Posts Tagged: project management

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9
Feb 11

Focus

Hoarce Dediu; Why focusing on a few products is hard:

But “focus” is the willful rejection of this theory. By saying no to alternatives you increase risk disproportionally to the reward. If you have the means to maintain a portfolio it certainly seems imprudent not to do so.

So why would someone want to focus?

The answer is that too much diversification is dangerous. It’s dilutive to everything the company uses to create value: its resources, its processes and its priorities. It dulls the mind and tarnishes the brand.

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17
Nov 10

Avoid the Big Bang

Johanna on Incremental Progress Not Big Bang:

“The problem is that the more big-bang you are, the less likely you will get everything you want. That’s because there’s a ton of work in progress, and that it’s hard to be omniscient about how your architecture will work in practice.”

I think this point gets over-looked far to much. The more stuff you keep up in the air (in progress), the less certain completion will be what you were expecting. Make your iterations shorter and you’ll get to guide your project more to your liking.

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30
Oct 10

Deliver Product, not Process

Jeff Patton has a good reminder:

“The design process that supports delivering a great design document is not the same process that supports delivering a great product.”

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28
Oct 10

Communication as a Deliverable

One more post from Liz:

“If the BA above was a piece of software, her users would be filing bug reports, working around her, and using her competitors instead.”

In Who are your Users? she contemplates the general state of command and control, and how the system is not really set up to offer feedback on various forms of communication (like design documents or requirements documents), and as such it is hard for them to get better.

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26
Oct 10

Estimation anti-patterns

Liz Keogh writes about Estimation anti-patterns. My favorite one:

Presenter: How tall am I?
Crowd:5′8″! 5′9″! 2 metres!
Presenter: Go on, you can manage more than that. How tall am I?
Crowd: 6′2″?
Presenter: Come on! You can do better than that! HOW TALL AM I?
Crowd: (Giggles nervously.)
Presenter: Just because a project manager tells you you can do more, it doesn’t make it true.

If you’ve ever felt burned by an estimate, you’ll enjoy the levity.

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