The Deadline: A Novel About Project Management – Page 3

The Sinister Minister Belok

--Originally published at Project Evaluation and Management

Sometimes you have to admit that not all the people during is useful. The problem with this is that maybe the problem can be your employer. Such is the case of the Minister Belok.

He is an ambitious man that does not listen to reasons. He is not able to see the big picture, and of course a knucklehead.

El Tiempo Es Dinero. Reloj Que Se Deshace A Dólares. Modelo 3d ...

This kind of person is very dangerous when they are above you in a project development. They like to establish Pathological Politics and once they do that you will have to be willing to put your job on the line any day, but even if do so, you will have problems. Often this politics are characterized for being goals of personal power and for try to override the natural goals of an organization.

The problem with this kind of politics is that it becomes unsafe to have a small development team.

An of course, as well as Mr. Thompkins you may have only one option: To do exactly like they told you. This is often a bad approach, but sometimes it’s the only way.

More for less

--Originally published at Site Title

Is amazing the way finance work in the industry and big companies, how this can make every decision in a project as long as money can be saved.

In the chapter 11 of The Deadline I learn how the thing that makes a company move is the money and most of the decisions made it at the end depend directly on how the finance of the project were or if the boss decide to cut the budget.

Once a professor at college told me: when you are the head of the project, you must always require more(money, time, resources) that you need, because at the end the person above you would try to cut cost to be more efficient, besides, you must always have a plan B to proceed if the things have to change drastically.

Is not easy to be a manager and less when everyday cost a quarter million dollars, for this reason you should be surrounded by people that can help you to continue the project no matter the adversities, because they will come and you must be prepare.

Finance and Politics are the most difficult part of any project.

Hunches and gut

--Originally published at Site Title

Normally when we find ourselves taking the lead in a project most of the decisions made it are based in our hunches and gut feeling, in other words, experience of how things use to work for us. Occasionally they are good and others result to be pretty bad.

Sometimes, when a person use to take good decisions people think, that person have really good hunches. However, the reality is he has a good model of how things work and are affected by different variables and can make calculations of how things will end and what would be necessary to achieve the goal.

But if in your case your hunches are not good at all or you want to improve it to get more effective decisions, you can make it happen developing your model on paper or in a software, where you can visualize what variables you are using, which ones are missing and which ones you do not need. With this action you can realize about how you were doing things wrong and how to improve, this is really importan in big projects to make a good decision and not end up regretting.

In this way, if you put attention on the most important aspects of a process you can be a step ahead and make the good choices and the good moments.

Seize the day

--Originally published at Site Title

Is amazing the way you can learn crucial knowledge about management that you only would be able to learn trough years of experience in a short talk with a senior manager.

In the last chapters I just read, could discover how relevant a good advice at a good time from someone who just have the same problem before could be to improve your work.

Through the lecture Mr. T highlighted some points of two different experts that are important to take care while your project are in development.

From the first one he stand out that prevent risk is one of the most important tasks to improve the development, even more that try to be more efficient in the success. However. to archive this goal you need to take some action, like create an environment where people can communicate possible risks or failures, through an anonymous channel or through a spokesperson, because it is the only way to prevent it on time.

The last one spoke more about how important is to not waste time and make every day count, this means do not waste your time on failures and if you see something that is going to fail cut ti out and the moment and keep going forward, a day lost at the beginning is as painful as a day lost at the end. Besides, he touches on the importance of keep together a good team, if you find a group that work great keep them together, it would make thing easier.

Basically, talks you about being all the time a step forward to know exactly how to solve the problems.

Abdul Jamid

--Originally published at Project Evaluation and Management

During this chapter, Mr. Thompkins had the opportunity to meet an interesting character, Dr. Abdul Jamid, for his surprise, Abdul is recommended by his old boss Jay, and finally, he had the opportunity to talk with Dr. Abdul.

Abdul reached Mr. Thompkins with the purpose of teaching him an important tool for Project Management. This tool is called Modeling and Simulation.

In the book this works by using a software called ithink but of course, this software is not necessary for the concept.

The concept of Modeling and Simulation follows a pipeline, the first thing you have to do is to Model your hunches about the process that gets work done, then you use the models to communicate and refine your thinking about how the process works. Once you have the model you simulate the results and finally you tune the model against the actual results.

This concept is important since it can be applied to lots of things, not just Project Management, in fact Machine Learning often uses this approach.

Dr. Rizzoli and Ex-General Markov

--Originally published at Project Evaluation and Management

There is not an opportunity like the one that was before Mr. Thompkins, having a team with thousands of members. Of course, Project Management is something important, as well as having a good team, that is why Mr. Thompkins took the opportunity to speak with Dr. Rizzoli.

Dr. Rizzoli is an interesting character that gives you important hints about conducting big teams, as well as project. The most important things this character talks about is Productivity Improvement and Risk Management.

The first thing to have in mind is that there is no such thing as a short term productivity fix, in other words, that there is no magic trick to fix the productivity of a team in a short term. The productivity improvements always come from a long term investment, anything that promises short term fixes are likely to be ‘snake oil’.

The second thing to have in mind is that if you wanna have a project, you’ll have to manage it by taking the risks under constant census. You’ll have to assess each risk for probability and likely cost, but don’t take into consideration the undesirable outcomes, instead, take into consideration the casual risks.

Mr. Thompkins was astonished by his talk with Dr. Rizzoli because there were lots of things he didn’t know about, but the time was running and he was in need to find managers for the projects, and while he was searching for them, he met the Ex-general Markov.

He found a lot of good managers, and in the meantime, he discovered lots of useful things. For example.

You can improve the performance by containing your failures more than by optimizing your successes. You have to be aggressive about canceling failed efforts. The best thing you can do is to find pre-formed teams, as well as

The World’s Greatest Project Manager

--Originally published at Project Evaluation and Management

Thompkins is ready to hire his new employees, but he’s mind is blank. Waldo suggests him to search for a consultant, someone who can help him during the interview process, and that is how he discovers Binda, the world’s greatest project manager in her day. The only problem with it is that she is a bag lady. This shows you that no matter the appearance of the person, it may be better than you for something, in this case for management. Belinda Binda tells Thompkins the most important thing I’ve read about in the book, “Management is not a cerebral science, Management is in the gut, in the heart, and in the soul”.

Once he meets Binda, he hires her as a consultant and starts the interview process, in which they talked with 30 managers in order to discover the best ones for the project. And of course, he learns to listen more than you speak, since that is the way to find the best candidates.

Sincerely this is an interesting approach since it tells you that you can’t judge anyone, because they may surprise you.

Opportunity Knocking and Standing Up to Kalbfuss

--Originally published at Project Evaluation and Management

There’s always an opportunity, you only have to find it. That is what Mr. Thompkins did not expected. During the first chapter of The Deadline: A Novel About Project Management we see how Mr. Tompkins is a heavily prepared manager, but that’s not enough to keep his work, and he is drugged and kidnapped by a Soviet Spy.

During his dream, he finds himself stuck inside a dream-loop in which he remembers his discussion with Mr. Kalbfuss. In this discussion he changed the name of the class to ‘Administrivia’, and he remembers The Four Essential Ingredients Of Management:

People Selection
Task Matching
Motivation
Team Formation

The concept of the book is interesting. Since we are able to learn about project management from the perspective of a novel I’m really excited to see what’s going to happen.