A Project Manager's Diary

The concept of a team can be highly demonstrated and understood through watching a music band, where each team member is responsible for his instrument, and all band members are responsible for the whole piece of music. For an unforgettable symphony, there should be no dissonant sounds; all instruments should be played in harmony and in synch, each in his turn. Guitar, drums and other instruments are each needed to serve a certain purpose, no instrument is more important than the other. It’s the same in software, whether you are part of a small project team or part of a big project team, or even part of your organization as a whole, the concept of a team is still applicable. Team members should always focus on completing each other not on blaming each other or getting rid of responsibility or throwing their tasks to others. Teamwork is harmony in everything, each team member knows his role and the role of others, each plays really good with his tools and experience. It’s like

At first, a PM to me meant a respectful person, full of experience and knowledge, some kind of a Chinese monk, sober, who knows what s/he does and knows that his/her job is to deliver successful projects as much as to help people and guide them. To my surprise “as usual”, I found out that there are different types of PMs in the world… In other words, different sizes of PMs! Let me introduce to you two project managers’ sizes and my stories with them. Mini PM referred to as Miss Mini and Mighty PM referred to as Mr. Mighty… Mini PM When I first met her, I tried to convince myself that she definitely looks much younger then her real age. Anyways… for her, a planning activity was equivalent to and maybe easier than preparing for a picnic or a weekend trip with friends and family! She was assigned a very big strategic project, and her role was to create the high level project plan for all teams and to coordinate with them to deliver the big project on time "of course".

I once used a very weird technique with my team to get things done in a short duration in a project that was very far away from being on schedule… For a while I’ve been asking my team for their progress, following up heavily and on daily basis, staying late with them in the office and sometimes staying till the next morning (online from home), trying to dig deeper by developing and testing with them…. And still we were very late in achieving any of our internal milestones… By time, I was empathizing them and I was trying my best to reduce the effect of the pressure under which they were put for a long time. We started a weekly game competition with some funny yet work-related rules, amongst which was “ each member in a sub-team should finish his work before the day of the competition ”… it went fine for about 3 weeks, then the situation became worse… and we all stopped participating in the competition… I then tried another technique… I started buying them either lunch or dinner in

Sometimes referred to as the Triangle of Horror… where the PM tries his best to maintain his balance while walking on the very thin project rope between this triangle and the Project Constraints Triangle (time, cost & scope). The triangle sides represent: The Team, The Client and The Management Every side of this triangle is obsessed by the sole idea that the other two sides want him dead, i.e. the team thinks that the client and the top management want him dead and vice versa. Usually a good PM gets lost while trying to maintain this triangle in good shape to keep all parties satisfied and happy while making them think they are his first and only priority to get out what is needed from them for the sake of the project. From my perspective, this is a much harder balance to keep rather than maintaining and managing the Project Constraints Triangle… It highly depends on people, their culture, maturity level, and on the PM’s ability to understand this and deal with it in a

I remember that once a team member asked me to go home, sit in the balcony and have a cold drink till they finish the deployment and then call me! I was really offended by this thought and attitude because I really care for both my teams and my projects. Other teams I dealt with refused to listen to me even before knowing me, just because they hate PMs! As previously explained and recommended to managers, there are reasons for which they shouldn’t listen to their PMs . These same reasons constitute a solid base for teams not to listen to their PMs too… “ A PM cares about his projects and is keen to develop them as per the planned budget, time and scope. ” Well… here’s why teams should not listen to their PMs in more details: 1. PMs are Time Wasters PMs use the help of their teams to study projects, their feasibility and estimates to produce plans. All these activities are time wasting from some team members’ perspective… Many teams think they can start coding right away to produce

Who are Pretenders? Simply these are the people who Pretend … Pretenders can pretend anything in the world. They pretend they understand and they claim they are experienced. They think they are superior when compared to others and they want everybody to obey them blindly. Most of the people I met falling under this category were consultants or acting as consultants. Pretenders are characterized by the following: Think they know everything in the world Think that books contain everything Have faithful beliefs in theory and nothing but the theory Use theoretical definitions heavily Believe in all best practices Use the word should a lot… they believe what books say, no what facts prove Have an amazing superiority feeling, which may be coming from studying definitions by heart or from hiding behind their many certificates They are Theory Relatives I guess… otherwise, they might be breathing theories! Also, they: Are logical but not reasonable, while others may be r

Who are Project Jeopardizers? As the name implies, these are the people responsible for jeopardizing your projects and accelerating their failure! They gracefully and confidently push projects to drift from their track to the disaster track. Project Jeopardizers (PJ) AKA Project Monsters are people who have authority and who, for some odd reasons, have a say in your work, and can destroy it completely by the directions they give and the decision they make. They usually help driving projects to their catastrophic ends or in the best cases they lead projects to disastrous situations only! These people run afterwards and disappear from the picture. They also exist in the background of every team project photo. In most of the cases, PJs think they are doing this for the benefit of the project. They are also the first people who panic in stressful situations and leave everything for others to save. They are also very professional in transferring the blame to others, and they are the one

Everyone asks for a strong project manager... When they get him they don't want him! By definition, a manager is “ the person responsible for planning and directing the work of a group of individuals, monitoring their work, and taking corrective actions when necessary ”. The Project Manager in the field of Software Development is a very special type of manager… I mean this when I think about the people who really care about their work and carry it out as it should be… From my point of view, I think these people are very rare to find. They are always put under the stress of delivering successful projects despite all obstacles related to pleasing their clients, top management and teams. Super Man-ager Or in other words, the Invincible Hero known as the Project Manager should possess a countless set of qualifications… He should have the: Wisdom of Confucius Brilliance of Albert Einstein Courage of Gandhi Endurance of Jacob … The PM should also be able to contain all