The Hard-Nosed Project Manager

The Eagle, the Crow, and the Turkey

This post as nothing to do with a fable or with Thanksgiving; it is actually about leadership.  As many regular readers know I am an avid podcast listener and, from time to time, I do recommend good ones.  This time I will recommend you do not subscribe to the “Think like a Leader” podcast. 

Actually this podcast didn’t start that bad; I listened to the first 12 episodes and, while it had a rocky start, some episodes were interesting.  In particular episodes 8 to 10 could be of great interest for anyone thinking about the technical aspects of creating a podcast. 

However, episodes 11 and 12 did this podcast in for me; somehow the presenter and his guest decided to classify people into three groups: the eagles, the crows, and the turkeys.  By their tone eagles are leaders and the turkeys are the followers.  I was left to guess that crows are junior leaders.  This leads me to think that they perceive leaders as better, as or more important than others team members.  I disagree completely with this point of view; let's not confuse an individual's role with his value to the team.

Also in these two episodes they discuss Adolf Hitler’s leadership capabilities.  Adolph Hitler as a leader; really?  Although one cannot ignore the fact that Hitler had charisma, one cannot use the word leadership in association with his methods.  Confusing a dictator’s use of fear as a way to control its people with motivational methods of a leader is a serious mistake especially for someone looking at fostering good leadership practices.  If you confuse this easily a dictator or a tyrant for a leader you need to retire from the leadership training business.  The sooner, the better.

For obvious reasons, I will not provide a link to this podcast.

What do you think?  As always comments are welcome.

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A believable plan

As I was catching up on my reading I landed on The Late Finish Strategy by Glen Alleman.  I find that reading his posts usually make me think, sometimes make me smile, and that linking to them make people believe that I’m not that dumb after all…  Often times Glen’s post are about those common sense things that, for some reason, end up being neglected.  Things like knowing what you are trying to deliver or having a believable plan.

In this post he talks about the need for budget and schedule margins.  Most of the time you are not given margins; your team has to fight hard to build them up.  Most of the time you look at your schedule and there is a sea of red tasks; the critical path extends from project beginning to project end with no break.  To state the obvious; if your schedule does not have any slack, it’s not that you MAY get in trouble, you ARE in trouble.

Now, if you are blessed with some slack in your project schedule you are not out of the woods yet.  As the old saying goes: ”How does a project end up late? One day at a time…”  So, however you got that slack, you have to fight tooth and nail to avoid seeing it disappear.  You likely won’t be able to end with all the slack you started with or all the slack you managed to build up but you just can’t give it away or you’ll end up being the meat in a “rock and a hard place” sandwich.  This situation can happen real fast or creep up on you but the result is the same; pain.

I’ll add to Glen’s post that on top of a budget margin and of a schedule margin you also need a personnel margin.  What good are schedule and budget margins if you don’t have the personnel to do the work?  I contend that like for budget and schedule you need a personnel margin.  Why?  Here are a few scenarios were that margin would be useful:

• Your resources are “potentially overcommitted” due to their name or skills being linked to numerous proposals or future projects.  Don’t you love “do not substitute” clauses in contracts?
• You work in a matrix environment, your resources are on “loan”, and the loan is being called.
• Your resources are committed to more than one project and the other project manager (not you of course) dropped the ball, his project is in trouble and he is sucking all available resources.
• Your resources are committed to more than one project, business priorities change and your resources end up overcommitted.  Multitasking and overtime are taking their toll.

Once again, if your schedule does not have any slack, it’s not that you MAY get in trouble, you ARE in trouble.  You must have slack in your schedule, budget, and resources or you plan is not believable and you have to stop lying to yourself and others.

What do you think?  As always comments are welcome.

Connect with me on LinkedIn.  I am a LinkedIn Open Networker (LION); you can use “Friend” to add me to your network, please mention the blog in your request. 

Odds and ends and the eXtreme project manager

The Hard-nosed PM blog was on hiatus because I was busy with other commitments.  But, all good things having an end, consider your vacation over; I’M BACK!  I must say I admire those of you out there that keep on blogging while carrying on your busy lives; it sure takes dedication.

Let me return briefly to the eXtreme project manager.  My last post was about part 1 of a 3 part podcast; while I was taking it easy, I did listen to the other two parts.  Basically I’ll condense my comments and say that they did mention project management but only in passing; most of the time was spend explaining life circumstances that led Doug DeCarlo down his current path.  That is all I have to say on the subject.

I’ll end by saying that I’m happy to be back and that I’ll be awaiting your comments on future posts.

Connect with me on LinkedIn.  I am a LinkedIn Open Networker (LION); you can use “Friend” to add me to your network, please mention the blog in your request.