Review on Chapter 19 of ‚The Deadline: A Novel about Project Management‘

--Originally published at Project Evaluation and Management Reflections

Planning vs. Doing

Kenoros gave all project teams grades on their design efforts. He only considered if all coded modules were established and if the interfaces between them were determined. An F means that this does not exist at all, which is the case in all but one of the A-teams, while all smaller B- and C-teams got an A or B.

Apparently, the reason being is that the A-teams started coding a long time ago, while the others stuck to the Oracle’s approach and are pushing back implementation to prioritize verification work first.

Kenoros theory is that as design work is for only a few people, the A-teams were simply too big and there were no other tasks to be done for the remaining workers. To not look like bad managers who let their people sit around doing nothing while a deadline comes closer and closer, they simply skipped the important part of dividing a project into small and meaningful pieces with the design process and went straight to the next step.

Even though it is not related to software products, this reminds me of a design thinking workshop I participated in: only a few people are needed in the beginning to figure out what the customer actually needs, not what he says he wants

We had the example of a customer who wants to hang something on a wall and goes looking for a device to do that.
He goes to the store and says he wants a drilling device for that.
However, what he actually needs is simply a 5mm hole in the wall. In fact, he doesn´t care at all how it gets there…

Belinda shows on a white board the difference between a product with few and thin interfaces compared

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