Reply to: Progression towards Project Management...

[malvolio]

Being a PM is undoubtedly as difficult as being a developer. The challenges are juggling the demands of the customer, dealing with a schedule which often has been driven by the sales team and keeping the development team focussed on the end game.

To be a good PM, I believe that you need:-

1. A thick skin
2. Powers of persuasion
3. Ability to listen to all parties
4. Knowledge of what's required to achieve the goal
5. Organisational skills
6. A logical mind

Ex-Developers could make bad PMs as typically they have little experience with requirements 1,2 & 3. Equally there are plenty of PMs who are very good at items 1,2 & 3 but have no ability in items 4,5 & 6.

I believe that demonstrably good business analysts/architects could have the necessary skillset to cover all 6 requirements.

Unfortunately, there are many bad PMs out there which give Project Management in general a bad rap.

Actually I'd go a little further. In my experience the really effective PMs come out of Operations/Support environments, not development. Mainly because they have grown up with multiple concurrent and often conflicting demands, whereas a good programmer is mostly working linearly on a single piece of work.

[mace]

Project Management

Being a PM is undoubtedly as difficult as being a developer. The challenges are juggling the demands of the customer, dealing with a schedule which often has been driven by the sales team and keeping the development team focussed on the end game.

To be a good PM, I believe that you need:-

1. A thick skin
2. Powers of persuasion
3. Ability to listen to all parties
4. Knowledge of what's required to achieve the goal
5. Organisational skills
6. A logical mind

Ex-Developers could make bad PMs as typically they have little experience with requirements 1,2 & 3. Equally there are plenty of PMs who are very good at items 1,2 & 3 but have no ability in items 4,5 & 6.

I believe that demonstrably good business analysts/architects could have the necessary skillset to cover all 6 requirements.

Unfortunately, there are many bad PMs out there which give Project Management in general a bad rap.

[PM-Junkie]

I heartily agree with beercohol...and agree this is a great discussion. For my sins I'm a current PMP, was also in a gig a while back that was exclusively Prince 2 so I'm very familiar with that beast to, though not certified - and have an MBA with a focus on Project Management. So I've just about got the theory bit under my belt....I've also been doing the job for over 10 years.

What I would say that the biggest failing I've seen from fellow PMs (and I've also taken on projects that have been failing so I've seen a few of them!), is focusing too much on the "how" rather than the "what" and "when". Having a methodology you work to is a double edged sword...the danger is that you become overly focussed on the mechanics of the thing, and forget what you're there for - and before you know it you're missing deadlines or breaking things. On the other hand though, having a methodology helps you not miss such things.

I guess having a set of PM tools such as PMBOK or Prince 2 is all about knowing when and how to use them. A bit like being an expert at an overhead kick in football...great at the right time if you can do it, but you look a compete dork if you do it all the time

[Maca]

Group hug?



I know this could be construed as taking the mick but I'm not.

I could do with some useful input into http://forums.contractoruk.com/techn...using-git.html if anyone's interested.

It's a reasonably relevant subject I think.

[original PM]

the company I currently contract for use a methodolgy called
Succesful Project Managment - which is quite a catchy name

I had not heard of this before and assumed it was an in house methodolgy (it is a big company!) however a quick google found me this link

Which seems to be quite a good methodolgy for the vast majortiy of projects I have worked on - it concentrates on the people and not the paperwork

for example right now I am rolling out a new system to about 600 branches - and so all the admin teams and managers in these branches need to learn how to use the system and also accept the changes the system will cause to their jobs.

So the key to the success of this project is not highly technical documents detailing PC specs and how we are going to connect these PC's to the network (from what the network team have told me as long as the branches have an adsl line and they know the username of the user they can roll pretty much anything out to them - and this has been true for the first 4 phases of the 6 phase roll out plan)

The key is actually winning the hearts and minds of the operational teams to ensure they use the system properly and understand the benefits the system offers.

[Maca]

I agree that this has been a good thread because it had open and honest opinions and experiences being expressed.

In this industry openness and honesty is rare but that is understandable. IT (and embedded - my thing) as a discipline is still under development. We all have found people that know stuff we didn't and vice versa.

The key to a successful dev project is to get everyone on the same page and that's what Agile is attempting to do by keeping everyone informed, pair programming etc. If you get a good PM who says he isn't Agile then he's doing the fundamentals of Agile naturally.

[beercohol]

IMO you can still hold your head high even if you have PM'd a project that hasn't delivered but you have documented/highlighted the reasons why

Especially if you forecasted the calamity and warned them before the fact. Takes some juggling between Risk Management and assessing progress.

They don't always want to hear it though, do they!

[Tensai]

IMO you can still hold your head high even if you have PM'd a project that hasn't delivered but you have documented/highlighted the reasons why....

However, I suggest leaving them off your CV might be a prudent move....

[Dow Jones]

Top thread

Agree - very impressive responses by some really good PMs. Like most of you, I have been 'indoctrinated' in the Prince2 dogma, however I can see it's not a silver bullet and things can be done equally without it. On the other hand, most banking projects are done on the hoof, with min emphasis on documentation and processes and the only criterion is whether the implementation has been successful or not. IMO you can still hold your head high even if you have PM'd a project that hasn't delivered but you have documented/highlighted the reasons why (eg lack of time/money/resources/etc) This can be done at a later date avoiding a repeat of duplicating whole stages - I have picked up several projects that could have saved half the time/money rewriting/going over most of them
- for me this is where Prince2 wins over Agile etc.

[techno]

great discussion

I think this is one of the most interesting discussions I have read on CUK - keep it up chaps!

I would not class myself as a PM even though I have all the business and people skills (I am way to technical; just love the coding) . All the projects I have ran have been small private software companies, real "seat of you pants" stuff.

[beercohol]

To communicate PRINCE2 adoption to senior management and educate project teams, we are outlining everything in Mind Manager, a very good mind mapping tool that also integrates with Office.

There is an existing EDRMS system we can use for our PCOs / PMO to access project documentation so we will probably go with that. Sharepoint 2007 is coming as part of a larger business transformation programme otherwise this would have been the platform of choice.

How did your client take to PRINCE2 over PMP methods?

Quite well in fact. Although there are some interesting differences:

- Prince has Processes and Stages, PMP combines these into Phases.

- A Prince2 project remains viable according to a revisited business case. Whereas a PMP project stays live until the Customer says otherwise (honestly!)

- PMP prescribes an approach to planning that dives straight into activities (WBS), whereas Prince2 takes a more pragmatic PBP approach first.

- PMP includes EVM, Prince2 briefly mentions it, but doesn't describe or prescribe it.

...to cover some of the highlights that jump to mind.

Overall I think PMP is a respectful study of project management based on observational work of project managers in action. It recognises that PM exists and has done for thousands of years etc. and is a collection of guidance based on what techniques are proven to work. In that sense, its more commercially aware. Things like, the project being viable as long as the customer says so. I mean this is real-life.

Prince2 seems more academic in comparison. Perhaps its a British thing, but it seems to suggest along the lines of - Whether or not Project Management existed before Prince2, we don't care. Starting from now, this is how it ought to be done.

A slighltly less commercially aware approach imho - A Prince2 project remains viable as long as its business case is viable. Thats a nice idealistic view, but in real life, the paying customer is still the actual decision maker.

Other than picky stuff like that which amuse PMI professionals, Prince2 was very warmly welcomed. I think there's a similar reception for ITIL in the US as well. They think we are clever as well as evil!

[beercohol]

Is Prince 2 worthwhile?

People I have spoken to say it will produce loads of documentation explaining why the project has not worked but does not guarantee results

aparently this is fine in public sector but private sector is more interested in results than documents....

and if not Prince 2 what?

Excellent question, and one often fired at Prince2.

The real power of Prince2, after having learned all those processes, components, techniques and document templates (all the stuff that makes it look top-heavy) is the scaleability guidance.

Of course, Prince2 is a big subject, it is designed to scale up to very large projects. On real life projects however, the trick is to scale it down to small projects so that the documentation requirement doesn't drown the actual work to be done. Prince2 has extensive guidance on how to do this.

This must be the single most villified (and least understood) aspect of Prince2 and I think this stems from two things:

1. Public Sector projects that fail spectacularly get plenty of media attention,

and

2. Prince2 Scaleability guidance is not covered at all in the Foundation Exam (giving stakeholders a wrong impression), and only minimally in for Practitioner (so even the newby PM hits the market all-fired up for a document frenzy).

[Peter Loew]

Aha! Good. Nothing like a paper-trail of exoneration!

Re Prince2 adoption.. How are you finding that? I did a similar thing for my last client to get their UK projects into the Prince2 framework instead of the HQ mandated PMP. We ended up going for a Sharepoint portal site for the PMO as organisation-wide guidance and templates etc.

To communicate PRINCE2 adoption to senior management and educate project teams, we are outlining everything in Mind Manager, a very good mind mapping tool that also integrates with Office.

There is an existing EDRMS system we can use for our PCOs / PMO to access project documentation so we will probably go with that. Sharepoint 2007 is coming as part of a larger business transformation programme otherwise this would have been the platform of choice.

How did your client take to PRINCE2 over PMP methods?

[original PM]

Is Prince 2 worthwhile?

People I have spoken to say it will produce loads of documentation explaining why the project has not worked but does not guarantee results

aparently this is fine in public sector but private sector is more interested in results than documents....

and if not Prince 2 what?

[beercohol]

Oh yes, I and the projects team are completely covered; documented and all.

I'm currently working with another senior PM to produce PRINCE2 processes for our particular customer environment and ensure they are adhered to as much as possible.

Aha! Good. Nothing like a paper-trail of exoneration!

Re Prince2 adoption.. How are you finding that? I did a similar thing for my last client to get their UK projects into the Prince2 framework instead of the HQ mandated PMP. We ended up going for a Sharepoint portal site for the PMO as organisation-wide guidance and templates etc.