Deadline 12

--Originally published at TI2011 – The Broken Wallflower

Before reading

I know it has been a long since I wrote a post but I did not feel like doing it, but now we are back in the game so lets start. The last time we talked about the book we ended up in a situation where all the things were running perfectly for Mr T, but then the NNL decided to leave Morovia and leave someone in charge, someone called Mr B, and this Mr B decided to update things a little bit he reduced the deadline for the six projects and desmantelated the a and b teams that he had for every project just to make one team per project, of course Mr T was not happy about it but with his coworkers decided to run the same projects but withouth Mr B to know it, which actually means more work to do, and less time.

Chapter 12

By now and with the changes Mr B did all the good developers were now working on the projects for Mr B and the other devs were working for Mr T in a place that General Markov knew and Mr B did not. This means that now they have 18 projects to run six A teams and twelve B and C teams, which of course is a tremendous amount of work, which of course our main characters will have to deal with it, it could no everything perfect right?

While Mr T was hanging around he found a misterious letter from Lahska, a letter that said that she was now working in a company in Massachusetts where they focused on meassure things but more specifically software, and that she met someone that could be really useful for Mr T operations now that he has more work to do and

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Mr. Talk Alot

--Originally published at Blog Oliver

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In this chapter we meet a peculiar character Mr T. Johns Caporous, he is introduced after Lahksa send a letter to Webster. So a few days later we meet Mr T. and man he talks a lot. He remembers all kind of different facts from a lot of topics. And not just that he also is good with numbers and calculations. Specifically with everything related to measure the impact, size and efficiency of projects. He talks with Webster about Functions Points, which are a measure to determine the size of a project. This way we know how much effort we need and how much time we are going to finish the project.

Every team project can create their own Function Points with the name they want so they can measure the time needed in that specific team. For example if we have data about past projects we have created and how much time we needed, we can calculate our own functions with this data. This way we have a more realistic approach to start a project. Thats what Belinda explained no Webster and how they could add this function points to the data modeling they already had. Webster also regrets they didnt use this points since the beginning of the projects, that way they could have a more realistic approach of how much time is needed to develop all projects.

We also see Webster and Belinda giving a new position to Webster personal assistant Waldo. He is now the manager of the metric group. Because he is good with numbers and he can get all the information needed from past projects.

In the end we see Belinda and Webster talking about why they do their jobs and if they are helping or harming people.

metrics

Review on Chapters 17 and 18 of ‚The Deadline: A Novel about Project Management‘

--Originally published at Project Evaluation and Management Reflections

Chapter 17 – Conflict Resolution Lessons

Dr. Larry Boheme, an expert on conflict resolution for systems projects, steps up to teach the management team about conflict resolution. He teaches Mr. T his ‘Win Conditions’ for conflict resolution:

  1. Accept conflict. Declaring it unacceptable will only drive the conflict underground.
  2. Complex organizations have diverse goals, which will lead to diverse individual goals which can conflict with each other.
  3. Conflict is not unprofessional but deserves respect and could be resolved to the organization’s best interests.
  4. Mediation can represent a simple method of conflict resolution.
  5. To resolve conflict, the conflicting parties need to understand and respect each other’s needs, keep the organizational goal in mind and look for new options not considered before. Most of the time, common interest exists.
  6. Procedures for conflict resolution should be put in place before conflict happens. When conflict arises, those procedures can be followed to spot and mediate conflict.

The logic Dr. Larry Boheme follows reminds me of my Project Management class, in which we also discussed how to manage conflict in projects.

We found that first of all, it needs to be determined which kind of conflict we have, as conflict can arise from three categories:

  • Different goals & expectations
  • Uncertainty about authority
  • Interpersonal conflict

Especially in projects, there are some common sources of conflict known to exist in specific phases for which you should expect to arise and look out for. They compromise the following:

  • Project formation: lack of clarity, setting of priorities, gaining resources
  • Project build-up: problem spill-over from first stage, technical conflicts
  • Main part: schedule-related, delays and catching up, trade-offs
  • Project phase-out: scheduling, deadlines, personal conflicts

Consequences can include increased costs and wasted resources, decreased productivity and lower motivation, poor decision-making, complaints, blaming or backstabbing. Those are actually

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Review on Chapter 16 of ‚The Deadline: A Novel about Project Management‘

--Originally published at Project Evaluation and Management Reflections

Feeling stupid?

In the beginning, notebooks with specs from the American NASPlan which ended up in litigation arrive in Morovia, stolen by Mr. Belok as a ‚help‘ for the project. I especially liked the comment of Mr. Kenoros when taking all those books to the teams:

We take on too much because we are terrified of too little.

Aristotle Kenoros

Then, Mr. T. is informed of a new problem. Osmun Gradish is the PMill-A project manager. He is changing from a „pleasant, soft-spoken, young manager“ into being „loud“, „angry“ and „abusive“ because of the pressure and stress on having to lead an overstaffed project team. They also suspect that he is afraid his project will be the only one not to meet the deadline, leaving him to be blamed for that failure.

Mr T. writes in his journal his thoughts:

  • Anger and contempt in management are contagious. When upper management is abusive, lower management mimics the same behavior (much like abused children who go on to become abusive parents).
  • Managerial contempt is supposed to act as a goad to get people to invest more in their performance. It is the most frequent „stick“ of carrot-and-stick management. But where is the evidence that contempt has ever caused anyone to perform better?
  • A manager’s use of contempt to goad workers is more a sign of the manager’s inadequacy than of the workers.

Meanwhile, Belinda is leading the project for the Air Traffic Control Tower for the summer games in Morovia. Her team is currently reading the Radio Governance System (RGS) specs from the FAA. However, none of them understands what exactly is specified by the RGS specs. With Belinda’s help, they conclude that in fact, it doesn´t specify a system at all and contains only vague descriptions that could be applied to

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