scottberkun.com » The book: Making things happenManagement and creative thinkingPM Clinic: Week 32 discussion summary- August 23, 2007 Fear of direction changes Compiled: 6132005 The Situation: I&8217;m the leadermanager of a team of programmers. Last week we hit a major date, on time, midway through our v3 release. Much rejoicing. But late last week our biggest competitor (aka &34;cunning mofos&34;) just announced their v3 release will be out well before ours, and with two major ...http://www.scottberkun.com/pmclinic/pm-clinic-week-32-discussion-summary/ PM Clinic: Week 31 discussion summary- August 23, 2007 Working with programmerarchitects Compiled: 5312005 The Situation: My mid-sized web development company recently reorganized. I&8217;m a mid-level project manager leading a team of 10 programmers, testers and designers. As part of the reorg my team is expected to work with &34;the architect&34;. He&8217;s been at the company for a long time as a programmer (started at same time ...http://www.scottberkun.com/pmclinic/pm-clinic-week-31-discussion-summary/ PM Clinic: Week 30 discussion summary- August 23, 2007 Happy project status meetings Compiled: 5252005 The Situation: We have a weekly hour meeting to review project status - but for several reasons these meetings often run much longer (and there is much suffering). The dynamics of our team are such that each person feels the need to either: have an opinion on every single topic that ...http://www.scottberkun.com/pmclinic/pm-clinic-week-30-discussion-summary/ PM Clinic: Week 29 discussion summary- August 23, 2007 The politics of bug fixing Compiled: 592005 The Situation: My team has finished major development work and is now turning the corner into bug fix mode. I&8217;m the group manager, and I sat down with my dev managers and dev leads to discuss how we wanted the team to prioritize work. We quickly fell into quicksand. I felt ...http://www.scottberkun.com/pmclinic/pm-clinic-week-29-discussion-summary/ PM Clinic: Week 28 discussion summary- August 23, 2007 My kingdom for some quality Compiled: 592005 The Situation: The current rage in my organization is quality - how to define it, how to measure it, and who should be responsibile and accountable for it. The test team feels it&8217;s their job to measure and drive quality, but they need more power to do so. The programming team ...http://www.scottberkun.com/pmclinic/pm-clinic-week-28-discussion-summary/ PM Clinic: Week 27 discussion summary- August 23, 2007 When to abandon specifications Compiled: 592005 The Situation: The current debate raging across my development team is about how long into development specifications should be maintained. Who should get to decide when specs get updated, if at all Has anyone in the real world ever continually updated them every day and kept them in sync until release Was ...http://www.scottberkun.com/pmclinic/pm-clinic-week-27-discussion-summary/ PM Clinic: Week 26 discussion summary- August 23, 2007 Big teams vs. Little teams Compiled: 522005 The Situation: I&8217;ve recently moved from a small development teamorganization (10) to a much larger one (80) people. I&8217;m having a hard time figuring out how to be effective getting things done without pissing people off - What I see as just being effective and efficient, is sometimes seen as cutting ...http://www.scottberkun.com/pmclinic/pm-clinic-week-26-discussion-summary/ PM Clinic: Week 25 discussion summary- August 23, 2007 Death by PowerPoint Compiled: 4252005 The Situation: &8220;Features aren&8217;t developed in Powerpoint, but my management seems to think otherwise. I&8217;m spending the majority of my time reviewing my features with successively higher layers of management and changing the deck layout to match the expectations (or mandate) of the next layer each time. This is starting to impact my ...http://www.scottberkun.com/pmclinic/pm-clinic-week-25-discussion-summary/ PM Clinic: Week 24 discussion summary- August 23, 2007 The evil of changes during development Compiled: 4152005 The Question: In every company I&8217;ve worked for, there&8217;s been a breakdown between developers and marketing about managing changes. Right now I&8217;m in a small company that uses CVS and Bugzilla to manage development. Before a project starts, we have a marketing requirements doc and a Software requirements doc ...http://www.scottberkun.com/pmclinic/pm-clinic-week-24-discussion-summary/ PM Clinic: Week 23 discussion summary- August 23, 2007 Traits to look for in PMs Compiled: 472005 The Question: You&8217;ve been tasked with interviewing candidates for an open PM position in the company. What do you look for in internal candidates (lateral move promotion, etc) What do you look for in external candidates (via a recruiter, etc) Extra Credit: You&8217;re the PM who gets to interview an ...http://www.scottberkun.com/pmclinic/pm-clinic-week-23-discussion-summary/ |