 – Page 13 – Project Evaluation and Management

A lot of (good) news!

--Originally published at Blog de Célia

Alan Levine
Hole in the Sky
(Be free like the air)

There is many information in this chapter: NNL is back, many projects are done, the company will be put on the stock exchanges, Mr. T wants to leave the company, Mr. T said what he really think about Belok….

I did not find many things to write about this chapter, perhaps because it’s easier to write about problems and negatives stuffs and there is not many negativities in this chapter.

However, I wanted to write something about the courage of leaving our job. I think that Webster had a lot of courage to do that… To decide to leave his job when everything looks to go well. It is something really hard to do, you need courage and to be determine. Webster is an example in this case: you need to follow your own inspiration whatever it will cost (do not do crazy think neither). Be able to change your life when you need it is very important. I know too many people (even people that are close to me) that do not have the courage to follow their dreams because they live in a routine and they are afraid to change it. We are afraid of the change and it is normal, but I think we should fight against this fear since follow your instinct is probably what will leads you to happiness (and then to success).

Chapter 22

--Originally published at Erick learning experience

In this chapter at the very beginning I agree in the part that said the importance of having a deadline and at the same time a goal, because the main difference between those two are that a goal is for satisfaction and it can help you to motivate you to keep working hard the opposite of a exaggerated deadline where instead of motivating you to keep working it stress you and make you feel the pressure that can be cause of more errors at the time of working.

The part when Allair start talking to Mr .T it was like all the summary of what you don’t have to do in a project, he didn’t care about their last employees, then he decided to fire some of them just to make space, and then he decide to reduce salaries and rule by fear just as he threat Mr .T and try to intimidate him, but with everything I learned in last chapters I already know what was thinking and how he was going to respond to that.

Another thing I consider very important was how Mr. T know almost everything about all his coworkers and how without shame he said which coworkers can do the same job that he did in those projects and that characteristic in my opinion was very important, because it means that he is not a selfish person and recognize the work of all.

“Blisters in the pecker” – Chapter 22

--Originally published at Meeting the Deadline

Sad doggo foundz at https://www.dogster.com/lifestyle/can-dogs-cry

What a painful thing to witness. Or to read.

But he (Belok) had it coming.

Now, this chapter is kinda sour.

It is when NNL returns to recover the throne and basically tells Mr. T “we don’t need you anymore. And it will be way behind when your original contract said.”

I don’t want to get misunderstood. It was all said in a friendly matter. It’s just, I thought this was going to last longer (and so Mr. T). But in the end, I guess we just stay for the required time. And then, we must move on. A painful thing to do, of course, but not that painful when you become rich AF, and specially if it comes directly from you sweat, tears and blood. Goddamn Mr. T he knows he deserved this.

But well, the goodbyes come later. Here we’re going to briefly talk about the last important lesson this book can show us.

As Mr. T said, “Lean and mean is a formula developed in failing companies by the people responsible for the failure.” Which is right.

A company should focus on being Prosperous and Caring, as all things should be, and one must inspire kindness and passion always, in everything we do.

Just like that succeed, in life and in the industry. Not by being failing and frightened, but by being and aiming for prosperity.

I think we could thank Belok for that lesson, because not anybody can demonstrate it over and over again; what we should and what we shouldn’t do.

This one’s rather short, but highly valuable as always. Also, we’re at the end, which means things are going to get simple and emotional.

Thanks for joining me today.
We’ll meet again next Continue reading "“Blisters in the pecker” – Chapter 22"

The Deadline – Chapter 19

--Originally published at Coder Bebop

So what are we doing in this chapter really? Do they mean to tell us that overstaffing teams (which was not recommended by Tompkins in first place) does not get things done? I really do not understand what they try to say with all the technicalities about work divisions and tarara. What seems to be the point of it? We already knew Belok’s idea was awful and he should die, so why do they keep complaining about the overstaffed teams? Should they not have seen this coming from the beginning?

That is all the complaining I have got for today, sorry. Nothing really happened in this chapter besides Belinda nagging at Webster to assign more people to other teams, even though, you know: HE WOULD BE PUTTING HIS LIFE ON THE LINE! Or rather, the deadline (badum-tss). If they so desperately wanted to get Belok off their backs why not try to reach for NNL or Lakhsa? But like, really really tried? With the contacts Mr. T seems to have, and the greatness of Bill Ga… I mean, NNL, it should not be that hard, should it? I mean, his life depends on it. But whatever, as Belinda says: “Priority to the project” or something of such.

Chapter 20

--Originally published at Erick learning experience

In this chapter I agree in the part when they said the importance of having a schedule to do a meeting and make it public so people can see if is important to their respective area or not, because if the subject of the meeting is not important to them they are only wasting their time and making the meeting more difficult, and if you add factors like insecurity about the project is obvious that all the people related to the project will come even if they are not necessary in that particular meeting and for the people that truly needs to discuss something is going to be harder and time consuming , that’s because with more people is harder to talk and ask opinions about.

How to Run Effective Team Meetings - Tameday

In the part that they started to talk about how you can prevent meetings with a lot of people I like the things Dr. Winnipeg took in consideration first the people that needs their time in another important thing and are not very necessary in the meeting, another thing he took in consideration is do it in a polite way, then make a reunion at the beginning of the meeting to keep focus on the objective of it and create trust that you are only going to talk about things you put in the agenda.

Another important thing I consider about this chapter is the part they talked about anger in the work, I consider that be angry about something can represent fear but I consider that most of the anger in a work is to suffer an injustice in the work and you can’t solve it alone or it will take a lot of time to solve it.

Chapter 21

This chapter was very funny at the beginning how Belok in a mysterious Continue reading "Chapter 20"

The Deadline – Long awaited finale

--Originally published at Parra’s Project Management Blog

I decided I was going to finish writing about this book by not writing at all. I liked making the Guess Song’s Name Challenge, but in these final two chapters, 22 and 23, there was not a lot of useful information to include. So instead, I’m closing this series of posts about The Deadline, by Tom De Marco, with a personal reflection.

I will first cover the last bit of useful information the book delivers. They talk about the concept of “lean and mean”, which is when companies reduce their budgets by limiting the working experience for their staff. This decision, specially in the software development industry, is the worst thing that you can do to your company. Even though this book was written in 1997, they had the right ideas. Today we see that the most successful companies don’t mind spending a ton of resources in keeping their employees happy, because they know it’s the best long term decision.

“Prosperous and caring – the real goal of an organization.” If you keep your most important clients (your workers) happy, they will make everyone happy, which will translate into better economic results. The last thing the book speaks about is estimates and goals. They must both exist, and they must be different because one gives perspective in a possible date, and the other is a remainder that you must do everything to get the best possible out of a project, resulting in ending right, time-wise speaking.

In conclusion, I don’t consider that The Deadline had the best plot in the world, actually was quite plain, but the real core of this book is the knowledge it offers. I really like learning with a fun little story rather than just receiving theory in the traditional Continue reading "The Deadline – Long awaited finale"

Chapter 19

--Originally published at Erick learning experience

In the start of this chapter it was very interesting how they evaluate the teams in terms of how they did the design of the project, I consider important that the biggest team did worse than the other teams because for planning is harder to that with a lot of people instead of just few people that design everything and then divided the work to the rest of the team, but the problem with that is that you have people that is not working until the design is finished.

The problem of not making a good partition and design from the beginning is that you consume a lot of time just in meetings with your teammates to organize how you can do the job, that means more interaction that consume a lot of your time just planning something that should have been planned from the beginning and now you are wasting time in doing the planning and coding at the same time.

I agree with the graph above, the ideal form of starting a project first is to have low staff numbers, this is because at the beginning you are not coding or dividing the work, at the beginning you should be doing some planning and design how the project is going to be divided, how many modules and then with all the design you can start getting more staff and assign them a specific part of the project and thanks to that avoid a lot of meetings and the most avoiding frustration among your staff.

So in conclusion is better to design everything fist with few people that letting a lot of people to start the design, because in the last case the design would be divided into teams and then it will end like an attempt of design Continue reading "Chapter 19"

Summer Game Time

--Originally published at Blog Oliver

ZXgaUfW

In this chapter we have news of Lahksa she has been in traveling for 7 or 8 chapters. She sends Webster team a document with al the Specifications from the FAA NASPlan which is a project similar to the one Webster needs to finish for the olympic games. But we have a problem NASPlan project was a totally failure, thats not all one of the managers from Websters teams is angry and is getting loud and abusive with his team. So Webster is thinking on how to talk with this manager and see if he can help. Belinda also tells Webtser how working in stressful situations serves as opportunities to learn. So they decide to create a team with experience in similar projects to work in air traffic control project.

Next day after the team have read the documentation they realized its poorly written, they cant obtain useful information from this paper because of this. But everyone thinks the documentation is useful and the problem is they cant understand the problem because of the difficulty of the final product.

tenor

In this chapter I realize Belinda is one of the most or the most wise of all the characters, she always have an answer for everything and no matter the situation she remains calm, I think its because she suffered from a burnout. She realized that nobody understood the documentation but everyone said they did because of fear. Nobody wants to admit the other its more intelligent and they understand the documentation but we dont. Documentation must have all details needed in order to understand the inputs and outputs of the project this way the user knows how it works.

Olympic Games in Korsjak

--Originally published at Blog Oliver

In this chapter we see Webster talking to Minister Belok again, yeah Minister Belok who is always trying to put difficulties in Webster projects and thinks Webster needs to push the teams even more. This time Belok is complaining about overtime hours, he thinks people are not working enough, they need to work more hours and increase monthly overtime hours. And thats not all, also Olympic games will be hosted in Korsjak in 2000, so they need to build a new air traffic control system, that can support three thousand landings and three thousand takeoffs. Webster is in a big problem he doesnt have any experience working in this type of projects.

giphy

Webster team starts to talk about how to deal with the new air traffic control and also the overtime hours. So they dig around information of past projects so they can see the relation between overtime hours and the time required to finish a project. We see something different from what everyone was thinking, overtime hours dont decrease the time needed to finish a project, this is shocking because it sounds logical if we work more ours we finish before. The reality its different we learn this when Webster and his team ask the oracle, the oracle responds with my favorite quote of the book so far “People under pressure dont think faster”. It makes more sense now it doesnt matter if we put more pressure or we make people work more overtime theres a limit in what people can do and how fast they can work. Pressure is not a good option to improve the efficiency of a team.

giphy (1)

Chapter 17

--Originally published at Erick learning experience

In this chapter it was mentioned how in a single organization everyone has different goals and is important to understand this because if you try that all the members of the organization or the team has the same goal it will be bad in terms of motivation. So in my opinion is very important to understand that everyone in the team has their own motivations and create facilities to make those goals easier will increase the motivation that the members have in the project.

Another thing I consider important in this chapter is that in every project there is always conflict and is important to accept this and start working on how to solve them and try to reach an agreement in the matter, and try to remember those persons or groups that are in conflict that all of them are part of the same team and the problem they are facing are in the opposite side so they together have to solve that situation.

Chapter 18

In the chapter when they were talking about the importance of keeping the workers happy and motivated them to stay in the team instead of having a team asking to change to another project is very important because in this case Mr .T sacrifice a hour of work to give more time to their workers to relax and have good time and thanks to that those employees stay in the project that is much better than having to change teams and spend time training them to do another work.

I like how Mr . T said that conflict is not something reprehensible, I agree with that because people will work better if they can think freely, because if you try to prevent conflict by punishment then some members in the team will start to