Movies are great. Women get pregnant and 5 minutes later their kid goes to college. One moment the family has the need for a vacation, the next shot they're floating on the canals of Amsterdam. And that's all just swell. Not many people want to view the hours of discussions around the kitchen table on deciding what country to go to. Not many people want to see every moment of a woman in labor, and watching the growing pains of a teenage kid, for hours and hours. Living a movie is great, you can skip the boring parts.

Being in the highest ranks of management is great. One moment you're in a wooden cabin in the mountains together with your fellow priests reflecting the need for the strategic development of a new product line. The next moment you're reviewing the results after taxes the new product line brings in. Life is good being at the top.

Meanwhile back in the jungle of middle management, lesser gods are struggling to pick up a vague comment made up in a wooden cabin up in the mountains, make something of it, and turn it into reality. Being a software project manager you meet strange objects thrown toward you from above. It could be no more then a little statement, or it can be a complete part of an organization coping with the remains of old mission impossible. The thing they have in common though is their label: project.

If you're a permanent member of the organization, you're just new, or you're from a third party supplier, the moment a software project manager comes into the picture, there is already something labeled as project. The 'chicken-or-egg-first'-dilemma does not apply to project management; first is the project, secondly the project manager. Sadly. The first task of the software project manager is to reengineer the situation that led to the project. The stakes of the people who initiated the activities now labeled as project should be clear. The requirements resulting from that should be known. These are the tasks during the intake of the project.

All may not be crystal clear. Time schedules may already be stated, without any one knowing what should be done in the first place. Goals can be formulated with such an ambiguity that anything produced satisfies the goal. The sad part of it is that stakeholders have already formulated their requirements. They may not have communicated them, but in their minds expectations are already in a particular direction. You should sort it out. It's a dirty job, but someone's got to do it.

At the end of the intake the project manager has aligned the project in such a way that he/she is willing to take the commitment for it, or he/she found out it is impossible and gives the job back (Yes, you have that choice!).

Related links

How Do You Describe A Project Problem?

Towards Speedy Assessments Of Project Problems