TI2011 Spring 2020 – Page 35 – Project Evaluation and Management

€ngineering economic$

--Originally published at TI2011 – Roger's Rad Records

So this is a course about project evaluation and management with a very heavy focus on software development/engineering. I don’t know about others, but for me, when I see the word management I always think of two things: time and money. Some people even say that time IS money, so that narrows it down to just that one thing.

“Money” flickr photo by Worlds Direction https://flickr.com/photos/worldsdirection/34776291250 shared into the public domain using (CC0)

Money is one of the most important factors when it comes to making decisions. According to the Software Engineering Body of Knowledge (SWEBOK) Wiki, economics is the study of value, costs, resources, and their relationship in a given context or situation. Such studies, along with a proper analysis of similar projects, benefits, externalities, costs and other prices, can lead to better perspectives and well informed decisions that can range from whether or not to start a project, to whether or not one should be terminated for good. Engineering economics is basically applying these studies for a particular engineering field.

If you, like me, plan on having (or already have) a career revolving around development, then you may have thought at some point: Finances don’t concern me that much, I just need to get an expert to do all of the needed calculations for me. To be honest, that used to be my mentality until very recently, but I’ve come to realize a couple of things that I’d like to elaborate on.

First, things aren’t as simple as just doing a couple calculations. There are a lot of elements that must be taken into consideration before making important decisions. The Wiki page I mentioned earlier contains tons of concepts that are imperative for economics.

If you ever read one of my UML entries you must know Continue reading "€ngineering economic$"

DEADLINE, chapters 1 & 2. “Is diet Dr. Pepper okay for you?”

--Originally published at TI2011 – Roger's Rad Records

Imagine having to sing a song about you being laid off and getting kidnapped right after while you’re trying to sleep. That’s what happened to poor Mr. Tompkins, the protagonist of The Deadline: A Novel about Project Management by Tom DeMarco.

“Sleeping” flickr photo by Mussi Katz https://flickr.com/photos/mussikatz/13842448454 shared into the public domain using (PDM)

I had never considered that a novel that teaches about management could exist. I always thought that if I were to learn about this topic (or any other, honestly) I would just get a textbook or one of those “Four things you must know before starting your business” kind of books. To me, this seems like a very interesting format, and I hope that the story stays as interesting as it started.

Mr. Tompkins is introduced as a person who falls asleep during boring lectures and refuses to join very forced choruses, but I don’t blame him, I would also be bummed out if I knew I would need to find a new job soon. He meets a mysterious lady during one of those boring lectures, her name is Ms. Lahksa Hoolihan, and she introduces herself as nothing other than an industrial spy. Mr. T is taken aback and starts questioning her.

We learn that Ms. Hoolihan works from Morovia and that she has the ability to pinpoint people whose presence keep the companies they work for afloat. Mr. T is shocked by her skill, but he gets a bigger surprise when Ms. Hoolihan confesses she has come for HIM. Mr. T is told he is a very good manager, and that his skills are required to help Morovia’s government. At this point, Mr. Tompkins would seem like a very clever person, but he didn’t seems that brilliant to me when he just casually

Review on Chapters 6 and 7 of “The Deadline: A Novel about Project Management”

--Originally published at Project Evaluation and Management Reflections

Chapter 6 – Women can not only be good spies, but also good managers

As a manager, you have a lot of responsibilites. The decisions you make directly affect the company, the people and yourself. An important task is to learn how to deal with this stress and how to avoid procrastination. As we learn later in the book when B. Binda is introduced, too much of that stress can even lead to a burnout. Instead of tackeling every challenge on your own, it helps to involve others who have experience in making such decisions or with knowledge about the current situation and the company’s business.

When Mr. T. realizes he needs help to start forming his project teams, he decides to involve B. Binda, another men who was selected for his job – at least in his imagination. Learning that she is a woman makes him realize that he was biased, even if the is trying to deny that. Yet the sad truth is that women are still not considered to be top managers. When hearing of people with such a resume as Binda (Berkeley, Harvard, Xerox PARC, Apple…Hewlett-Packard…), people tend to picture a man behind such success, someone you can „drink beers with and talk about war stories“.

Just have a look at this Forbes gallery, and you´ll see some prime examples of women in leadership positions.

Yet, this is only part of the problem – equal pay, equal appreciation and acknowledgment and much more aspects are part of this issue as well.
However, it is funny to observe that when Belina is talking about managers, she on the contrary is always talking about women, the exact opposite to Mr. T.

Her story shows the hard work and effort are required to achieve such success. But even

Chapter 6

--Originally published at Erick learning experience

While I was reading chapter 6 I consider very important the questions he ask himself about take that job like the basic parameters workable, if NNL can be trusted (in my opinion no but if he trust in a kidnapped why not trust to a tyrant able to use violence), if the work is correctly rewarded, these questions I consider are important to take in consideration before accepting a job or a project because if you are not prepared it most probably will fail.

The sitting around concept I consider is important to make mention of because when Waldo ask Mr. Tompkins he answer that he didn’t make decisions alone, and he had trusted group of peers and subordinates to discuss possibilities and I agree with this way of taking decisions because in large projects taking decisions alone can be harmful in some cases if you don’t consider certain aspects that can be important to other people that have different point of view.

One of the most important thing about the chapter are when they are talking about management comparing it with some part of the body, when you are dealing with people decisions you have to trust in your experience and in your impressions of that person(Trust your gut), is important to be nice to people that is working for you because if you are nice with them and you respect them it create a good relation(heart) and last but not least the environment people are to create a good community, where they can trust each other and everyone feels part of the team this is important first to make the people feel comfortable there and to make communication a lot more effective(The soul).

Chapter 7

About this chapter I like to mention first when they interview the first

The deadline Chapter 10

--Originally published at TI2011 – Alex’s Barn

It’s Saturday night, who in the world would be reading Management novels by now?

Me, reading at Saturday night.
Src. Giphy

After reading the current chapter, my perspective of this book change completely. Having a physics background, I’ve learned that “If you can image something, then you can model it”. Till now, in the novel the author have been presented ideas about management which are most oriented to define good practices in soft skills management. And, don’t get me wrong, this is great and very useful, but there is necessary in someway measure and predict results.

Measure is necessary to get better results.
Src. Giphy

“If you can image something, then you can model it”

This idea is applyable also in management. This work enviroment could be treated as a system. And, if it’s a system, it will have inputs, outputs, tuneable quantites and constants in it.

I love the way how the author represents the work enviroment as a system, it looks very similar like an Automatic Control System.

For example, the usable workers model looks pretty similar like a water pipelines system, and the results looks pretty similar in an analogous situation.

I could say we can evaulate a model as correct ( even if the system to simulate is not a physical system) if you can find these two characteristics in it:

It covers the most important elements which could alter the system. The most significative variables.
It has some analogous characteristics with natural systems.

Why modeling?

Remember that in the last blog we say one the most important ideas of management is control risks and cut your losses?

How could you know if something is a risk or if that element could transform into a loss if you can’t watch the future outcomes? Simulating them!

How

The deadline: Chapter 8 & 9

--Originally published at TI2011 – Alex’s Barn

Well, Here we go again.

Along the reading of this novel, It came this idea to me,
that Mr. T is some kind of Mr. Scrooge man, who has aparitions
from different ghosts of software projects managment.
During these chapters I found some interesting ideas I think I should talk at least a little bit.

Communication is essential

At the chapter 9, there is this scene, where the general Marklov is presented to Mr. T.
Then he said something like: Oh, this workers are not gonna make useless work anymore, we are getting offshore work.
This line got confused to the NNL, covered as Mr. Lider. Don’t get me wrong, I think the initiative of the General was great and pretty clever, and maybe he had the power to make that call.

But he didn’t communicate his decision to his direct boss.

Maybe it looks like nothing, maybe it was a little detail it was not the point of the charapter. But it’s important.

Is highly necessary in a health company. . . Is:
Src. Giphy

Communication is necesary, in any direction, upwards or downwards. In my opinion, the more communication “downwards” the more the employees feel they belong to the company. Of course, there should be some calls that aren’t supposed to be published, but this idea should keep in mind a good manager.

On the other hand, a good “upward” communication, could help us to point flaws or red flags during the process of a project.

This idea lead us to the next point.

Risk management

Manage projects by managing their risks.

Basically, if there is not risk in a project, Management would be the simplest thing to do ever.

Basically, because there are errors which are caused by little flaws and mistakes, the manager needs to keep track

The Deadline Chapters 6-7

--Originally published at Coder Bebop

This author has a talent to introduce eccentric characters, and these chapters were no different. As the story continues unfolding, our protagonist, like many other protagonists, begins to grow stronger as he builds a network of allies. Our newest companion, Belinda, seems to know a greater deal than Mr. T appears to do about managing. She is a mentor on Webster’s journey to raise this country, even though she was already teaching him before they met (if I understood correctly, she wrote the book Tompkins was reading). And yet, she seems to have come to a rather contrasting conclusion now than she did three years before or when she wrote the book. Something weird happened to this woman who was at the pinnacle of her career and had a decent curriculum, something which will without a shadow of doubt be revealed later and play a tremendous influence in our main character’s ability to make decisions, for good or ill.

Although she seems authentic, I do feel uncomfortable towards her “hunch” when choosing employees. It is not that I do not trust the guts of someone better than me, or that it does not make sense, but to put it simply: relying on someone to do 85% of the job destined to me gives off a vibe or sensation that makes me wonder, what did I really do? Just as our friend Mr. T wonders that himself at the end of the chapter, he defends his standing with the “I did the paperwork first” excuse to leaving most of the recruitment to Belinda.

But let’s be fair: he reflects on his weaknesses about doing the recruiting on his own. He admits being impatient, too talkative, probably aggressive on his approach when compared to her. So it is a matter of time

Management’s Wonderland

--Originally published at Parra’s Project Management Blog

Recently I started reading the book “The Deadline” by Tom de Marco, and I want to share my thoughts and opinions about the first and second chapter. This book was published in 1997 and it’s main inspiration is 1930’s Mr Tompkins in Wonderland by George Gamow. De Marco applied the same principle as the original novel, which was teaching physics by using a character that confronted important situations regarding laws of physics in a fictional universe. This time, the character is named the same, but the story focuses on a fictional world of Project Management lessons.

A quick summary of the first two chapters (SPOILERS): Tompkins is attending a seminar for people who are recently fired and preparing for finding a new job. He is a veteran project manager with plently of experience. He doesn’t seem to enjoy this seminar and passes most of his time asleep, but one evening a lady sits next to him. He discovers she is a secret agent of Morovia and kidnaps him using a modified version of his favorite coke. He now must help a government in a project management mission.

Still drugged and dreaming while traveling to Morovia, he sees a seminar given by Edgar Kalfbfuss, a young, unexperienced PM who only wants to see hard skills of the discipline. Tompkins confronts him and asks him: “Is that the whole agenda?” Kalbfuss, defensive, tells him that soft skills are easy to learn, and that is the reason he only covers those topics. Tompkins reminds him that human relations are just as important to successfully manage an organization, so his course should be named “Administrativa”. He then wakes up and the dream was over.

In my opinion, Tompkins is right: if you don’t know how to motivate people, how to teach them to Continue reading "Management’s Wonderland"

The Deadline: Chapter 6 & 7

--Originally published at TI2011 – Alex’s Barn

There’s some point in life, when we have to decide who is gonna be part of our projects.
Sometimes, this decision is pretty easy and unconsious, like, choosing a dancing partner, or maybe who will be your team for the next
school homework.

If get the right dancing partner is difficult, how complex could be hiring?
Src: Giphy

Sometimes this decision implies money, and therefore, huge consequences.

Let’s talk about hiring.

According to the Deadline book, to get the right people while hiring, it’s necessary 4 basic elements:

Guts:

Most of the ability to hire, comes from the experience. This sound pretty obvious, but it has sense.
It’s practically imposible to know someone in a couple of sheets of paper from a resume. The momment the interview becomes ( or even before ) you could have the chance of observe this traits you need in your employee.
Observation. It’s all about it. People who unconsiously develops this skill call it guts.

Observe your candidates, watch their steps . . .
Src. Giphy

The novel show us that this process of watching little details about our interviewee goes far from the actual interview. At the novel they had the facility of meeting the interviewee last coworkers.
This could lead us to draw an important conclusion: We could know somebody way better from their interactions with other people. If we could observe this kind of scenarios, we take advantage.

But for me it arises a little problem: What happens when I don’t have enough experience nor time to make mistakes?

Well, I don’t think we could get a shortcut for this, but It could be very helpful keep the eye awake and observing all intentions and actions from others. For me this has been helpful to refine my sight.

Heart

I’m not gonna get

K.V . . . .Whatever

--Originally published at Blog Oliver

giphy (1)

The first time I saw the book and read the title I thought it would be another boring technical book, like all the others we need to read in different subjects. This one is different, spies and mysteries is what awaits you in deadline but that’s not all, the autor found a great way to introduce technical knowledge too. I didn’t realize I was learning about the four most essential ingredients of management.

Let’s see what new adventures awaits to Mr. T the main character of our history. He is know in a plane flying to uncertainty.