Why Project Management: I have all these websites and I am mostly just providing hopefully useful info for the masses...
However, I have for a long time noticed that "many moons project management" gets me the most hits from search engines.
So, give 'em what they want...
Secrets & Deadlines: Internally in companies there are always secrets.
"What happens in the board room stays in the board room." AND "What happens in the Project Meetings stays in the Project Meetings."
Lets face it, if you have ever had the misfortune of either witnessing or being a casualty of a layoff you'll know that the powers that be basically consider it a successful layoff if it is a surprise!
My Project Management experience has been in the fast paced engineering development environment and yes, THERE WERE DEADLINES.
But with me at the helm, the quality goes in before the product goes out.
I've missed many a deadline... and on at least one occasion it cost me a nice bonus... but it ain't about the money...
So here's the thing. If you miss a deadline the first thing that you have to do is set the new deadline.
For me if it was a day later it was a month later.
After spending the previous several months driving to the old deadline, and coming extraordinarily close, having now received another whole month to complete the project was like a sigh of relief.
I kept everyone on the project and was like "what else needs to be or could be checked besides the crisis that just cost us the deadline?".
This gave people the opportunity to step back and look objectively at the big picture.
This allowed everyone to get it right.
A hardcore deadline usually achieves a "good-enough" product.
My goal is nothing less than a "great" product.
So here is my simple observation... why not have the published deadline (or the soft deadline - more like fainting) and the secret deadline (the real one to come slightly later)?
The only real importance of the deadline is good coordination with Marketing for the product roll-out.
The connections between marketing and engineering are generally isolated enough to let at least someone from marketing in on the secret deadline and coordinate rollout efforts accordingly.
Distribution of Energy: Human Beings basically secure their energy as by-products of the consumption of food and liquids (not to mention oxygen).
I believe that all "event" meetings should provide some descent food and juice, etc...
Maybe not every weekly meeting but design review meetings and the like.
Chances are the project can absorb Friday Bagels too.
The project team is above all other things, hopefully, a team.
Friday Bagels offers a weekly opportunity for team-building that you can't put a price on.
As a Project Manager you generally don't have the authority to hand out on-the-spot bonuses for a job well done.
"Nice design meeting - here's a thousand bucks...". Have you ever heard anything like these words uttered?
I think not. So to at least reward all the Project People that hopefully did a worthy job of reviewing the design package a descent breakfast is a small price to pay for their efforts.
Furthermore, when we signed off the project we had a party at the local eatery.
A responsible number a drink tickets were handed out to everyone and we celebrated.
In fact, me having signed off all the test protocol approval documentation the only people left to sign off was the VP's of all departments and I collared most of them right at the Completion Party.
I'm not sure what to call it, but it is the opposite of "Garbage-In, Garbage-Out". It is like, "Sweetness-In, Success-Out".
Schedules: I really hate to admit it but there is a critical path for any project.
Let's take, for example, the simple project of filling up your gas tank.
There are many, many variables but no matter the present price of gas the tank will get filled in the same amount of time.
Here, I would have to peg the heart of the critical path as dependent on the rate at which the fuel is dispensed.
However, if you are one drop away from a full tank, what does that even matter?
It becomes roughly irrelevant.
The trick is to really crunch down all the reportedly long lead items.
Parallelism, and pre-booking test or manufacturing time can address most things.
On one project the software validation was a reported 2 month effort.
So I got all the software and validation people together in a room with some good food and said let's break it down.
Long story short, they were pinned to a 3 prototype paradigm.
Easy, we'll have 22 prototypes!
Now there is certainly some overhead that goes with that.
Namely, configuration management.
So we put someone on that and problem solved.
We were able to do complete software validation from major release to completion in about two weeks.
As issues came up, they were quickly communicated to software and addressed which led to recursive software validation of reasonable parts of the validation.
Normally, you would have got the results at the end.
Just in case you are so stressed out at this very moment that you don't completely get the gas fill-up analogy, let me challenge you to think about a few more parameters.
How far is the gas station from your starting point?
Is the gas station on your way to your next destination?
Do you encounter a line for the gas pump?
If there is a line at the pump can or will you pass up that station and go to another one along the way?
If there is a line, do you have enough in the tank to get the gas later, prefererably after your present destination?
If you need gas bad enough, can you afford to go to a higher cost empty full serve line?
Can you buy just enough gas for this trip instead of filling up your tank? Is your goal to fill up the gas tank or make it to your destination without running out of gas?
Are you paying cash or credit card?
Credit Card is better for self serve, cash is better for full serve.
Can you pre-arrange a credit account with the gas station to defer payment? Will this speed things up?
Could you have filled up last nite instead?
We still have yet to touch the pump...
Do you remember which side your gas cover is on?
Can you hit a gas cover release button?
Is there ice on the ground? How quickly can you safely shut off your car and get from the drivers seat to the pump for self serve?
Do they ask for your zip code? Do you want a receipt?
Do you have to lift the handle?
Once inserted does the pump keep clicking off unless you have at just the right angle?
How full is full? One, two, three click-offs or do you wait until gas pours out of the car? (Or are you getting just enough gas?)
How quickly can you get the pump out and the gas cap closed up again?
Now - don't forget the receipt that you asked for...
OK, stroll back to the car with a calm sense of accomplishment, start 'er up and watch out for traffic in the gas station.
If you think about it there are parallels to most of these steps in project management.
In the end, you can make each one short but they are all necessary steps and to do everything safely you can not rush.
When you rush you make mistakes and as my cousin once said as I explained where I was at in a project "you have no time to rush".
Schedule Management: A good schedule is made once, put on the wall and marked up as you proceed thru it.
You catch all the activities, you estimate the activity time periods, you line up your people, you go for it!
The idea of maintaining your pretty schedule is a waste of time and effort.
Project Management software companies and their advocates would have you spending most of everyday maintaining the schedule.
But the schedule is not a deliverable when the project is over, is it? So what is the point?
As long as you captured all the activities just run with it.
Resources: In my Project Management career I would say that I didn't spend enough time fighting for resources.
I would get so caught up in getting it done, reviewing documentation, attending meetings, preparing for meeting, following up from meeting, need I mention reading emails...
I just know that there were times when I should have worked thru the channels to get more people.
Signature Authority: When it comes to resources, money is of course one of them.
As I said, in my experience, in the end you are judged by the expeditious delivery of a quality product.
However, that said, if your signature authority is for $1,000 and you are prototyping Printed Circuit Boards you are set up for a lot of delay getting spending approvals.
The best decision that my Manager ever made was getting Project Managers $10,000 signature authority.
This I would also fight for.
Having to track down VPs to approve PCB Prototype runs is a big waste of time and causes delay.
The same is true for some mechanical tooling and prototyping.
Condensed Motivational Speech: Here was what I delivered at crunch time.
STOP, GO
YES, NO
DO, DON'T
WILL, WON'T
I think that that pretty much sums up the crux of all the Project Management Seminars and Experience of my life.
Please note that it does bear some homage to "LEAD, FOLLOW OR GET THE HELL OUT OF THE WAY".
Ah, the Art of Prototyping: I would elevate Prototyping to an Art not a task.
First and foremost, all prototypes should be created equal.
Physically, this is controlled by good configuration management.
Philosophically, each prototype deserves a name.
This gives it character.
I introduced this practice in about 1997.
I don't know to what degree it has spread or died since then.
I had noticed that at project meeting they would refer to the activities of P3. Now CP3O would have been more entertaining. You see, CP3O had personality...
I was curious if you named your prototypes, would they also develop personalities, or at least character.
We went thru two complete product development cycles with this approach.
The first was around the 1998 election so after I gave this directive I let the project team come up with the theme.
They came up with Political People as the theme. Then everyone picked their names.
I remember Nixon and Gore to name two.
Now when you referred to a prototype at a meeting you would hear that Nixon went out for Emission Testing, for example.
It just spiced things up a bit.
In my opinion, you had to collectively care for these prototypes now.
It removed the impersonal, drab P1, P2, P3 references which meant nothing and provided machines which had names and needed care.
There was something to joke about.
I wondered if the prototypes would manifest themselves to taking on characteristics of their namesakes but this didn't seem to happen.
With configuration control they were all a good bunch.
For the second cycle they team came up with local Rivers and Lakes names as the theme.
This worked equally well.
I believe that this is, was and shall remain, my greatest contribution to Project Management.
Conclusion: Well, that's pretty much it.
Thanks for visiting.
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