SoftwareProjects.org is over seven years old. It contains my personal journey as a software project manager for over a decade. I still hold by the stuff I have written over these years. Only, as time is progressing I am searching for a deeper knowledge and background on the topics that before I had just accepted as-is.
At this moment in time I am mostly occupied with
- The role of mental models of Project Managers,
- Project Sociology: How and why project people are behaving in certain ways within groups, and
- The Fish Pond: How we can deal with ever increasing complexity in the global village.
In the last decade two believes are unchanged and guiding every thought:
- People cause more project failures than technology, and
- It is better to stimulate people than to dictate.
The Two Main Ideas Behind “Surprise! Bow You're A Software Project Manager”
In 2001 and 2002 I wrote a short guide on software project management called "The Microwave Way to Software Project Management". You can find this guide still on this site today, just as it was originally written. Some years later, 2005, I revamped the material into a full swing Project Management book: “Surprise! Now You're A Software Project Manager.”
You can download the first part of this book by signing up for my newsletter (see the sidebar for details). And yeah, it's free.
The two major concepts addressed in this book are:
- The Flow Of Stakes
- Project Potion
The Flow Of Stakes
The most important aspect is the mindset of the project manager. He should focus on one simple mental image of the jobs he has to perform instead of trying to cram 500 pages of charting and calculating into his head. He should know the flow of stakes:
- Stakeholders have stakes
- Stakeholders communicate their stakes by expressing their expectations, and these are more formally defined by means of requirements to the process or product
- Project management should make every stakeholder a winner by accepting and creating requirements that continually satisfy the stakes of individual stakeholders and do not conflict with the general process or the product
- Project management should give continuous feedback to the stakeholders on the state of the stakes
- Based upon this feedback, the expectations and requirements might change, and in this way a new cycle begins.
For a lot of people involved in projects, one inescapable conclusion still comes as a big surprise: project management is a people business. It’s all about keeping everyone associated with the project happy by supporting his or her stakes. The trouble with stakes is that no one tells you what they are. You have to guess, negotiate, anticipate, and manipulate to get past the requirements and directly through to the fears and wishes of people. Software project management is more about psychology than technology.
Project Potion
Different project circumstances require different approaches to ensure optimum effectiveness. As mentioned above, it is the people who largely determine these circumstances, and you have to tailor your software approach to the particular situation. For this you can make use of techniques and tools from different existing methods by simply mixing and matching everything together in such a way that you brew the right Project Potion for the occasion.
Concocting a Project Potion consists of the following steps:
- You analyze the stakeholders and their interests and expectations (Stakeholder Analysis).
- You analyze the products (technical stuff) you have to create.
- You determine the potential risks that might exist (Risk Management).
- You create a project approach that reduces those risks, and for this you have three main tools:
- Strategy: What are the steps taken in the project, and what are the sequence and time frame?
- Organization: How is your project organization constructed?
- Feedback: How is the feedback to the stakeholders on the status and content of products and processes organized?
Leave a Reply