Monday, June 11, 2007

Cervix Low And Soft Pregnant

From clean courtyards held

Nature abhors a vacuum (Aristotle)

A former client of my agency (with the same technical Project Manager) used considerable effort in the implementation of the following PM-rule:

" for every possible situation that could occur in the project, there must be a responsible person. This must be identified before the situation occurs, and this must be verified to have committed "(so I've combined the rhymes of at least ...)

There are two motivations:

first It facilitates the work massively because of friction losses avoids. A TPM should be made as quickly communicate with his colleagues, who wrote what part of the standard rates calculated whether the technical requirements are described fully or supported by the concepts of the technology has to be whether the TPM has to organize the testing or someone else will do this . With the customer to a vote, to be carried out in what form the acceptance, which can count on Vosständigkeit materials provided you who do the sequence in which programming interfaces for the integration of two systems, etc. must

second More importantly, it helps in case of doubt it, "keep their own yard clean. If you encounter an awkward situation one is well advised to take a message from his pocket to be able to show that someone else is responsible.

And because one could argue here that it is more important not to make good projects than his time with Machiavellian political stuff to it versus me on this issue a declaration allowed:
  • If a project is something really goes wrong question No one on whether one has ever done as a great content TPM job. In the extreme case is no longer possible to continue to make good projects: "The Tenth as technical project manager for such an important thing Let me see, that was such a debacle at Y, we can not really use again ... "
  • Ob man will oder nicht, wenn ein Auftraggeber (Kunde, Chef oder andere Abteilung) einem den schwarzen Peter zuschiebt, muss man sich dazu äußern.
  • In der Regel ist die Beweislast umgekehrt, als Projektmitglied muss man nachweisen dass man alles richtig gemacht hat. Das ist im Zweifelsfall ausgesprochen aufwendig. Für die Möglichkeit, eine Mail der Form " sorry, aber hatten wir nicht vereinbart (siehe angehängte Mail), dass Sie sich um die rechtzeitige Buchung des externen Dienstleisters kümmern? " schreiben zu können ist man dann dem Herrn dankbar.

Saturday, June 2, 2007

Is There Chanel In Woodbury Common Mall?

escalation

Der Begriff Eskalation hat weiß Gott kein gutes Image: if you just Google it looks, it is found mainly in the environment of Middle East conflict , Telekom against ver.di or knife fighting techniques . Escalation in the project business is actually not bad, but sticks "blow away" the smell of him "squeal" or. "Is (to their superiors) is delegated, if possible in a conflict situation on the lower level of decision is no agreement." According to Wikipedia means escalation "that some decisions controls a level" to the top

based project work - like any other kind of business Relationship - the fact that people respond to each other "contracts", and each must rely on can ensure that its contractors comply with their part of the contract. These contracts are often informal and are not perceived as such:
  • The customer relies on the Agency at the agreed time a website live on.
  • The agency expects the employees of the customer timely delivery of materials and releases.
  • expects the head of the development team of the latter, that the development of the site is completed on time.
  • The developer relies on that he view the layouts and final concept of of creation is replaced.

Failure to comply with an agreement, this leads directly to the fact that someone else can not do his job properly. Creation provides layout is too late = Web Developer also not completed on time and would therefore not comply with his agreement with his boss.

Many developers do not understand that the solution of the problem lies outside their control ("I'm really twenty demand, but nothing happened. What I had to do then? "). In fact, the only way forward, the task back to top delegate, in other words, to escalate.

So lieber Web Developer (stellvertretend für alle anderen): demnächst bitte den Teamleiter darauf hinweisen dass Du gar nicht pünktlich fertig werden kannst, weil Du kein Material bekommen hast. Damit wäre der Plumpsack beim Teamleiter. Dieser versucht mit seinen Mitteln eine Lösung: er wird beim Teamleiter der Kreation die Lieferung der Layouts einfordern. Der Kreationsleiter delegiert das entweder eine Hierarchieebene nach unten (etwa wenn der Designer einfach nicht genug Zeit zur Verfügung hatte um seine Aufgabe zu lösen) oder eskaliert selber nach oben (wenn der Kunde Material nicht geliefert hat).

Eskalation ist im richtigen Zusammenhang also nicht nur ok, sondern sogar absolut notwendig.

Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Make Leather Soft And Shiny

The fixed-price fiasco

once followed a false alarm on the night bell - it's never make good. (Franz Kafka: A Country Doctor)

What is screwed up in the fixed price offer can not be repaired more often throughout the project. Accordingly, like developers are reluctant to give a cost estimate (" it takes just as long as it takes "), especially if you still do not know what exactly sooo in the project will ever be made. The customer wants to know just very early, and who wants to blame him: he must organize a budget before the project began. Would you build a house (and massive personal debt) without knowing what it costs? Exactly.

first Ideally, one makes a technical calculation based on a concept paper and a technical analysis. This one has both, unfortunately, in the rarest cases.

second If it is for the technical requirements of a tight briefing (" we like our website will expand to a shop system ") attacks the principle of " An application at the earliest then be calculated if you can imagine, as a user . So one has to list all pages and all processes and can roughly describe. If those descriptions do not exist, it must be indicated on the basis of a short workshops or Telephone conversation with the customer or alternatively make assumptions based on himself. This then comes as a tender in the offer.
is whether the request later in the project to be implemented just not that important, it is important to have a description against which you can define additional expense, if needs change (and that is used in the design phase safety ) to pass. The more inaccurate the description in the offer, the more likely it is that the customer wants is something which is more complex than originally kalkuliert.Im area of the business requirements you can get by a little detail work project risks pretty well under control. This applies to the following item 3 only restricted.

third If the technical analysis is not available, one can try to make at least a brief search and a short prototyping an overview of the unclear technology or interfaces to get. For technical risks, there are different technical requirements for no power to mitigate through boundaries in the offer. The customer is what counts no matter what their requirements are solved by technology, so it makes no sense to formulate assumptions on offer, because if they do not apply is not a change requested by the customer but quite simply the wrong assumptions of the service.
exception interface to external or customer systems. Here it is quite common to write something like "assumption: the product data is provided by a SOAP web service available by the customer."

4th be happy to forget quality assurance, deployment into the live system, documentation, etc. is also here: delimit delimit delimit,. Since this is not quite trivial example in technical documentation (because you can define the level of detail is difficult) you must make do with crutches, such as: "Development of technical documentation, scope about 20 pages. Even if the page number here seems entirely reasonable free, they still fulfilled the purpose impart at least a rough idea of performance.

Thursday, May 24, 2007

A Sample Poultry Farming Business Plan

costs: two addenda

Nachtrag 1:
Die Folgekosten in meinem Post von gestern müssen nicht unbedingt Geld bedeuten - es funktioniert auch mit den beiden anderen Elementen des Magischen PM-Dreiecks , nämlich Qualität und Zeit:

Zeit bedeutet, dass die Auswirkungen der Kundenanforderung auf die Deadline klargemacht werden müssen. Eine kostengünstige Lösung kann möglicherweise mit höherem Risiko behaftet sein und dadurch die Einhaltung der Deadline gefährden.

Qualität bedeutet nicht unbedingt das what the agency or the developer keeps it. Many customers mean "no bugs" and generally meet their expectations. What is happening under the hood them is often less important. Excessive demands often lead to higher error rate, which is not a fault of the agency and the client should also be made transparent.

Addendum 2:
As with any negotiation situation can also go off the shot back. "This sounds entirely with the costs for expansion of my schwiemeligen old system covered, if not do that in half the time create - other agencies do it, I have two offers to lie on the table. Please make the going out the door. "

Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Divilbiss 6000 Watt Generator

costs

Everything we do has a consequence. (Johann Peter Eckermann)

It is acceptable, especially for software developers without pain, . that is the property of the customer in the project created Web site or application, and not the agency this can lead to conflict if the customer requests something that felt by the developers as the deterioration of product quality, and the first impulse is often to say " we do not, that's bungling? ? Or "For example, customers want instead of a state-of-the-art new development rather an existing und veraltete Anwendung weiterentwickeln lassen, zu der ganze Horden von Entwicklern Spaghetti-Code beigesteuert haben und deren technische Basis durch und durch Old-School ist. Eine Erweiterung ist nun mal in der Regel günstiger als ein kompletter Neubau.

Antwort: Doch, das machen wir im Zweifelsfall, denn es Sache des Kunden ob er die Qualität seiner Website verschlechtern will. Aber es gibt einen Ausweg.

Grundregel 1 : Was man mit dem Kunden ausgemacht hat (etwa im Rahmen eines Angebotes/Vertrages) muss man durchführen. Man verpflichtet sich mit dem Vertrag zur Erbringung einer bestimmten Leistung zu einem bestimmten Preis, und da gibt it is also nothing to discuss.
reason Rule 2: Everything that was not agreed upon (because it goes to a whole new Aufttrag or because there is a change in an existing project) is always negotiable. It offers you the customer turn to a power, but released a price mentioned. This is the most important lever for the customer to guide the project.

For the argument that technology is a thoroughly old-school, and also have hordes of developers contributed spaghetti code "is not accepted by many customers. She is also more aesthetically motivated as they considered that a customer simply a project mt a limited budget has to perform.

One rather should the customer make clear the consequences of his intention, and even the future. " Of course, my client create, we'll be happy your application based on this schwiemeligen legacy application, the expansion costs [here insert moderate price] however. The code to wait very difficult because it has been extended very often uncontrolled. This will mean in the future that we have the monthly costs of running the application must start higher [less moderate price] and also changes in the order of [ ] here are using percentage percent more expensive. "

Of course, the numbers and as such the claim to be realistic and stand up to scrutiny. If they do not, one should seriously question whether the customer is not with his approach is correct.

Monday, May 21, 2007

Mount And Blade - Native Fantasy Expansion

What users hate about freedom

The confidence is coming, everyone has only until its safety (Schiller's "Wallenstein")

almost as much as customers hate bad job insecurity. Clear: their success is often closely connected with the project's success, since one is naturally like in the picture about the current status of the project or the extent of a problem: "Do 'm sorry, Mrs. K., Import product works, unfortunately, still not our turn. True, if it does not have to run tomorrow, we can not go live in time. What do we do then? Äääähhh, good question. "

are more thankful customers if their security concerns with:

regularly and unsolicited status information to give Although the creation of status reports on the most hated work of highly paid software engineers heard. Customers will love you, so create them without the customer having to ask constantly.
as possible is always a Plan B ready . Sobald man gezwungen ist, Probleme zu melden, sollte man irgendeine Antwort aus der Tasche ziehen können für den Fall dass sich das Problem nicht oder nicht pünktlich lösen lässt (außer man kann glaubhaft versichern dass das Problem auf jeden Fall in einer definierten Zeit lösbar ist).
Prozesssicherheit vermitteln : Wenn ernste Probleme auftreten ist nichts wichtiger, als dem Kunden zu vermitteln, dass man die Situation noch unter Kontrolle hat. Im Klartext: Keine frei erfundenen Versprechungen, sondern eine Schilderung dessen was man bereits getan hat und was man als nächstes zu tun gedenkt um die Situation zu lösen. Das beinhaltet auch den oben genannten Plan B.

Note 1: Of course, belongs to this field. Security is pretty difficult if you provide a complete Gurkentruppe at launch, it (ie design, concept, programming) simply can not.
Note 2: This is all not only with customers but also with managers and teammates. Also like to be informed again and got cold feet when they need to fear that builds on the principle of hope to run instead of active risk management.

Saturday, May 19, 2007

Pokemon Games Can Played Vba



In a project a few years ago I had for my agency to create very short notice an offer for a site. The management of the customer had us against the will des Projektteams ins Boot geholt, und ich wusste, dass der Projektleiter auf Kundenseite alles tun würde um uns draußen zu halten (das Projekt endete übrigens genauso krank wie es begonnen hatte, aber das ist eine andere Geschichte...)

Interessanterweise war der Projektleiter nicht komplett unkooperativ. Er setzte eine verbindliche und recht knappe Timeline zur Abgabe des Angebots, Verzug hätte bedeutet dass das Angebot nicht berücksichtigt würde (denn er selber hatte von seinem Management ebenfalls ein knappes Timing für das Gesamtprojekt bekommen). Im Gegenzug hat er uns mit Material zum Angebot geradezu zugekippt und mehrfach nachgefragt ob er denn auch wirklich alle Unterstützung geleistet hat die we need - what we had to confirm in writing. In fact, we were able to accomplish in the time the information is not at all.

He gave us a maximum of this strategy under pressure without making themselves vulnerable. If it subsequently emerged that he has blocked, possibly a second round of bidding the result would have been. You could learn from this: Even in less-charged situations you could get used to as an IT project manager to let all participants a minimum of degrees of freedom, but share the same dates and limits (which also applies to the education of children, if the relevant Literature Guides believe must pay. My children, however, can not read yet):

Example 1: It depends on the project on the supply of materials or releases of the client. , in any case in advance a time limit to keep but not too tight! If the customer fails to comply with them and pointed out that it was ridiculously short, you have very little leverage. Iron insistence on meaningless Time Lines is a service not very good to see. If the customer does not meet the deadline to respond in any case, otherwise the question is to what for the time limit is there, if allowed to pass without consequences.

Example 2: You have to work on customer service with a second (because of the design and makes the own agency, the technical implementation). It is the same as in Example 1, it should also provide for appropriate dates transfers and bug fixes to the customer in case of trouble the other service providers do not even have to take under his protection. In particular, problems of cooperation (not complied with transfers) are not notified too late to the customer. That falls under "the court keep clean," I come back to it in a later post.

a period not to share signaled customers and other project participants, moreover, that the delivery can be in doubt, one day before the deadline. And rightly so.

Friday, May 18, 2007

Diapers With Clifford

Why are there "dogmatic"?

Wenn Techniker über Projektmanagement reden oder schreiben geht es in der Regel um Vorgehensmodelle - was heute Agile Development ist, war vor ein paar Jahren der Rational Unified Process (kennt den überhaupt noch jemand?) und in der Computersteinzeit das Wasserfallmodell, das sich nach wie vor großer Beliebtheit erfreut (es ist also sozusagen der Quastenflossler unter den Projekt-Management-Moden...). Zu Phasen, Prozessen, Erhebung von Anforderungen, Architekturen und dergleichen mehr möchte ich mich aber eher weniger auslassen (deshalb habe ich mir erlaubt dieses Blog als undogmatisch zu bezeichnen), das können andere besser.

Tatsächlich gibt es Grundprinzipien und Tricks die unabhängig the process model in IT projects from time to time are important and are very helpful especially for beginners. While I have tried to formulate at least some of them, I noticed how hard it is to summarize grip. Maybe that's the reason for this is that you read them so rarely. Some examples of what it does:
  • fixed-price offers without sufficient briefing
  • account leadership
  • The "Hidden Agenda" of the customer and project colleagues
  • project policy. How can you clean the yard? (A real ÄhBäh theme, which is a real tekkie is above such things. But wait until I was writing this ...)
  • Proper escalation
  • What to do if things get tight?

Wednesday, May 16, 2007

How To Hang Double Shower Curtsins

Kickoff

Here we go, my first post in my own first blog. It took a while until I was about to answer the question in mind which one or the other bloggers have already made sure: Do I have something to tell the world anything? Something more interesting than the fact that yesterday I tipped a glass of milk?

have in my case, I decided to write about technical project management in general and in relation to online projects in particular, because not only satisfy my need but perhaps even for other utility value. I'm 12 years online projects, including 3 as a developer, 4 and 5 as a technical project manager makes a team leader who still projects. There must be something stuck so what is relevant.