Project Evaluation and Management
--Originally published at TI2011 – FABIAN'S GEEK STUFF
The following review and analysis of the book Deadline are mainly about management, and not in general, specifically on teamwork's who want to get the project and te best relationship between them. When Mr T has to make his team work and worth, the reall hard task come into his mind, that is when he... Continue Reading →
--Originally published at Coder Bebop
So we might as well wrap up the chapter with this quote:
What do you call a guy who
Webster Tompkins, Chapter 15, Page 195
tells you something you should have known a hundred years
ago, but didn’t.
Is the author trying to excuse himself for making a chapter revolve around pressuring people and then self-realizing: “Doy people do not work as good under pressure.” Have we not had conversations like this one in the story before? Good incentives are always better than bad incentives. Whatever has Webster been doing as a manager all these years if he is just figuring it out until now? I feel I am terribly misunderstanding the point of this chapter. I do not really feel it was a waste, but I am wondering where it is going most of the time with all the graphs and the corelations between previous works, Binda’s graph, etc. since we end up with a “well, duh” note in the last few pages.
All this work just to make everyone see that Belok is more of a douche who not only abuses of workers but also abuses his kids (if anyone would dare to have kids with such a person)? Perhaps the author’s intention was more of a showcase to the readers and I am just distressing on “why are they working so hard to figure out pressure is not good”.
On a sidenote: I am feeling
--Originally published at Erick learning experience
When T. Johns was presented to us I was surprise of how he actually start making questions to Mr. T and then he answers his own question giving all the data with precision.
In this chapter they start talking about how you can quantify the amount of work that has to be done in a more specific way called function points and they show us a table with all the projects that Mr .T with his team were running at that moment and the quantity of function points of each project. Another important think is the importance of measuring the production rate and the variation this because all this data is important to make more precise plans and assumptions and make measures of time more precise than without that information, and if you don’t have that information but you have worked with that team before you can use the past project to obtain the information necessary to start making all the planning for future projects.
One quote that I like and I agree with is in the part that said “We are not losing him, we are just putting him to work at something that can make use of all his talents. That is what we do as managers. Apply people where their skills and talents can really shine. That’s what management is all about.” I like these quote a lot because I have seen in some project of the school that one of the best people in a certain area are doing things that are not fundamental instead of using all the knowledge they have in the important things and all because a bad decision made by the leader of the team. I agree that is important to let people use all
--Originally published at Project Evaluation and Management Reflections
Mr. Belok is convinced that only overtime work and strict control can lead to success. That is why he says he would move the deadline closer if he believed the projects were on track. He also wants the process improvement program to reach the Level 4, even though he has no idea what that means. He only cares about how numbers sound, not the details and implications of anything.
Belinda´s thoughts on overtime are quite different. While she also knows that overtime hours are needed, she wants to see the most overtime work done when the projects are in their maximum effort phase. If overtime hours increase too much before that point, that extra work cannot be sustained long enough, and the overall effort will be not enough to carry the burden of the peak workload.
Contrary to the believe that a reasonable amount of pressure will increase productivity, Waldo’s analysis of projects shows that the relation between pressure and productivity is almost flat. People keep working as normal even if pressure is way too high, as they are already used to impossible deadlines and expectations and behave rather cynical. However, they don´t understand why a little pressure is not having a large effect. They decide to ask Mr. Kenoros Oracle for help, and the answer is:
People under pressure don´t think faster.
The Oracle
Waldo´s results for overtime work were surprising as well. Those working overtime were even slightly less productive than those not working any overtime at all.
This is an extremely interesting fact. Even though it is logical that in an office, workers spend a lot of time on meetings, hallway chats, coffee runs or other unnecessary and unproductive tasks, it is still expected for people to work overtime
--Originally published at Project Evaluation and Management Reflections
Chapter 13 teaches us one of the most important things in project management, especially for software products. Even though it can be extremely helpful to have guidelines and processes to follow, they should never be assumed suitable for any project. Depending on your scope and resources, tasks might be redundant or could be solved in a different way that would save lots of time for other work.
As the B and C product teams are anyways rebuilding already existing products, they all figured that specifications didn´t need to be developed from scratch but could simply be derived from the already existing software. In addition to those functional specifications, they added their own non-functional specifications suitable for the individual teams to lay the ground for their own product.
However, the contrast to the A teams is huge and points to the problem that Mr. T. was aware of right from the beginning: too large teams. Instead of working on tasks that move the project forward quicker (still), the manager needs to assign unnecessary and productivity–decreasing tasks just to be able to provide one task for each team member.
It´s almost comparable to strong and weaker economies. Often, in developing or weak economies, jobs exist that industrialized countries don´t have anymore. For example, in some countries it is common at hotels for people to open doors, deliver bags to rooms, pack groceries into backs at supermarkets or help you with parking and reversing out of parking bays – and it is expected that you give those people a tip for their tasks, as for them it is their source of income. In other countries, these jobs either don´t exist or they are part
--Originally published at TI2011 – FABIAN'S GEEK STUFF
Welcome back you common reader!, the following post is about how he deadline book has changed my life, not quite as I expected but enough to talk (write) about it. Not going to list chapter after chapter, just going to emphasize the brilliant points and facts that held into my mind... One of the main... Continue Reading →
--Originally published at Hector's Blog
--Originally published at Hector's Blog
--Originally published at Project Evaluation and Management
The video game industry is very large, but analyzing all aspects of video games is better, because many would think that it is only designing, programming and having the idea, if not also has to do with the costs of the final product. video games are not only for one platform, many times they are for several and depending on the aspects that that platform contains, it is not the same to make a video game for a PC, console or smartphone.
He mentions a smartphone game called clash of clans, I played it when I was at the end of high school, when I entered university I stopped playing it and to this day I still do not play it, but I saw that many people bought gems in the game to be able to Make improvements, especially the pro players were the ones who spent the most money to be in the first places. I remember the game was down but people are still playing.
Now to make a game you have to think about whether you will take it to mobile development or consoles, since depending on where you want to focus it you have to have several tools and above all have a great team today to be able to carry out the entire project, you have to have from programmers, animators, lawyers, sound people, marketing, etc. It is not just saying I want to do this but being able to say now we are going this way, or you have to change this to get attention and keep the game alive. Because if not the games can die in a short time if you do not have a good strategy to keep monetizing it for many years.
The importance Continue reading "Guest Speaker Reflection – Jorge Morales"
--Originally published at TI2011 – Miguel’s Blog
It’s time for the first reflection, I know I’m a few days late, but at least I’m doing better than last semester. For this reflection I will mostly be covering the topics that I learned reading the book Deadline. The first partial covered chapters 1 through 11. So far, I have liked the book. It has a good combination between telling a story and teaching new things. Too much story and you wouldn’t learn much, and too much stuff to learn and it would get boring. The book manages to be interesting and informative. Besides being engaging, the book provides a lot of useful information in the area of management.
The book starts with Tompkins being laid off. This is a lot more interesting during the current situation since many people are going through this right now. Unfortunately, not everyone is as lucky as Tompklins and gets a job right afterwards. Something that’s key is mentioned here, if you really want to take down a company, taking out the CEO won’t do much. You want to take out the managers in order to have a bigger impact, this goes to show how important managers are. Another concept mentioned at the beginning of the book is administrivia. Administrivia is what some may think management is all about: checking your email, doing progress tracking and doing project milestones. However, a manager is so much more than just that. A manager is about people, knowing who to hire, keeping your people motivated and managing people.
It’s until chapter 3 when we are introduced to the nation of Morovia. It’s also in this chapter that we first learn about the software management experiment. There are many variables when building a software development team: age, size, previous experience, how much do the team members know
