The Deadline: A Novel About Project Management – Page 2

Overcoming Conflicts

--Originally published at The Awesome Blog

A thing you cannot ignore is conflict. Conflict is everywhere! and in an organization is an important thing to tackle. Since conflict can be the difference between the success of your project or its own failure.

Of course, there are ways to resolve conflicts. One way is the negotiation, but as the book says, “Negotiation is hard, mediation is easy”. Negotiate means that if you give a part, you lose another part whereas Mediation means that both can achieve something without losing.

Conflict is not an unprofessional behavior as everybody might think. Conflict is when two goals might be one against another, but this is often false since they both will help achieve a bigger goal.

Corporate conflict management on social media - Journal of ...

Of course, if you try to resolve a conflict you need a catalyst. A catalyst is a person that can contribute to projects by helping teams to form and gel and to remain healthy and productive. A catalyst job is essential, for it helps to mediate during conflicts.

And obviously, if you are trying to solve a problem, the most important thing about it is that the parts accept you to mediate between them, you cannot force them to be jell, and of course, it’s almost impossible to act as a catalyst if you are a boss, this will pressure them and might cause more problems.

The Specification Problem

--Originally published at The Awesome Blog

Often things are not what we like. And this applies to everything, whether you are a project manager or a programmer this will happen.

Of course, reading specification documents are not safe from this. On several occasions, you might find a lot of ambiguity in a document, this is a big problem at the time you try to read the document because this doesn’t give you insight about what to do. This problem is caused by unsolved conflicts among various system stakeholders. But even if a specification is ambiguous, you need to find sense in it.

If you have trouble finding sense in a specification document, this might mean that the document is nonsense and it is not worth reading. To identify this kind of specification document you only need to check one thing: Check if the document has a complete census of inputs and outputs. If a document does not specify that there is a problem, it does not start to specify, and because of this, it does not specify anything at all.

The problem starts with the document of course, but if you have employees reading a specification document of this kind they will not tell you if the specification is lousy. Instead, they will blame themselves rather than the paper.

To solve the problem with the specifications, the first thing to take in place is to speak with your stakeholders, apply other techniques to solve the conflicts between them, model a good specification document and then finally to pass them to your employees, try to reduce the ambiguity the more you can.

Stakeholder Engagement Policy - Iberdrola

Think Fast (Or at least Try)

--Originally published at The Awesome Blog

They are lots of ideas about thinking fast. One of the most common ideas is that to increase productivity is to implement a lot of pressure over your employees, but that is not a good idea.

The Deadline: A novel about project management talks about that precisely, PEOPLE UNDER PRESSURE DON’T THINK FASTER. Actually, the more pressure you apply to your work the more likely you are to burnout, or to lose your interest in whatever you are doing.

A Reader's OPEN TO THINK Question About Critical Thinking ...

Another common idea is to extend overtime during your project, but this is a tactic that usually reduces your productivity. The truth is that if you want to be productive you cannot be pressured or spending more hours in your work.

Sometimes you can apply a short burst of pressure in order to focus, people and increase the sense that the work is important but extended pressure doesn’t help at all.

If the book actually said something that is 100% true, is that “Programmers are natural Cynics, Like Cats”. I personally think that in a way we all are natural cynics, but especially programmers. Since programmers are so used to pressure, they don’t usually care about how much pressure there is, and they choose to handle their respective situations in a lot of different ways.

Cat Wiggle GIF - Cat Wiggle - Descubre & Comparte GIFs

Here lies the problem of project management for software projects, How do you handle pressure in your employees?, What can you do to be more productive?. The answer is quite simple: Work your respective hours, don’t stay overtime and maybe put a little pressure at the beginning, but certainly don’t kill your employees with pressure, this will not help their productivity.

The Numbers Man

--Originally published at The Awesome Blog

Sometimes you really should take numbers into consideration. This chapter Mr. Tompiks had the opportunity to meet T. Jhons Caporous, described as a genial man with sparkling eyes who seemed to be running at an internal clock speed at least twice that of a normal human.

Even if they were only four and a half hours together they had a complete revelation about their project. They needed to size every single product and they didn’t have a single metric before!

The visit of Mr. Caporous helped them to get special units that allowed them to measure every single product, this metric is called Function Point.

Sometimes you can’t have all the data you need, at that moment, you could collect archeological data to see if your productivity follows the same trend as the ended products.This Points helps you to measure the productivity of your actual project, something vital for big projects.

Process and Process Improvements

--Originally published at The Awesome Blog

Having a good process, or trying to improve your process is always a good thing to do. But even if it’s good you have to take into consideration lots of things. This Chapter of the book The Deadline: A novel about project management talks about it in a special way.

Actually good technical workers will focus on improving your project. It doesn’t matter if you tell them to do it or not. One thing you should consider is to use formal process improvement programs. But they cost time and money, and they are not perfect at all.

In fact, during this chapter, Tompkins discovered that the awful Minister Belok stands in his way (again) and sends the MSEI to audit the programs. During the auditions of the first building, Tompkins discovered that some of his employees were using a different approach to tackle the problem, but this doesn’t please the MSEI. In fact, several employees are using similar techniques. For example, the PS-Shop-C Manager actually used Photoshop’s manual in order to establish functional requirements, but they also applied their knowledge to write the non-functional requirements. Once they ended this process they ended up with an unorthodox form, but with excellent content.

This shows that the danger of standard processes is that people will miss chances to take important shortcuts, particularly on overstaffed projects.

conceptodefinicion.de/wp-content/uploads/2014/1...

Mediation and meditation

--Originally published at Site Title

Conflict is everywhere in all organizations, normally people use to think that allowing or accept that they have a conflict in the organization is something unprofessional so they decide to solve it underground by ignoring it. However, when the time comes it could break down a project or strategy.

So the smart thing to do with a conflict is to understand how could be solve it.

One strategy is from the beginning of the activity keep a winning condition where all people understand that they are on the same boat and the long term goal is the same, so you can change from a negotiation to a mediation, where you can establish a criteria where both parties would be winning and no one is going to loss.

There are some people that you just do not know how but you end talking like an hour without realizing it, you talk about stories on the past and start knowing better each one. This kind of people are like a catalytic personality that allows to bring a soul in an environment and connect everyone, sometimes they seem like they are not working or doing too much. However, the benefit that they are generating something can be greater than the best worker.

You can’t see what’s as plain as the nose on your face if you’re sufficiently persuaded that it isn’t there

Seeing the unseen

--Originally published at Site Title

Normally bosses are like a throw a coin, 50% have a good one or 50% to have a bad one you never know who is going to be, if is the first case you are lucky. However, when is the second one, watch out bro, it can really mess with your head and make you hate your job.

The common thought is that he is just a jerk or he likes to mess with people, nonetheless, the true reason could deeper, maybe we do not know all the pressure that guy must have from his superiors and he is only retransmitting that pressure. And for a strange reason most of the managers thought that keep pushing his people will make them improve their performance and that is something that NEVER HAPPEN, well, can be a useful tool ONLY for a short period of time, maybe a couple or days but no more.

In the other hand, being a manager, is not a easy work, there are too many things like the counterproductive effect of push your team that they do not catch up easily and some more things due the pressure they live and feeling of being below the average, so they keep pushing harder themselves. For example, when you are trying to make a doc spec, where you have a party of stakeholders in conflict is harder to produce something that will meet everyone’s needs, so make a document ambiguos will make you win maybe more time or evade the bullet, but this won’t fix the problem, for this reason you must look what is unseen to get a good solution and not evade bullets.

Break point

--Originally published at Site Title

Pressure is not the same as productivity and many bosses do not realize it and that is a day a day problem in the life of most of the managers and employees.

Every day I wake up, through my way to work I think about what did I learn a day before and how I can improve any situation of my life and since the last Thursday one thing that did not go out of my mind was a curious phrase a PM from Flex, Iliana Valdelamar said: If you want to have baby in a month you can not just put 9 woman pregnant and try to make it happen, the things do not work in that way, is impossible.

Of course, that is true, but how this kind of things affect the people in their works?

Sometimes when you have a deadline that you must accomplish, your boss try everything to make it happen and it does not matter the actions you take, he only keep saying: “Do whatever you want, but you must have the work done at the end of the month, hire more people or make them work overtime is necessary, but make it happen”. And the majority in that situation would do what you supervisor is telling you. Nonetheless, overcrowd a project and push your workers to the limit is never the answer and that is because people under pressure don’t think faster and I really know about that stuff, as programmer and student, most of the time I like to left things at end and feel the adrenaline of it, but in that kind of moments the only thing I know is that my brain inside is crashing and any mistake can break down everything and try to solve it would be impossible.

Break the rules & change

--Originally published at Site Title

Normally in the world for every process we have a series of rules to keep the order and standards, in other words, letting have a controlled system where you can measure your progress and know how far you are from you objective. However, these kind actions are only good when you are in charge of a huge group of people where regulation is the key to keep work flow and do not waste time. But this type of practice in a dynamic group where you can save time jumping from one step to another, can push back, for this reason is good to know when and where is the right moment to use one strategy or another.

Another good plan, can be try new things, change the complete methodology of work, to achieve your goals, like Albert Einstein once said: “Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again expecting different result”.

This idea came to me when I was reading the Deadline and make me thought how hard can you see something that we are not unaware of or are not used to doing and even harder try to make people follow this idea, you must be persuasive and have the backup from your team so they can trust on your leading. A good way to gain the trust from your team can be showing that you care and appreciate them.

It’s all about the time

--Originally published at Site Title

It’s funny how time always intrigues us, when we are waiting a message, a product ordered online, finish the homework before deadline, when the waiter will come with the food; this little things make us feel crazy and are just trivial events during the day, in a short term. Now, imagine when you are running a huge project and your client request you a estimated date to the delivery, how would you come with it, would you throw a random number, would be greater than the required or just keep a silence and say that you have to talk to your team first to win some time, what would you do?

Knowing how long your project would be is important data that any manager must know or at least have an approximate to get a plan and know during the time when an adjustment would be needed or have to make an improve. For example, an architect or civil engineer sometimes is easy to make estimations in base of the budget they have and know exactly how more builders would be needed. Nonetheless, in the software industry this changes drastically, because any project is different and any builder(programmer) have their own way to make things and how can you size a program, with code lines, functions, how manny software engineers you have, is not a linear behavior where you only add more personal and get better results, all the process is a complex equation.

For this reason, in the software industry is necessary to have a research and analysis about how long projects can become and how they were working, how many personal and how qualified were they for the job, because all these data is the one that allow you to run a simulation where you will find an Continue reading "It’s all about the time"