Closed. This question is opinion-based. It is not currently accepting answers.
Want to improve this question? Update the question so it can be answered with facts and citations by editing this post.
Closed 3 years ago.
Improve this question
I am managing a software project that is hot for the company in terms of it being one of the things that is their bread & butter and it is going well. I have another manager at the company interfering with my project and people. How does one get this interference to go away. One thought that he is not creative enough to create work, I mean there is a lot he can do in other aspects of the business that would make a huge impact. The other piece of this is tasking a person that for a lack of a better way to describe it doesn't actually produce or actually make anything. How does one handle or manage people that don't produce anything I guess is the question.
Would anyone have resource suggestions such as:
- Books
- Paid Training
- Others
Maybe this is not a topic for this forum. :) If so, suggestions for other forums would be greatly appreciated.
It happens a lot this kind of interference in the project. Your authority as a project manager depends upon the managerial structure in your company.
Some companies works only as functional teams and the project manager has little power and authority facing the different interests among the stakeholders. The PM is hierarchically under a functional area and reports to a functional manager instead of a program or portfolio manager.
On the other extreme side there is a project organizational structure, the project manager has control and authority on the project as well as on the teams.
The midst of these two structures is the matrix organization structure. In this case the project manager divides the responsibility to a functional manager.
I believe that your first step is to understand the power structure in your company works and how your hole is related to it. The next step is to assure exactly the role of the other manager who interferes in your management activities. Does he a client? Does he the sponsor? Or does he only a partner?
The stakeholder management is a daily activity in the PM job too. It is common to see this kind of interference from the stakeholders but always remember that the project manager is you.
Related
Closed. This question is opinion-based. It is not currently accepting answers.
Want to improve this question? Update the question so it can be answered with facts and citations by editing this post.
Closed 3 years ago.
Improve this question
Some friends of mine came up with an idea for a web application which we (so far) think could be great. I made the analysis and all the early stages of the development process and I'm about to start the coding. I'm talking about something that is barely a mid-level project, so I consider one developer (myself) should be enough.
The thing is that we are trying to assign roles to each one of us so we can be focused on our duties and have clear our responsibilities within the team. We are a crew of four people, three of us (my friends) are business people who would do the marketing, customer relationship, management and accounting stuff and I'm basically the developer. I have in mind to get them involved into the development process by giving them documentation to write and use them as testers, all of that besides the management duties they have.
Perhaps someone out there have been in the same situation, so I would appreciate if the experience is shared so we can effectively give ourselves positions in the project based on what I explained above. Which are the essential roles or the optimal team layout so the idea can be developed successfully? The question is not strictly about programming, but it's related to build a software entrepreneurship beyond the code, that is something that I'm sure plenty of us are looking.
Any help is really appreciated! Regards.
I think you're on the right track. What I tend to do is think about responsibilities in terms of "functional" vs "technical" and go from there. "Functional" responsibilities and requirements reflect the customer, the user, the stakeholders and are usually technology agnostic. "Technical" responsibilities and requirements translate the functional items into architectures, platforms, technical relationships, coding languages, etc.
Here are some possible functional roles your partners can fill to support your development role:
Project Manager: Ultimately responsible for timelines, budgets, and delivery of projects / sprints and product delivery.
Business Analysts: Collect customer requirements for the software. This role usually requires subject matter and market expertise or access to such expertise. They ultimately write the functional specs that your technical specs will be derived from.
Product Manager: This role compliments the marketing efforts by ensuring that first and all future iterations of the product are meeting market and customer needs. They have full responsibility for bridging that gap between functional and technical.
I think what you mentioned about also using them to write documentation and test is a great idea, as it will help them understand the development time and effort required from your job, and allow them to speak intelligently to the more technical aspects of the product, even if they are not techies themselves.
They could also play a big role in helping construct the user experience, by storyboarding and wire-framing.
Good luck!
Closed. This question is opinion-based. It is not currently accepting answers.
Want to improve this question? Update the question so it can be answered with facts and citations by editing this post.
Closed 5 years ago.
Improve this question
there are a lot of articles/books etc about PM for medium or big projects. All articles which I found describes how to manage a project with at least few people involved.
In my case that is totally different, so this is my specific case:
I have a small team (4-6 developers) and we do small short-term projects. Usually one or sometimes two persons per project. Project's lifetime is about 1-2 month in general (but can be 6 months in case of customer related issues). All projects are customer related, quite often there are some breaks in the projects because of lack documentation from customer or lack of hardware etc, so one person quite often handle 2-3 projects with different priorities at the time.
My question is: can any "popular" modern methodology be tailored to suite this types of tasks? What could you recommend (methodology/pm tools).
May be someone can give a link to an article about this type of software pm?
Cheers!
In my opinion, any project management tool could be adapted to your team and you should first choose what type of project management methodology you want to follow. Personally i think Kanban could be a good fit as there are no specific deadlines or cut off for projects, just tasks. It also allows you to prioritize tasks and carry out several projects at once.
This is the methodology we use and we do have similar uncertainties when it comes to the length of the projects. The tool we have been using is Eylean, it allows us to follow the methodology and have the updated status of the tasks at all times.
I'm a fan of Crystal Clear, which is Cockburn's method focused on smaller team work. http://alistair.cockburn.us/Crystal+Clear+distilled
Any methodology can be scaled, provided you don't fall for the dogma and consider it to be the "Best" or "Only" way, or that you need to follow all the principles completely.
That said, I'm a big fan of Extreme Programming myself.
However, in practice, on our projects, we "officially " use a Waterfall methodology, but within each phase our methods are more in line with Agile methodologies, and our official stance is that each PM will use whatever tools he or she needs, so long as the project is moving along, we are meeting our deadlines, and most importantly, the customer is getting what they need when they expect it.
Closed. This question does not meet Stack Overflow guidelines. It is not currently accepting answers.
We don’t allow questions seeking recommendations for books, tools, software libraries, and more. You can edit the question so it can be answered with facts and citations.
Closed 3 years ago.
Improve this question
I am looking for some kind of solution to take care of development scheduling for web applications. How does the big guys in the industry handle this?
Is it all about SVN and bug trackers for them?
I'm not doing web develoment myself, but I assume that the approach for web development is exactly the same as for other big developments (which my team IS doing). In that case, the following tips might help:
Use version management (SVN, ...)
Be agile (this is also resembled by the following points)
Make a mixed team (developers, testers, designer, functional responsibles, ...) that all work as an integrated team on the same subject. Make sure the whole team communicates.
Make everyone responsible for the whole project. Never blame individuals if things go wrong.
Be sure the whole team knows the status of the project: where are we, what should still be done, ... Make everything visual by sticking graphs and sheets to your office wall.
Keep the time between 'raised questions or raised problems' and the answer or solution short. E.g. if a bug is found, log it immediately and try to solve it as soon as possible.
Develop incrementally. Don't develop for several months and then start testing, but make sure you have a working copy every day.
Split development/design/... tasks in smaller tasks that can be developed incrementally (see previous point) and in a minimal amount of time (a day or a few days).
Automate tests as much as possible.
Use continuous integration (where the tests are run at every commit in the version management system)
As a manager, support your team.
Focus
Shield the people of the team from all kind of problems not directly related to the project (e.g. PC problems, printer problems, ...). Choose a 'scrum manager' that solves all these annoying problems for the team.
Demonstrate the results at regular intervals to your customer, your boss, ...
Give a reception if an important milestone is reached.
There are probably many more tips. Therefore, read a good book about managing software development. There is probably no essential difference between web development and other software develoments.
Closed. This question is opinion-based. It is not currently accepting answers.
Want to improve this question? Update the question so it can be answered with facts and citations by editing this post.
Closed 5 years ago.
Improve this question
Which is a good Project Managment Method to Develop a Website?
XP? The Waterfall Model?
Anything but waterfall....
But keep in mind that saying you are agile and being really agile are two different things.
For agile to really work over an extended period one has to also be doing several technical things well.
http://ayende.com/Blog/archive/2010/02/20/nice-process-but-what-about-the-engineering-bits.aspx
http://davybrion.com/blog/2010/02/youll-never-get-sustainable-progress-for-free/
Agile/XP would be best.
Waterfall would be the worst choice in my opinion.
It depends on who the customer is. If you are your own customer, then definately Agile.
If your aren't your own customer then you will have to negotiate with your customer on your development method. If your customer wants a fixed bid project and a hard deadline, then you will be best served by the waterfall method.
If your customer is willing to be an active participant in the development process and doesn't have a hard deadline and fixed budget then you could do Agile/XP.
It always depends on the type of the website you are developing, how many developers you got, what is the timeline, expectation for delivery time. But definitely Agile or prototype-iterative method will work fine for website development. To complete the development in different phases, and enhancing in the chucks, as an when identifying the strong and weak areas.
As well you can check the factors like target audience, maximum used sectors of the site and prioritize the development of those pieces first.
Always consider to go with standard framework, that will make life easier in long run with the future developments.
I find that waterfall fits some web site projects fairly well. Get the requirements, wireframe a design, do the graphic design, convert the graphic designs to HTML/CSS/JS, then fill out the content of the site. Client signs off at each stage. If the site is large the last stage ("fill out content") is probably more work than all the preceding ones and you'll want to use iterative methodologies for it, not waterfall.
Waterfall tends to not fit web applications very well. Those are software, treat them as such.
Use waterfall! But:
Set duration of the project to 1 month.
Then repeat this project until customer is happy!
Closed. This question does not meet Stack Overflow guidelines. It is not currently accepting answers.
This question does not appear to be about programming within the scope defined in the help center.
Closed 5 years ago.
Improve this question
We have different steps in our planning for online webprojects:
1) Information Architecture
Provides user stories
Provides wireframes
2) Design
Use Wireframes to develop a nice design
3) Development
4) Testing
I know that working agile asks for dedicated teams. But it is impossible to have a dedicted IA until the end of the project. Because the projects are small developers are working in different teams. How do you plan resources when you know 50 small projects and 20 new projects are using different resources?
And is there a useful tool that can assist in this?
The situation where an IA (or a UI designer or anyone else for that matter) could not be committed for the whole length of the project is quite common.
However with Agile the problem is easily resolved: commit a resource for the length of the iteration where he is needed. I.e. if you need an architect for a spike or for a particular user story make sure that she could work with your team for the length of that iteration when the user story will be implemented. Later on if you will need her again do the same thing.
If your iteration is too long for that approach try committing the resource for the length of a particular user story or a spike only.