scottberkun.com » The book: Making things happenManagement and creative thinkingPM Clinic: Week 22 discussion summary- August 23, 2007 Dealing with limited resources Compiled: 3312005 The Question: We&8217;re in the specification phase for our next release, and the ratio of Product designers (UI designers) to PMs has dropped significantly from our last release. If we use the same process we&8217;ve used in the past (i.e. Design is in on all the feature teams, PMs work with ...http://www.scottberkun.com/pmclinic/pm-clinic-week-22-discussion-summary/ PM Clinic: Week 21 discussion summary- August 23, 2007 The project from hell Compiled: 3242005 The Question: I have a classic project management nightmare: poorly defined requirements, few specs, short lead time, no additional time or resources, and the kicker is it&8217;s a client-based project that, if not delivered on time and to satisfaction, could cost my company a significant amount of business. To add insult to ...http://www.scottberkun.com/pmclinic/pm-clinic-week-21-discussion-summary/ PM Clinic: Week 20 discussion summary- August 23, 2007 The Question: How many PMs do you need Compiled: 3162005 On many projects, the estimation for how much time development and testing require are based on clear requirements and some kind of process. But how should an organization decide how many project managers are needed for a given project Should there be some kind ratio to the ...http://www.scottberkun.com/pmclinic/pm-clinic-week-20-discussion-summary/ PM Clinic: Week 19 discussion summary- August 23, 2007 Topic: Managing those far away Compiled: 3102005 The Situation: I&8217;m about to start development with an offshore group of three developers and one project lead. The project lead is based in India but will travel to my office in the US at various milestones. The project is a website redesign for an external client and requires connectivity to ...http://www.scottberkun.com/pmclinic/pm-clinic-week-19-discussion-summary/ PM Clinic: Week 18 discussion summary- August 23, 2007 Topic: Sinking in sunk costs Compiled: 372005 The Situation: My team was faced with the choice of buying expensive off-the-shelf software or writing it in-house - we decided on the latter course since it was an important tool (a software performance analyzer), was within the range of our expertise, and is something we expect to customize in the ...http://www.scottberkun.com/pmclinic/pm-clinic-week-18-discussion-summary/ PM Clinic: Week 17 discussion summary- August 23, 2007 Tales of woe and things that went wrong Compiled: 2282005 The Situation: This week, lets try something different. Like we did back in Week 3 with our list of mistakes PMs make, I&8217;m looking to compile a nice list of people&8217;s favorite war stories about things that went wrong on their own projects, or project&8217;s they&8217;ve witnessed. Disastrous ...http://www.scottberkun.com/pmclinic/pm-clinic-week-17-discussion-summary/ PM Clinic: Week 16 Summary- August 23, 2007 PM Clinic: Week 16 Summary Topic: The battle over design authority Compiled: 2212005 The Situation: I&8217;m a sole project manager on a team on 5 programmers, 3 testers and a handful of other specialists (documentation, localization, etc.). We have decent processes in place for most of the basics, and generally get along and work together well. However the machete ...http://www.scottberkun.com/pmclinic/pm-clinic-week-16-summary/ PM Clinic: Week 15 Summary- August 23, 2007 Topic: Preventing Feature creep Compiled: 2212005 The Situation: We&8217;re a version 3.0 software product for business accounting. The product is at a point where many of the common and important features already exist, and the design is becoming mature. But what&8217;s happening is that the waves of features that the entire team (businessmarketing, as well as engineering) are ...http://www.scottberkun.com/pmclinic/pm-clinic-week-15-summary/ PM Clinic: Week 14 Summary- August 23, 2007 Topic: Tools of the trade (scheduling) Compiled: 252005 The Situation: This week we had a semi-redundant topic: Tools of the trade (See week 7: tracking programmers). What software have people used to manage projects and what&8217;s goodbad about them What are your biggest complaints with what you&8217;re currently using How big an impact on you ability to manage ...http://www.scottberkun.com/pmclinic/pm-clinic-week-14-summary/ PM Clinic: Week 13 Summary- August 23, 2007 Topic: New vs. Experienced managers Compiled: 1302005 The Situation: &8220;I just joined a new team as a Program Manager (Microsoft terminology for a project manager who is expected to lead, and be involved in most things). The overall team is large (150 people) with a very experienced PM (program management) team. The PM team does an awesome job ...http://www.scottberkun.com/pmclinic/pm-clinic-week-13-summary/ |