Risk management is one of the most important parts a manager must do. He must census the risk of every project, for this task he can select a person to be a risk officer. Every risk is important even the small ones, small risks can transform into bigger problems later.
When a project is over, if the team worked well don’t dissolve it, we already know that team works and have good synergy. Time is really important, its the same if we lose a day in the beginning or the end of the project. We can’t buy or get more time.
Management involve things that you can’t learn, you need to have heart, soul, gut and nose. Lead with your heart, earn the trust of your team, if your team trust you they will follow you. Your organization mus have soul everyone must work for a common goal. Use you gut to select your team, and you need a nose to detect bullshit.
People need an anonymous way to send message to the project manager, no one want to tell bad news. We need a way to communicate with everyone in an anonymous way.
Time management is a really important part in software development we need to create a realistic schedule that we can follow, if we don’t, we will always be late for something, and no matter how hard we work or how bad the consequences are we will never finish on time. Punishment don’t help developers to work faster. They need to feel safe to adapt to new changes.
We think we can work in our homes just because we deal with software. But the truth is we need to be together in order to get anything done. That way we can communicate directly and report problems as soon as possible.
That is a question we have all asked ourselves, life isn’t a movie where dreams come true after the struggle, failure is always a possibility and that is something we gotta have respect for, but the biggest failure in life is being afraid of failure itself. So as Tom does in the book, he didn’t answer that question with words, he kept going until he gets an answer by trying, and so should we.
“It’s your heart that people respond to. They don’t follow you because you’re clever or because you’re always right, but because they love you.”
That I believe is the biggest difference between being a leader and a boss, of course you can motivate people for what they will receive, but to welcome them as a part of your team and get them to share the same motivations as you will get you the most motivated people you can find, because they won’t just worry for themselves, they will care about everyone around them that has the same goal.
“Community doesn’t come from our towns anymore. But the need for community is still in us. For most of us, the best chance of a community is at work.”
Many people find that as a problem, and I think it is too, getting to know your neighbors is something I have barely experienced in my life, and there isn’t an old person that hasn’t told me how different it is now. But this opens a huge opportunity, now work is where people find a sense of belonging, and with that a sense of purpose and motivation comes in. Which is why many companies like Google and Cisco put lots of efforts to make the work environment feel the most comfortable.
It was funny when Lahksa suggested meeting Dr.Rizzoli but she said that he was going on his free will sort of? In this chapter I can reaffirm that Lahksa is dangerous and can do anything for the project, but I can’t believe that Mr. T helped.
When Mr. T and Dr. Rizzoli were talking about how to increase productivity it was interesting how Dr. Rizzoli said that there is not a short term fix to increase productivity, the only thing they can do is to think in a long term way and make things better for their successors. So in order to improve production you can focus on how you managed time to avoid unnecessary wasted time.
I agree when in the chapter they mentioned that managing an engineer project was more like managing future problems, planning what to do in case of each risk you can imagine, the cost it would take to surpass that problem or risk, is important to hear the people of the project to see future problems and most important don’t have a culture of fear, because thanks to that people would be sacred of tell you the problems that are present in the project and at the final stage all the problems would become a bigger one.
Chapter 9
At the beginning of the chapter I agree with NNL when he said that one of the most important thing about a manager is to respect the team, but you have to be careful with that people because it can be just appearance when they said that.
In the part when they go to the ex-general it was a bit confusing why he maintained all that people working in something that have been rejected, if I were an employee there I would be mad about
Sorry everyone I’m late with all the coronavirus stories I did not had the time to do my weekly task of writing about The Deadline (I’m sur you’ve already missed me). So, I’m back at it nooooow.
Starting now with a resume of the situation: Mr. T met a new guy when he was travelling outside of the country (in Rome, I hope he did not bring the coronavirus with him to Morovian lol, sorry, I’m trying to laugh about the situation, better to laugh than cry, isn’t it?). The guy and him had a discussion about productivity and hunches in project management. The guy tried to explain to Webster the importance of transforming hunches in models to get better in your previsions.
Webster said that by doble the persons working on a project, the productivity won’t doble. However, he couldn’t give number or say exactly how it’s will change with precisely and the give taught him that with a model he could know. If the productivity is not as great when you work with more people, it’s because they lose time interactions between each other.
As well to know your productivity rate and how the people affect it you have to be aware about the hiring and quitting rate. Since, someone arrive in a project you have to teach him stuff, so you will lose time at the beginning. Also, with the explications and the software the man gave to Webster, now he can modelized all his hunches. The models will be turn in actual result if he uses it well.
This chapter teaches us about measuring work. Although it does a good job on the description and the details on how to achieve it, I am still wondering, how are they going to use it? Previous to this (and restated by Belok), the team already had a dealine and calculations on how they were making the job efficiently and approximately how much it would take them (had they not been interrupted by the NNL’s best man). So how different would their work be now that they had a new measuring unit? To be honest, I did not totally understand how it works, only that it is synthetic, and thus needs to focus on the different process of each business to bring out the result. If Binda and the boys say it is 100% useful I trust them (that is how management works, sort of, right?).
An interesting point that Binda and Tompkins talk about is how Corpolous was being paid for doing something that was vaguely obvious. Webster getting scolded by Belinda for not thinking of it before comes off with a quote by Mr. T:
No. Good on him. The people who point out things that should have been obvious but weren’t are the ones who do the most real good. They see the simple fundamental truths that the rest of us miss, and they help us to see them as well.
And yet, it is hard work. Just because something appears obvious, it does not mean it is easy. Tompkins probably thought about it, but he has many worries in his head (including not getting killed). At any rate, it should have been Binda, the bag lady who just says “this guy” or “that woman” and promotes people to managers, who starts doing these measurements on her Continue reading "The Deadline – Chapter 12"
Note: The next blogs will be written in Spanish. This is due, by now, I’m running out of ideas about how keep this blogs fresh and fun for both parts. My objetive is (mostly) always give to you a pleaseant lecture while we learn something.
La fecha de entrega, o linea de muerte, acorde a los angloparlantes.
La novela, hasta ahora, lejos de ser una historia de ficción y aventura, como al principio creí que sería, se está transformando en un triste caso de la vida real.
La administración de proyectos es un andar de constantes obstáculos. Src. Giphy
Los problemas con los que tiene que lidiar Mr. T. constantemente parecieran extraídos de la realidad. Uno tras otro, obstáculos para no llegar a la fecha de entrega. Es tan realista que aterra.
La novela suele tener muchos puntos interesantes, aún algunos solo tomen una o dos frases. Durante este escrito me dedicaré a hablar de esos pequeños ( o no tan pequeños ) puntos, conforme el interés fue surgiendo.
¿Es necesario seguir siempre los protocolos?
A lo largo de la lectura, encontramos al equipo de Mr T. en auditoría. ¿El objetivo? Medir el nivel de certificación en procedimientos de los empleados. Lo curioso para mí, era la definición de la certificación del nivel 2, definida como la certificación de la Repetibilidad: Los equipos, hagan bien o mal los procesos, mientras siempre los realicen igual, están dentro de la norma.
Por un lado, podemos justificar este pensamiento, ya que un protocolo tiene como objetivo, definir las reglas y procedimientos a seguir en cierta situación. Por ende, al tener procesos repetibles, al menos existiría un protocolo para ellos.
Sin embargo, a fin de cuentas, el objetivo primario de un PM, debería ser minimizar costos en la medida de lo posible. Así,
This chapter felt like an extra episode of a running tv series, one where the main character goes off the main course of the story arch to achieve some goal or check on someone who can give her/him some insight about something, and then on the next episode they return accomplished and triumphant.
Or maybe more like a The Legend of Zelda mission in the same way. Where link goes on a mission and finds valuable intel or a new tool that will aid him in the rest of his adventure.
It was like that for sure.
Mr. T travelled far (not that far really) to attend some business when he met a friend of a friend (that’s all I have to say about mister I-came-out-of-nowhere) that gave him a tool that could aid him in his business venture (see? Just like Zelda).
Turns out the friend of a friend of Mr. T was developing and testing some new innovative tool that could model project management processes, but he needed some input data (it was funny when mister new guy made Mr. T angry with his comments about irrational management decisions. It seemed necessary though in order to force Mr. T to give the correct data).
By modeling processes based on the hunches of an experienced manager such as Mr. T, they arrived at important conclusions about how to improve certain processes and model even more, and discussed some of the following:
The manager must be concerned every day about the trade-off between people and time; about the possible productivity a team of n members can produce and how it can be affected by team members coming and going.
