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A question in the general thread sparked this for me when I realized there wasn't a project management thread. AND WHY NOT?  I figure between the corporate thread and other lurkers there must be some other poor schmucks out there that got asked to manage a project, estimate how much a thing would take or cost, seen or worked with bad project managers or whatever else. Consider this a space to talk about project management things. Here are some project things you could talk about :
You might be reading this and wondering what the gently caress "project management" even is and what is involved with it. You might have met an unlucky engineer that became a project manager through no fault of their own, or someone you work with was asked to step up "and just do the needful". Let's start with what "project management" as a concept is. Project Management applies to the set of tools, processes, and analysis techniques to successfully complete a scope of work that has a definite end point. That is, itself, the definition of a project. THey are time limited, budget constrained, and resource constrained pains in the asses that rarely finish when you expect them or be cheaper than you assumed. What are the general stages of a project? I'll use the PMI set up for it (I know): Here's a nice little article for reference Initiation This is the stage where some dipshit executive wants to "improve" your call center efficiency by implementing a series of measures and technologies so he can rub KPIs on his body and slap high-fives with his chadbro VP bruhskis. Chad Dipshit drafts up a project charter which describes the "need", how it "provides value" to the organization" and a rough outline of how those goals will be achieved. This is considered the point where a project gets a soft-go or gets shitcanned. Planning At this point, Chad Dipshit got his idiot buddies in management sign off on the project because "gently caress those little nerds down in the call center". In this stage, some overworked resource will get asked to put together a project plan to complete the identified scope of work. This is where the bulk of PM work goes into and where a project manager spends most of their time. The PM then works with peopel to define the scope, or the boundaries of the project, or "how many crabs can we cram into this fuckin' bucket?" Once the scope is defined, a series of linked activities is created that executes that scope. This is where the real work is as the PM works to figure out the right sequence of events, knowing it'll be blown apart on Day 2 of the project. Once the sequence is determined, the PM can figure out how long everything will take, knowing it'll be blown apart on Day 2 of the project. Some resources for how to estimate schedule can be found here. Now that you know how long that crap is going to take, you can estimate cost based on the poorly out of date cost figures you have for labor, procurement, services, and Execution & Control Work is getting done on making call center nerds' lives more miserable, status and reporting happens, project controls analysis comes into play here. Phrases like "schedule variance" or "CPI" or "ETC" are used as if they're accurate. Closure High fives all around, we're done. Obviously there's a lot more to it but for those that wanted a nutshell intro, there it is. So let's hear it. Are you a current project manager? Are you trying to figure out some of this bullshit and want help from others? What are you tips or advice to new poor souls? Are you interested in a cert or is your org pushing one and not sure where to start? Do you just want to poo poo post about vaguely related business things?
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Apr 1, 2018 01:24
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I'll start. I have worked with many useless PMs who are promoted into the role because they used to be an SME of something, but have no real project management experience. Many of them are quick to draw a line in the sand claiming what is and what isn't their job. My favorite is the belief their job does not include getting other people to communicate. Many PMs stand by their favorite response which is "I e-mailed them, but they wont' respond." My plan of attack for any communication is e-mail, instant message, phone, or standing at their loving desk until I get an answer. Any good PM knows how to get people to communicate. A technique I learned from the world of construction is called the committal schedule. The committal schedule is a separate schedule listing out tasks when resources are forced to make decisions or have a scheduled meeting to make a decision. I have found that putting a meeting on a calendar to make the decision has been an effective method to get project stakeholders and leadership to be prepared to make a decision versus kicking the can down the road. I always tell the PMs that I work with that the best PMs are annoying. If that PM is annoying enough, then every time a resource sees a message from the PM or sees the PM in person, then they will be reminded of the deliverables or tasks from that project.
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Apr 1, 2018 16:40
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oh rly posted:I'll start. I have worked with many useless PMs who are promoted into the role because they used to be an SME of something, but have no real project management experience. That's a sad truth. Good PMs always seem to have a way of getting a decision or status update out of someone. I think the culture shock for a lot of people is when they find out being a project manager is 80% emails, phone calls, sitting in meetings to get people to agree to something and emailing, calling, and hounding people for answers.
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Apr 1, 2018 19:55
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Been doing project management for a Japanese finance firm in Tokyo for the past few years. AMA about convincing old Japanese salarymen that their fax machines are in fact outdatedoh rly posted:promoted into the role because they used to be an SME of something, but have no real project management experience. This is me
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Apr 2, 2018 02:55
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Does anyone have any strong feelings about the COCOMO system, function points the whole shebang. It looks like a reasonable tool I could use for my department but it's also kind of heavy. Nevermind i spent forever researching it. It's old and clunky but that's how we roll here in the creating vba macros / sql databases department Veskit fucked around with this message at 15:38 on Apr 4, 2018 |
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Apr 2, 2018 15:27
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Veskit posted:Does anyone have any strong feelings about the COCOMO system, function points the whole shebang. It looks like a reasonable tool I could use for my department but it's also kind of heavy. I was going to say, after researching, I’m not sure what it would do that standard bottoms up or historical knowledge for tasking couldn’t. Which brings up a good point, what PM software do ya’ll is if you do use it? I’ve seen mainly MS Project and P6 but I’d love to find a better alternative to either.
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Apr 4, 2018 20:53
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If I were a full-time project manager I would gladly use the bottom up approach because of how many levels it makes sense, however I think I might have like an hour to figure out how long it'll take to progress something so I found cocomo to work? Is there a hey go quote this project for me in 30 monies kind of an approach with no documentation? I feel like our org spits in the face of pm a lot
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Apr 5, 2018 16:06
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Veskit posted:I feel like our org spits in the face of pm a lot 4 posts in and there’s a better thread title
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Apr 5, 2018 17:17
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So, where would you PMs recommend getting started with learning formal project management approaches / skills? I've been managing projects for like six years now, but it's only sheer luck that none of them have blown up in my face yet. I have no formal training for project management and one of these days, someone is going to notice.
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Apr 5, 2018 18:23
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Sundae posted:So, where would you PMs recommend getting started with learning formal project management approaches / skills? I've been managing projects for like six years now, but it's only sheer luck that none of them have blown up in my face yet. I have no formal training for project management and one of these days, someone is going to notice. Uhh if you've made it six years with no explosions, you're already way ahead of the game (compared to the five or so PMs I've seen).
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Apr 5, 2018 20:26
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Project management is the most made up scientific sounding loving field I've ever heard.
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Apr 5, 2018 20:31
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Sundae posted:So, where would you PMs recommend getting started with learning formal project management approaches / skills? I've been managing projects for like six years now, but it's only sheer luck that none of them have blown up in my face yet. I have no formal training for project management and one of these days, someone is going to notice. My first introduction to it was through a book they had us read in business school called “Making It Happen”. One of those fictional “novels” that seem kind of dumb at first. It walks pretty well through the core basics of project planning, scheduling, budgeting, controlling, etc. I can try to dig up some other resources later. PMI has a lot of good stuff though a lot of people tend to not like them since a lot of their stuff is behind a paywall.
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Apr 5, 2018 20:34
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Veskit posted:Project management is the most made up scientific sounding loving field I've ever heard. project controls engineer: a real and not made up job title.
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Apr 5, 2018 20:36
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Sarern posted:Uhh if you've made it six years with no explosions, you're already way ahead of the game (compared to the five or so PMs I've seen). The secret is to inherit projects that are already smoldering.  Higgy posted:My first introduction to it was through a book they had us read in business school called “Making It Happen”. One of those fictional “novels” that seem kind of dumb at first. It walks pretty well through the core basics of project planning, scheduling, budgeting, controlling, etc. Thanks a bunch! I'll google the book as a starting point. It really is a miracle I've not been sacrificed to the dark gods multiple times over already by capital request review boards, so I'll take any help I can get. 
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Apr 5, 2018 20:49
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Sundae posted:The secret is to inherit projects that are already smoldering. This is the truth. I've never been a real PM by title, but inherited so many dumpster fires that I tell people I'm the project janitor. I work in IT and taught myself most stuff by learning on the job. It helps that I absorbed most of the process from working at a Fortune 100. Every place has a different method of doing things, but the most important aspect is learning what works within your organization. We practice random elements of traditional waterfall development and Agile. The 2nd best resource I had was a Project Management class while getting my masters. Just learning simple terminology like three elements of a project (time, resources, budget), what the critical path is, how to track issues and risks, project charter, process to re-baseline, how to define what's in scope and out of scope, how to prevent scope creep, escalation process, importance of leadership alignment, and resource capacity were all things that I have been able to use.
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Apr 6, 2018 02:37
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My old job title was “project manager”, and the only training i ever got was one grab bag o stuff AMA class. Mostly it was, there is an engineering project that needs to get done, get it done. I felt fancier being called an PM rather than X engineer though. In regards to PMI certs, is there any value in getting a CAPM vs maybe trying to finangle my way in to sitting for the PMP? I have over 5 years on my resume of being called as such, but now that i no longer work there trying to recreate project timelines for all the stuff i did, would be woefully incomplete.
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Jun 18, 2018 02:16
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I've been doing 'unofficial' PM work for the last few years (or a very, very basic version of it), and I'm starting next week at a new company in a much more official capacity. I'm pretty sure it's going to end up being sort of a hybrid PM/SM role, and until I start I won't be sure which direction it'll lean harder in. The last 5 months I've been reading tons of PM/Scrummaster/Leadership books (mostly because my last company did an org-wide transition from waterfall to Scrum and pushed everyone through an Agile bootcamp which left me wanting much, much more info on being an SM while still learning about the PM role). I'll list the books I've gone through already, but was wondering if anyone had any other good PM-specific suggestions off the top of their heads: Favorites: Others I read:
Owned but unread (yet):
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Jul 20, 2018 22:30
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How do i tell MS project that when using a resource pool, please schedule the dates according to the workload and based on the resource being used. IE bryan's calendar doesn't have availability until 08/25, so don't schedule him until then, and on a 80 hour project if i put the start date please schedule it out 2 weeks.
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Jul 25, 2018 16:11
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Veskit posted:How do i tell MS project that when using a resource pool, please schedule the dates according to the workload and based on the resource being used. IE bryan's calendar doesn't have availability until 08/25, so don't schedule him until then, and on a 80 hour project if i put the start date please schedule it out 2 weeks. I haven’t used ms project in awhile but there should be an option to set it so all tasks don’t ignore resource calendars when scheduling and then set a constraint to start as soon as possible on the task. Might also look into resource leveling options which take resource constraints into account and set the task schedules accordingly. I used to spend my time fighting Primavera P6 so YMMV on this one.
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Jul 25, 2018 17:19
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I'll try it out thanks. Are there better options for this resource planning stuff because it's a nightmare.
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Jul 25, 2018 18:26
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Veskit posted:I'll try it out thanks. Are there better options for this resource planning stuff because it's a nightmare. I honestly take a softer approach because my projects are more ambiguous and ~agile~ but my assumptions run off of available staff FTEs I can get for my projects. I take their average availability percentage * available hours in each month * charge out rate and peanut butter spread that cost across the timing I have for the project. It’s not perfectly accurate but it gets it pretty close which tends to be good enough for my project sponsors. It sets up nicely for spending spikes and valleys due to the nature of my projects. Getting it down the gnats rear end, though, I can’t think of a better way than using a shared resource pool in a Project server environment that all your project staff is entered into with available working hours then resource loading every task. It takes a lot of planning but t gets you the most accurate project costs and sets you up for some detailed Earned Value reporting that management gets wet over.
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Jul 25, 2018 20:57
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We us P6. My engineers tend to show 60-80 hours a week because we don't understand how to load and balance resources.
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Jul 25, 2018 23:45
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spwrozek posted:We us P6. My engineers tend to show 60-80 hours a week because we don't understand how to load and balance resources. I grew up as a little project controls specialist using P6. It was pretty powerful but oh so loving infuriating at times. My favorite was trying to run reports from its backend SQL database and getting 15 different start dates for any given task.
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Jul 26, 2018 00:48
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Can I hang out in this thread if I don't have any formal PM title, but have taken half a certificate program on it and gotten real good at managing without authority? Because I love it, but figuring out how to get people to do poo poo to move your project forward without having any formal authority over them seems to be the essence of project management. In fact I'd propose that as the thread title: Bitcoin, Forex, and Candles > The Project Management Thread: Managing without authority.
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Jul 29, 2018 04:11
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Dik Hz posted:Can I hang out in this thread if I don't have any formal PM title, but have taken half a certificate program on it and gotten real good at managing without authority? Because I love it, but figuring out how to get people to do poo poo to move your project forward without having any formal authority over them seems to be the essence of project management. It’s a slow as poo poo thread with a niche audience but welcome! Sounds like you fit the bill bud What kind of stuff you got goin on?
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Jul 29, 2018 04:50
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Does anyone have any suggestions for resources about documentation methodologies or formatting? Our document library is sparse and we're pretty much just free-styling in OneNote right now, so I'd like to have a real solid, professional format for everything. We're doing a M&A so I need a way to clearly document the workflows of company A, company B, and then our expected future workflow with any build steps we had to take to get there. I'm sure there's existing methodologies for all of this out there, already but all of my project experience has been making it up as I go along, so I'm sure there's a better way to do this. Also, it's a chore to get my teammate to write down anything coherently, so I'm hoping if we can at least put everything in a standardized template it will look sort of nice and make up for her complete lack of literacy.
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Jul 29, 2018 18:36
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I've said it in other threads, but I'm a fan of Confluence for project documentation. We've been using it for all of our software and IT projects for a few years now. It's easy to organize in a way that's professional looking, keeps all documentation together and easily accessible enough to most people. It can even work as a psuedo-document library in that you can load files but not great for revision tracking and all that for files.
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Jul 29, 2018 19:39
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Higgy posted:I've said it in other threads, but I'm a fan of Confluence for project documentation. We've been using it for all of our software and IT projects for a few years now. It's easy to organize in a way that's professional looking, keeps all documentation together and easily accessible enough to most people. It can even work as a psuedo-document library in that you can load files but not great for revision tracking and all that for files. How are you using this for tasks and breakdowns? It does have a "tasks" and assignments, sort of basic sort of thing, but, editing and managing content is kinda clunky if you get overboard. Our org had someone determine all projects need a PMBOK type project workbook so we end up getting stuck in documentation trash land while trying to also do work.
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Jul 29, 2018 22:42
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Partycat posted:How are you using this for tasks and breakdowns? We use Jira for task tracking which is in the same family of products owned by Atlassian, works out pretty well
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Jul 30, 2018 01:58
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I’m considering confluence for requirements tracking since I use Jira and bit bucket. Anyone use it to track requirements? Does it allow the use of a linked unique ID like DOORS or MS Project?
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Jul 30, 2018 02:48
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CarForumPoster posted:I’m considering confluence for requirements tracking since I use Jira and bit bucket. Anyone use it to track requirements? Does it allow the use of a linked unique ID like DOORS or MS Project? Not sure on those integrations but my teams do use confluence to track requirements. The nutshell of it is that we generate software feature pages that have a table of requirements broken down into enough detail and acceptance test language that our devs can work and test them. Confluence then has a feature that lets you covert a table of detailed requirements into a series of Jira tasks that we can then track or decompose further into sub tasks if needed. This includes a nice two-way thing that shows that task status on the confluence page and gives me an easy status report to run my stand ups with. I’m not sure if that answers you questions but that’s roughly how I manage my software projects.
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Jul 30, 2018 23:42
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Nobody goes to school to be a project manager; they tend to rise up from the development floor after getting an understanding on how everything works at their company and getting lucky as people above them leave. The ratio with me was probably 25/75 to be honest. I'm 28 and am still with this company after graduating from university 6 years ago. How do you job hunt as a project manager without going to the bottom again? PMPs are viewed with scorn, and I'm not really considering getting one, but maybe it's good way to say "I can interpret poo poo for your devs and clients easily and painlessly" on a resume? Or is success in job hunting--and I know this applies to any position but seems doubly true for these types of jobs--really just about having a lucky and supportive network?
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Jul 30, 2018 23:48
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Jedi Knight Luigi posted:PMPs are viewed with scorn,
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Jul 31, 2018 00:55
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I think it’s heavily industry dependent. Things are pretty saturated with PMPs. There’s a lot of trash project managers with PMPs and a lot of good ones, it’s really just a basic discriminator. In regards to the other question, w/r/t interviewing and job hunting as a project manager; showing a history managing, leading without authority, defining scope and controlling projects all translate well into nearly any field without starting from the bottom again. There are exceptions, like specific industry things for construction, pharma, software, etc but mostly you can fit into other orgs. Like the other poster mentioned, though, networking and “who you know” will almost always win out. Higgy fucked around with this message at 03:44 on Jul 31, 2018 |
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Jul 31, 2018 01:19
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I just passed my PMP exam today! Really glad to have that behind me. I totally agree that having your PMP doesn’t say much besides your being able to memorize a textbook, but just like having a degree, it’s a checkbox that’s pretty common when somebody is looking to fill a PM position.
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Jul 31, 2018 03:37
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Silvergun1000 posted:I just passed my PMP exam today! Really glad to have that behind me.
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Jul 31, 2018 04:32
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Dik Hz posted:Eh. Given that it takes 2 years of PM experience to even qualify for the certificate, I think it shows a certain dedication to get it. Yeah that’s kinda what I mean. Like the big thing a degree (at least an undergrad) shows is that you can undertake and complete a big multi-year undertaking. Most organizations I’ve worked for that wanted project managers with PMPs couldn’t articulate what that meant beyond “They PM good”, but these were hardly Fortune 500 companies either.
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Jul 31, 2018 09:02
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Just about every project manager that put PMP in their title or email signature was bad. They seem to treat it as a license to just do whatever they want. In my experience that includes not following standard practices themselves, and overreaching into the project. The latter I feel comes from PMs being somewhat interested in work they are not qualified for and shouldn’t be part of and now they feel like they can inject themselves. If there’s one thing I’d like to get from this thread it is how to tell a PM they need to back off and be a PM - they’re not a project technical resource and should not be. Partycat fucked around with this message at 10:30 on Jul 31, 2018 |
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Jul 31, 2018 10:14
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Partycat posted:Just about every project manager that put PMP in their title or email signature was bad. They seem to treat it as a license to just do whatever they want. I have a major problem with this lol. About 25-30% of the projects I PM have a localization aspect to them, and since my minor was in German I can’t help but look stuff over myself sometimes even though I shouldn’t be.
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Jul 31, 2018 14:55
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Partycat posted:Just about every project manager that put PMP in their title or email signature was bad. They seem to treat it as a license to just do whatever they want. My favorite are people who put their BS degree in the alphabet soup following their name. It’s rare but you get them on occasion! As for the technical resource thing, I’d just look at the project’s roles and responsibilities and point out he’s not signed up to work on that stuff, assuming he’s not assigned to those tasks at least. Kinda hard for him to argue with his own documentation. This is assuming he actually did his job and put stuff like that together in the first place. Personally I’ve been a technical resource as well on most projects I’ve run because I always wind up working for companies that don’t have enough technical resources to go around and have to wear a few hats. Honestly I think it’s good for a PM to be involved on a technical level since it ensures they have a better understanding of the product they’re helping develop. I kinda get the feeling you mean your PMs are sort of being back-seat drivers with the technical aspects of their projects though? If that’s the case, I agree that’s not really helping anything.
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Jul 31, 2018 18:48
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