The A-Z of Project Management Survival

At some point in the working life of every manager, you will be asked to make judgement on your subordinates. Luckily they will be usually given some form of performance review system to give structure to your meandering thoughts. The system will typically be based on objectives, competencies, performance against ‘vision’, that sort of thing. The simplest thing to do is to ignore all of this and to concentrate on some fundamentals rules. Start by answering these questions:

• Who in your team makes you look good without being a direct threat to your position?


• Who in the team would it cause more hassle to lose than retain?


• Who would you happily flush down the toilet?

Got the answers? Good. Now the next stage. Recite the mantra ‘Reward to retain, ignore to eliminate’. Pay most attention and reward to those you want to keep, be polite and courteous to those you want to flush. Its for the good of everyone, you, the company, even the individuals themselves. No one wants to work for a boss that thinks they are a muppet. You’re doing them a favour, putting them out of their misery.

Labels: A, Appraisal

This is probably the most galling fact of all. You work in I.T. You have a right to expect that you share your working life with well-educated, well-trained, competent individuals. This is why you feel alone. This is why you get frustrated. What will free you from this hell is if you just accept that probably as many as 85% of all people working in I.T. aren’t very good at it.



Arses

In fact, brace yourself, Project Management is probably the most guilty discipline of all. Think about it. How many people have you met he have stumbled into Project Management solely because they weren’t actually any good at anything else and specifically because the role of Project Administrator is very often confused with Project Manager. Collection of timesheets does not a Project Manager make.
Try this test. Give one of your so-called Project Management colleagues this book and if they say things like “That’s terrible” or “Very funny, lucky it’s not actually like that” make a mental label of “Arse” for them in your head.

Labels: A, Arses