Project Management, do we need it?

[Lance]

Are you sure you've done Prince 2? To even ask these questions shows a lot of naivety of how projects should be managed. I'd give being a PM a miss if I was you.

I reckon not a Prince 2 practitioner any road. Foundation was bollox.

[Lance]

There are clearly too many devs on this thread. All your deadlines are loose, requirements vague and budget variable.

Try a project with a real (albeit arbitrary) deadline and a definite deliverable. Those projects need managing. Sometimes a Project Manager can manage that, and sometimes the PM is just a paper-work goon relying on the techies. But the project management role is important.

If a PM tries to manage people then there's a problem. Contractors shouldn't need managing, and permies have line managers who the PM can kick.

[tomtomagain]

Again, I don't disagree that you're required by your clients to provide up-front estimates for large projects, but, in your 10 years of PM'ing, just how accurate are those right-up-front estimates? I'd venture that they're highly inaccurate. Yes, as you've said, you refine them over time, but it begs the question just what is the point of providing estimates right-up-front when we know for a fact that they're highly inaccurate and of very little use?

Depends on the type of project. Some types are easier to estimate than others.

In my DC-in-West-Africa example, there was an original "Budget" allocated of $300k - which was the number someone put together based on a DC migration they had done in the UK for a much smaller, simpler company. There were lots of problems, local procurement rules, and a company policy of not moving hardware in developing countries.

I only had a few days to get something more accurate but I knew someone in the US doing a "Refresh" project. I phoned him and asked him how what his budgeting was based on and he said "$30k per server". So I used 100x30k = $3M for my initial estimate.

Of course that was a difficult conversation. But I caveat that with the usual excuses and promises that we'd look to lower the cost. The management accepted the estimate, but of they had to really. They'd asked me to tell them how much it would cost, I'd done the groundwork and given them my best view.

It came in at about $3.1M in the end. So was I close to my original estimate or way-off from the very first estimate?

So why give estimates? Well its simple really. Companies work on budgets. To build up a budget you need estimates. Companies that don't estimate run out of cash when they activities they thought they could afford turned out to be pricer than they imagined.

[woohoo]

There are 3 pillars to a successful project - time, quality and budget. If you can't plan to these early on, and manage to them during the duration of the project, how can you possibly claim to have managed a successful project?

Sure, it's easy to not estimate how long a piece of dev will take and to continue working on it until it's finished. This should hopefully deliver the quality pillar, but likely fail the budget pillar and as you can't give a time estimate you'll fail that too.

Poor developers hate to estimate how long something will take as they don't want to be held to account. Good developers are happier coming up with estimates (and i always add a % slack to cover for the unknown). If you're a good developer, with 20 years of developing software, then you should be experienced at estimating how long your work will take ... if you can't I'd question if you're that good a developer and I wouldn't want you on my project.

Whorty, lets not make this personal.

I'm asking a question because I don't see the value of a PM and I don't believe they should lead the development of a software product. I can't estimate how long a project will take and I know from experience neither can anyone else.

My first lesson managing a software project was if I impose a deadline, usually their estimate, on a developer they will do their best to meet it. They don't want to disappoint me, but they will deliver a piece of work that is incomplete and bug-ridden.

Now you can dismiss me and my views as those of a poor developer but that's the easy way out.

[woohoo]

Are you sure you've done Prince 2? To even ask these questions shows a lot of naivety of how projects should be managed. I'd give being a PM a miss if I was you.

I will give being a PM a miss, thank you.

[billybiro]

So why give estimates? Well its simple really. Companies work on budgets. To build up a budget you need estimates. Companies that don't estimate run out of cash when they activities they thought they could afford turned out to be pricer than they imagined.

This is ass backwards, surely. You have a set amount of money (or a fairly defined range) you can spend, because that's what you can afford, and you try to get the most/best for the money you have. If it worked the way you say, that the estimate comes first and the money is simply "found" depending upon the size of the estimate, then we'd all be running around like A**enture and charging our clients £10 billion for delivering vapourware. Oh, wait....

[tomtomagain]

Here's something for the Dev's on this thread to think about.

I worked as developer, team lead, software development manager. Totally in my comfort zone, managing a team of 30 or so developers. I could never see the point of PM's. They just got in my way.

I accidentally took a job called "Project Manager". The first couple of projects were easy. Software Dev stuff.

But then my manager said : "Your next project is a building move"

I thought "oh oh .... I don't know anything about buildings".

That was when I began to appreciate the PMing and the skills required to be a good PM. And guess what? It was really great. Doing something that was not coding or code related was really liberating. It opened my eyes up to a whole range of other things that I had just ignored.

More importantly, it exposed me to a whole range of skills that I never would have the opportunity to learn.

So I did that for a decade or so, doing bigger and more complicated projects with multiple moving parts.

However, I have always loved coding. And just because I became a manager I didn't stop. It just became a hobby again.

Eventually, I wanted to do my own thing and run my own company. So I set one up, a SAAS offering, and the managerial/PM skills I have learned have been just as valuable as the technical skills I have acquired.

The final thing I noticed ( and I don't know if that's just me or if others can relate to ). When I was a pure techie/dev I wanted to run my own company, but I could never think of a problem to solve. When I was "managerial" I couldn't stop having ideas ... I think its because when you are tech you are so focused on the detail that it crowds out other thoughts. When you are a manager you are exposed to a whole range of problems that other managers/staff are dealing with and that never reach you as a developer.

[woohoo]

There are clearly too many devs on this thread. All your deadlines are loose, requirements vague and budget variable.

Try a project with a real (albeit arbitrary) deadline and a definite deliverable. Those projects need managing. Sometimes a Project Manager can manage that, and sometimes the PM is just a paper-work goon relying on the techies. But the project management role is important.

If a PM tries to manage people then there's a problem. Contractors shouldn't need managing, and permies have line managers who the PM can kick.

You comment is rambling, struggling to find your point. Could you put a bit more effort into it and make is concise?

[woohoo]

Here's something for the Dev's on this thread to think about.

I worked as developer, team lead, software development manager. Totally in my comfort zone, managing a team of 30 or so developers. I could never see the point of PM's. They just got in my way.

I accidentally took a job called "Project Manager". The first couple of projects were easy. Software Dev stuff.

But then my manager said : "Your next project is a building move"

I thought "oh oh .... I don't know anything about buildings".

That was when I began to appreciate the PMing and the skills required to be a good PM. And guess what? It was really great. Doing something that was not coding or code related was really liberating. It opened my eyes up to a whole range of other things that I had just ignored.

More importantly, it exposed me to a whole range of skills that I never would have the opportunity to learn.

So I did that for a decade or so, doing bigger and more complicated projects with multiple moving parts.

However, I have always loved coding. And just because I became a manager I didn't stop. It just became a hobby again.

Eventually, I wanted to do my own thing and run my own company. So I set one up, a SAAS offering, and the managerial/PM skills I have learned have been just as valuable as the technical skills I have acquired.

The final thing I noticed ( and I don't know if that's just me or if others can relate to ). When I was a pure techie/dev I wanted to run my own company, but I could never think of a problem to solve. When I was "managerial" I couldn't stop having ideas ... I think its because when you are tech you are so focused on the detail that it crowds out other thoughts. When you are a manager you are exposed to a whole range of problems that other managers/staff are dealing with and that never reach you as a developer.

To be fair, I did start off my post asking about project management and software development.

Now, if I was building a house, then perhaps a PM who has managed the same kind of house build would be your person. But I'm asking about software development.

[tomtomagain]

This is ass backwards, surely. You have a set amount of money (or a fairly defined range) you can spend, because that's what you can afford, and you try to get the most/best for the money you have. If it worked the way you say, that the estimate comes first and the money is simply "found" depending upon the size of the estimate, then we'd all be running around like A**enture and charging our clients £10 billion for delivering vapourware. Oh, wait....

So if you were the CEO of a major company with a list of say 500 potential projects you could spend money on ... how would you know which ones to follow?

How would you allocate money to your department heads at the start of the financial year?

I had a conversation with a senior guy in the company I was in ... he said "We never hit our budgets" ( he meant the massive $100M pot of money he was told allocated to spend each year ).

I said "Instead of estimating, why don't we just look at what we spent last year and use that number?". My theory being whatever it was, it would probably average out.