Technical term for a brain dead management technique?

[cojak]

Nice post Nick!

<squirrels away to 'Reference'...>

[original PM]

[QUOTE=NickFitz;996907]You could indeed

Firstly, it's not micromanagement: it's as much about the team keeping in touch with each other as anything else.

etc

[QUOTE]

A very good point and one I shall remember oh hang on the basic assumption in all of this is that you are dealing with profesional motivated people!!!!

[Mustang]

so it would seem that a group of correctly skilled motivated people who are committed to achieving the project goal will achieve more than a bunch of seperate people who are hung together by a process.

so choose the right team, make sure they understand the goal and keep them motivated - and your project will be a success regardless of the methodology you use.

Which is why project management cannot be learned from a book.

You can tell from the posts on this thread who are PM's and who aren't!!

[original PM]

or to put it another way

your frognostificator is already 3 days behind schedule because you were pulled off the project to fix the MD's laptop - after 3 days of trying to do this by phone you go to the MD's luxury mansion to find his son has swapped his laptop for an etch-a-sketch

in addition to this the guy building the widgetiser is the boss's mate and so does not need to stick to any schedules and wo betide anyone who tries to say anything against him

and besides the whole frognostificator project has been put on hold as some bean counters projects show that the frognostifcator project will be 2 p over budget and so approval from the board, the exec, god and Davros the Dalek must be approved before that project can continue.

and I am no longer a PM I am now a Solutions Architect - whatver one of them may be - so I suppose I should change my name.

[NickFitz]

A very good point and one I shall remember oh hang on the basic assumption in all of this is that you are dealing with profesional motivated people!!!!

Why would I waste my time working with any other kind?

[original PM]

**** gimme your job!

[shoes]

[QUOTE=original PM;996917][QUOTE=NickFitz;996907]You could indeed

Firstly, it's not micromanagement: it's as much about the team keeping in touch with each other as anything else.

etc

A very good point and one I shall remember oh hang on the basic assumption in all of this is that you are dealing with profesional motivated people!!!!

PMs do not need to make team members artificially keep in touch with one-another, we do it anyway as and when required. I've always found PMs to be unnecessary overhead who are only told things they want to hear or that they can understand without a massive technical briefing in order to try and keep them out of the way of the productive people as much as possible.

Granted I've only ever worked with bad PMs, I am currently unaware that there are any other kind. Perhaps if they had an experience of development in the technologies in use on the project they would be helpful.

[NickFitz]

PMs do not need to make team members artificially keep in touch with one-another, we do it anyway as and when required. I've always found PMs to be unnecessary overhead who are only told things they want to hear or that they can understand without a massive technical briefing in order to try and keep them out of the way of the productive people as much as possible.

Granted I've only ever worked with bad PMs, I am currently unaware that there are any other kind. Perhaps if they had an experience of development in the technologies in use on the project they would be helpful.

One thing that I found very useful about the morning stand-up was that, very often, it brought up matters that could be dealt with very quickly, in a way that avoided delays, inconvenience, or interruptions.

So, for example, I might know that I need Fred to do foo sometime today, but I don't know how long that will take him. By mentioning it as a blocker at the morning stand-up, it's possible for him to say "Oh, that'll only take me two minutes, I'll do it straight after the meeting." If I left it until I actually needed it later that day, I might find that he's nose-deep in some complex task which means he's ignoring email and IM and will probably lose a couple of hours of productivity if I go and tap him on the shoulder and break his flow.

By having a fifteen-minute stand-up meeting at a fixed time each day (between 10 and 11 AM is good, as you don't want to force people to get out of bed too early) there tend to be no end of little things that get sorted out that much easier, and many fewer interruptions and temporary diversions throughout the day. It's surprising how beneficial it can be.

[thunderlizard]

Last time I was involved with scrum the "team" was just several independent contractors each with their own area of responsibility and no overlaps. "Daily Scrum" never lasted more than 90 seconds.

[MPwannadecentincome]

PMs do not need to make team members artificially keep in touch with one-another, we do it anyway as and when required.

I have found the opposite at many places - quite often someone sitting in the corner who is struggling with their work and doesn't want to come clean and admit it.