scottberkun.com » The book: Making things happenManagement and creative thinkingPM Clinic: Week 12 Summary- August 23, 2007 PM Clinic: Week 12 Summary Topic: Process change Compiled: 1222005 The Situation: If you&8217;re trying to change a process (say how code, test plans or specs are written) or you&8217;re pushing to use a new process for a new project (new process vs.. what the company normally does), how do you successfully sell it to the team organization ...http://www.scottberkun.com/pmclinic/pm-clinic-week-12-summary/ PM Clinic: Week 11 Summary- August 23, 2007 Topic: Fixing a train wreck in progress Compiled: 1172005 The Situation: Our mid size development team (About 15 people including test, etc.) is 5 weeks into a 30 week project. Some of us had major concerns during initial planning that were never resolved (to our satisfaction). Now we find ourselves part of the way over a cliff: the ...http://www.scottberkun.com/pmclinic/pm-clinic-week-11-summary/ PM Clinic: Week 10 Summary- August 23, 2007 Topic: Meetings, bloody meetings Compiled: 12162004 The Situation: A two part situation. 1. The overall project leader, my boss, is a kind of blowhard. In our team meetings he wastes all kinds of time talking about things no one cares about (war stories, pet peeves, bad jokes, etc). He seems to believe that he&8217;s entertaining, but few others share ...http://www.scottberkun.com/pmclinic/pm-clinic-week-10-summary/ PM Clinic: Week 9 Summary- August 23, 2007 Topic: Disasters Compiled: 1292004 The situation Dear pmclinic, Recently my web development team did an exercise in disaster planning. We sat down as a group, came up with a short list of things that could go wrong, and then tried to brainstorm on how we&8217;d respond (It was a lot of fun and y&8217;all should try it.. but ...http://www.scottberkun.com/pmclinic/pm-clinic-week-9-summary/ PM Clinic: Week 8 Summary- August 23, 2007 Topic: QATest and relationship recovery Compiled: 11222004 The Situation: Dear PM Gods and Goddesses: We&8217;ve hit some bumps in the QA phase of the project and my relationship with my client has become strained. My manager and I have determined that one reason is that I didn&8217;t do enough relationship building at the beginning of the project. So, ...http://www.scottberkun.com/pmclinic/pm-clinic-week-8-summary/ PM-Clinic: Week 7 Summary- August 23, 2007 Topic: Tracking programmer&8217;s work Compiled: 1182004 The Situation: Dear PM-clinic: I&8217;m a new manager of a team of programmers and testers. An argument we&8217;re having now is over the best way to track programmer work. Since the team is newly formed (many folks haven&8217;t worked together before) each programmer comes from a different school of thought about how ...http://www.scottberkun.com/pmclinic/pm-clinic-week-7-summary/ PM Clinic: Week 6 Summary- August 23, 2007 Topic: Innovation vs. Execution Compiled: 1182004 The Situation: Dear pm-clinic: Development teams get narrow windows to propose something different and innovative from their organizational or industry norms. Otherwise, it&8217;s back to the digital chain-gang, working on a roadmap derived from bugs, customer feature requests, VP whim or competitor&8217;s existing features. How does a team best prepare for ...http://www.scottberkun.com/pmclinic/pm-clinic-week-6-summary/ PM-Clinic: Week 5 Summary- August 23, 2007 Topic: Not on time The Situation Dear pm-clinic: I&8217;m on a team of about 30 people that has, over the last year, set several milestone dates and driven the team hard to meet them. For many of these prior milestones, the team goes all out to hit the date, only to have external forces cause a ...http://www.scottberkun.com/pmclinic/pm-clinic-week-5-summary/ PM-Clinic: Week 4 Summary- August 23, 2007 Topic: Too much customer love Compiled 10252004 The Situation: One of my responsibilities as a PM is to &34;own&34; the relationship with an internal customer. My challenge is that at least 4 other people on my team interact with the customer team (working with 4 different people on their team) at least once a week. I ...http://www.scottberkun.com/pmclinic/pm-clinic-week-4-summary/ PM-Clinic Week 3 Summary- August 23, 2007 Topic: Mistakes project managers make Compiled: 10152004 This summary will stay open. If you come up with other ones, send them my way and I&8217;ll update this list now and again. Mistake 1: Not paying attention to reality. Description: This is a general form of dysfunction where the PM lives in their own cushy universe. Specs are written, ...http://www.scottberkun.com/pmclinic/pm-clinic-week-3-summary/ |