Thursday, May 08, 2008
Death by Scheduling
I was on Linkedin attempting to figure out what IT executives I knew on my side of town so that I can extend an invite to them for the next OWASP meeting when I ran across a name of a horrific project manager I had worked with in the past...
This project manager loved to kill trees and used to print the Microsoft Project schedule on the big HP color plotter. It looked horrible from an integrity perspective prior to printing and became even worse seeing it on four-foot paper.
I remember the poorly run status meetings where this individual would want to discuss each and every item on the schedule and solicit status. Not being one that tolerates worst practices of CMMi like thinking, I of course had to be the wise guy. The conversation sounded somewhat like:
The moral of the story is that if perception is reality, then the best way to manage perception is to make up stuff that you can honestly remember. Note the arbitrary precision which is a visual cue to me that when I see it in the future, I know I made it up...
| | View blog reactionsThis project manager loved to kill trees and used to print the Microsoft Project schedule on the big HP color plotter. It looked horrible from an integrity perspective prior to printing and became even worse seeing it on four-foot paper.
I remember the poorly run status meetings where this individual would want to discuss each and every item on the schedule and solicit status. Not being one that tolerates worst practices of CMMi like thinking, I of course had to be the wise guy. The conversation sounded somewhat like:
- PROJECT MANAGER: "McGovern, item 74.2."
- MCGOVERN: "Done"
- PROJECT MANAGER: "When did you finish it?"
- MCGOVERN: "I don't know, two, maybe three weeks ago."
- PROJECT MANAGER: "You don't know?"
- MCGOVERN: "Actually, I finished it while listening to others go through the pain of this meeting and hence always multi task whenever project managers want status"
- PROJECT MANAGER: "I don't understand"
- MCGOVERN: "I know you don't. Anyway, I did it awhile back and just never bothered. I focused more on actual delivery than on taking credit for delivery"
- PROJECT MANAGER: "Well, I still need to put something down on my project plan. Could you give me a date"
- MCGOVERN: "It was a lot of code ago. It was probably done about two weeks ago"
- PROJECT MANAGER: "Ok, we'll say two weeks." (makes a note on his printout of the schedule). "How long did it take you?"
- MCGOVERN: "A few hours every few days over the course of a month. It wasn't contiguous time."
- PROJECT MANAGER: "How long would you say?"
- MCGOVERN: "I really couldn't say. We jump around a lot when developing."
- PROJECT MANAGER: "You don't know?"
- MCGOVERN: "I could make up a number. Do you want made-up numbers?"
- PROJECT MANAGER: (Visibly irate) "No! We need real numbers, not made-up numbers."
- MCGOVERN: "Ok..."
- PROJECT MANAGER: "I just need a number."
- MCGOVERN: "Ah, ah, ok. 7.42 days."
- PROJECT MANAGER: "7.42 days?"
- MCGOVERN: "Sure. 7.42 days."
- PROJECT MANAGER: Makes a note on his schedule, looking relieved. "Great. Ok, next item, when was that done?"
- MCGOVERN: "Let's say, December 17th, 4.72 days.
- PROJECT MANAGER: "Great. next item?"
- MCGOVERN: "How about January 15th, 2.47 days?"
- PROJECT MANAGER: "Thank you."
The moral of the story is that if perception is reality, then the best way to manage perception is to make up stuff that you can honestly remember. Note the arbitrary precision which is a visual cue to me that when I see it in the future, I know I made it up...