The A-Z of Project Management Survival

Not everyone can be a star, and there are many people who do just fine not being a star. They don't crave the limelight, they don't particularly want the attention, they just do a good, solid job and are happy that you thank them for doing just that.

These kind of people are essentially your grunts, the engine-house of your team. These are the guys that deliver stuff for you, day-in, day-out. You need them on your team.

If you have a team full of experts and stars; let's call them Prima-Donnas, you will spend all your time massaging their egos, making up for their shortcomings, apologising to people they've annoyed or upset and stopping fights between them. They'll take up a lot of your valuable time.

While you absolutely do need both in your team, you need to watch out. If you want your team to deliver, and not just postulate and come up with whizzy ideas, you would be well placed to make sure you have a high Grunt to Prima-Donna ratio.

Labels: G, Grunt

The railroader is the kind of person that will use his personality and blind determination to force his ideas through, regardless of other popular, or learned opinion.

You'll easily be able to classify a Railroader when you encounter one, they typically talk over other people, usually starting when the have a grasp of an idea and think they can run with it. At this point, they genuinely think they know better than everyone else in the room, including the person who was talking.

You can try to go toe-to-toe with a Railroader, and keep talking over them but unless you have the presence or seniority to carry it off and they stop, it can quickly degenerate into a babble-fest where the rest of the assembled group will be wondering what's going on.

One strategy is to use distraction to shut them up, like the magicians do. I don't suggest the, "Look, an eagle!", approach. More the open handed-stop signal, holding up your finger or pen as a blocker, hand on the shoulder, other ways to knock them off their stride. But be aware when they've sussed what you've done, they'll just start off again.

The best strategy is to let them talk themselves out first. Then pitch in with the real solution, as it's highly probable they have not grasped the whole situation and have gone off half-cocked.

That way you end up looking like the one that knows what they are talking about, which is about right.

Labels: People, R, Railroader

To offshore or not to offshore: that is the question.

If you've worked any length of time in IT and/or worked for any of the larger companies, the subject of offshore will have undoubtedly come up. The bean-counters love the idea of offshore. Usually with the disheartening cry, "It's so cheap. The rates are less than half that of our guys. We can't lose."

Well, let us tell you here, loud and clear, yes you can. Big time.

We at the A-Z are not Xenophobic, far from it, we like to think of ourselves more as stupophobic. We are firm believers that there is no golden arrow, no global, one-size-fits-all solution to any and every IT problem. Lots of things need to be considered on the path to successfully delivering IT soluions.

Whether it's India, Malaysia, Russia, Israel or any of many other locations where extremely unit-cost resource are waiting to do your bidding, the deal is the same: use them only if it's the right thing to do, and do it under the proper conditions.

You wouldn't recruit a someone off the street who showed you an impressive CV and let him loose on your most complicated, business critical code, in the same way you wouldn't hand your car keys to the first person you met at the shops.

So treat it the same way you would any other recruitment-for-purpose task. Define the roles, review the CVs, interview the best candidates; test them if appropriate, locally if necessary. Only when you are sure you have people capable of doing what you need them to do should you consider taking them on.

Like you would with any newbie, define clearly what you want them to do and monitor their progress closely. If they are delivering successfully, give them a bit more responsibility. You should be able to reasonably quickly gauge the calibre of your new recruits. If they're no good, then get rid and replace.

Don't underestimate the management overhead of having a separate offshore team. That's your, or your team-lead's, time we're talking about so it's important time.

In summary, don't immediately discount the idea of offshoring, but if you are going to do it, do it right, under the right conditions and with the right expectations set beforehand.

Labels: X, Xenophobia

"Surely" is a word that should not be in the vocabulary of the vigilant Project Manager. Uttering phrases like, "Surely the customer knew we would..." or, "Surely the software is able to..." or even, "Surely they don't expect...", means you have made assumptions.

When you make assumptions you are leaving yourself open to all sorts of problems down the line that will, of course, materialise at the worst possible time.

Assumptions are a bad thing and are best left to the amateurs. Since you're a good PM you will be keen to be across everything in your project and you will have thought throught the 'What-if' scenarios, giving you time to put any mitigation plans into action.

So, do your homework, make sure you know what is going on and don't get caught with your pants down. But surely you knew that...

Labels: S, Surely