Micromanagement

A few days ago I read this article from the blog, Coding Horror.  I read it fairly frequently even though it has a very technical slant to it.  It claims that if you answer yes or kinda yes to any of these questions – you are probably micromanaging.  I shared my answers below – in some cases I disagreed or felt it wasn’t as black and white as the article makes it out to be.

1. 1. Do you pride yourself on being “on top of” the projects or your direct reports? Do you have a solid grasp of the details of every project?
2. Do you believe that you could perform most of the tasks of your direct reports, and potentially do a better job?
3. Do you pride yourself on frequent communication with your employees? Does that communication include asking them for detailed status reports and updates?
4. Do you believe that being a manager means that you have more knowledge and skills than your employees, and thus are better equipped to make decisions?
5. Do you believe that you care about things (quality, deadlines, etc.) more than your employees?

Here are my answers to those questions -

15 Project Management Tools

I don’t use many sophisticated tools to manage my work or team.  While it may take me some time to create what I need in Excel – I find that the end result is custom fitted to what I need.  Luckily at Rosetta we have a Sharepoint implementation that allows us to version control and share (with clients) documents, bug lists, etc.  Some love Microsoft Project – I very much dislike it.  Too bulky and cumbersome for the type of work I manage.  When I have tried to use it I become almost obsessed with updating the workplan, etc and getting everything perfect.  Not a good use of my time.  Maybe if I were managing a 35 person team it would make sense.  But for the team I need to keep track of, I’ll take Excel.  Whatever you do – don’t fall in love with any 1 tool/app.  Have a solid process and approach that can be supported by the tool.  Don’t wrap your process and approach around some “miracle tool”.

I have looked into Backpack a couple of times and should I be in a situation where Sharepoint is not available to me, it would be my first serious consideration.  It does cost money, but seems very reasonable.

Here are some other free and non-free alternatives with reviews and opinions… 15 Useful Project Management Tools

- Bill Weber

photo credit: karramarro

Scrum – a Project Management Approach

Scrum – noun

1: a rugby play in which the forwards of each side come together in a tight formation and struggle to gain possession of the ball using their feet when it is tossed in among them; also: the arrangement of players in a scrum b: a usually brief and disorderly struggle or fight.  2a: (British) madhouse.  2b: a usually tightly packed or disorderly crowd

The Scrum I am talking about is none of these.  Scrum is an iterative process of software development that is typically used with agile softward development.  Even though it was intended to be for management of software development projects, it can be used in running software maintenance teams, or as a program management approach.

I have found it to be very effective in managing ongoing projects – meaning projects that are not building something from the ground-up.  If you read my post on Context Switching, you will remember the diagram of “Total Demand” to “Completed Work” – Scrum is the way in which I manage the “Total Demand”.

Context Switching

There are lots of issues to be concerned with when leading a team – who is dependable, who is not?  who is your go-to problem solver?  how do you raise the overall “level of the water” on your team?  All valid concerns.  However, what I struggle with the most is the having a team that must deal with planned strategic-type work and also ad-hoc requests – or better yet, context switching.  Context switching is the changing of focus for one or more of your team members – it is absolutely a productivity killer.

The simple formula that I use to go from a pile of work to the delivery of work is a series of filters or stages… Total Demand -> Prioritized Demand -> Capacity Constrained Demand -> Completed Work

Total Demand – this is the total “list” of all things that must be completed.  It is important to get EVERYTHING on the list and accounted for – if everything is not on the list to begin with you are setting yourself up for failure.

Prioritized Demand – this is a forced ranking of Total Demand – it must be a forced ranking… no ties.  Once forced ranked or “prioritized” the top items should be given estimates – they can be ballpark.

Capacity Constrained Demand – this is understanding how many hours per week (month, deployment cycle, etc) your development team has available.  Example – you have 4 developers on your team.  You assign 40 hours of work per week to each developer for a 4 week development cycle – that is 640 hours of capacity.  Your team can work on the first 640 hours of highest prioritized items.  Clearly this is a simplistic scenario.

BA/PM Resources – Methods and Tools and Productive Magazine

I have been subscribed to Methods and Tools for some time now and find many of the topics informative and helpful.  In the Fall 2008 issue they talk about Risk Management as well Scrum Meetings – both topics of these topics are relevant on my current project.  In the Summer of 2008 one of the topics was Control Your Project… again directly applicable.  There is a good mix of technical stuff and BA/PM stuff each issue (quarterly).  Take some time and go through the back issues here… http://methodsandtools.com/mt/download.php .  If you like it, you can subscribe here… http://methodsandtools.com/forms/submt.php. I just ran across this brand new publication (attached PDF).  Unfortunately it is a pay subscription but the first issue is free.  If you are familiar with the Getting Things Done (GTD) methodologies this will be a good resource for you.  If you are not familiar with David Allen’s Getting Things Done – this is a good way to get familiar with some of the concepts.  http://productivemagazine.com/

Productive Magazine Issue 01

- Bill Weber

photo credit: Eric Gjerde