https://catechfest.aspirationtech.org/index.php?title=Project_Management_101&feed=atom&action=historyProject Management 101 - Revision history2024-03-29T12:45:40ZRevision history for this page on the wikiMediaWiki 1.35.1https://catechfest.aspirationtech.org/index.php?title=Project_Management_101&diff=620&oldid=prevEvelyn: Created page with "Project management on Thursday with Gunner & Gilda 1. Needs a. How to keep long term projects from hitting the floor while pursuing short-term needs b. Re..."2019-07-23T21:53:18Z<p>Created page with "Project management on Thursday with Gunner & Gilda 1. Needs a. How to keep long term projects from hitting the floor while pursuing short-term needs b. Re..."</p>
<p><b>New page</b></p><div>Project management on Thursday with Gunner & Gilda<br />
<br />
1. Needs<br />
a. How to keep long term projects from hitting the floor while pursuing short-term needs<br />
b. Remove blockers for a team; help accelerate progress<br />
c. Speeding discovery and post-mortem phases<br />
d. What software programs best allow coordination across organizations<br />
2. Philosophy / principles<br />
a. Gilda: What is a project? Anything with a<br />
i. Defined term: Beginning & end<br />
ii. Defineable elements<br />
1. Product<br />
2. Goal: a deliverable (not merely an update)<br />
a. Manageable pieces: sub-projects<br />
b. Something that can hold shared work / vs a solo task<br />
iii. The time required to support the project management process should not eclipse or antagonize the execution<br />
1. Software presenting the system’s needs…<br />
2. …vs. a user’s needs<br />
b. Gunner: Project management = community organizing; mobilizing stakeholders <br />
i. Overview<br />
1. Focus on narrative<br />
2. Clarity on process<br />
3. “Pragmatic pessimism”; now that people will let you down, and plan for it<br />
ii. Not car washing or closet cleaning<br />
3. Diving in<br />
a. Focus on narrative<br />
i. Good project managers are communicators able to build consensus<br />
b. Clarity on process<br />
i. Transparency: who’s doing what + status<br />
1. Unify understanding of the project<br />
a. Why are we doing this?<br />
b. What are we doing?<br />
c. What language are we using? <br />
i. Language ambiguity is often a locus of failure (eg “we need to build a website,” or “lunch needs to be spicy”)<br />
2. Discipline about language used can unify sense of purpose<br />
ii. Accountability<br />
1. It’s helpful for a tool that changes colors or yells at you when a deadline gets missed; when something is overdue<br />
2. Eg Excel isn’t automated vs. Basecamp turns red when a deadline is missed<br />
iii. “Pragmatic pessimism”; now that people will let you down, and plan for it<br />
1. When someone gives you a time estimate for a deliverable; pad it<br />
2. Presume that gaps will emerge in whatever you plan<br />
iv. Ensuring adequate resources<br />
1. If adding projects & time to someone’s workload, it can be helpful to take others off<br />
a. Gunner: conceptualize a table full of canned vegetables. Adding anything to the table will force something else off<br />
b. Federated: give people control over their projects <br />
2. Dynamic deadlines; adjusting expectations to account for hiccups<br />
3. Gantt charts: a standard tool which is more or less useless<br />
a. it doesn’t allow for dynamism / slipped deadlines<br />
b. They collapse quickly and are tough to rebuild<br />
4. Time & prioritization pairing<br />
a. Put each week’s priority at the top; focus on that<br />
b. Allow lower priority issues to attain a lower priority<br />
c. People generally can’t estimate how much time something will take<br />
d. Ideally, move priorities over to next week; it allows more flex in the joints<br />
e. Don’t call fire drills unless it’s actually critical; flex in the joints enables greater sustainability<br />
f. “Play the long game”<br />
v. “Humility to the learning”<br />
1. Good project management embeds learning along the way<br />
2. Recognize it as learning, rather than as inefficiency<br />
3. It’s easy to burn people out<br />
a. Crisis in the macrosphere is not a reason to place pressure across the project. <br />
b. “Emotional firewall”: don’t let your sense of crisis infect the rest of the team; rational thinking is critical<br />
c. Rudyard Kipling: “If you can keep your head while all those about you are losing their’s and blaming you, then you will be an adult.”<br />
d. Win at project management by not losing control<br />
vi. Core skill: negotiation (eg of deadlines, budget, resources, etc.)<br />
c. Tools<br />
i. Minimal consumption: Don’t use all the tools<br />
1. The more you use, the more time consuming<br />
2. In Basecamp, Aspiration uses only the calendar + the to do list + file upload<br />
3. Don’t succumb to “Feature underutilization guilt” <br />
4. But also be willing to adopt the features that can be actually helpful in your context<br />
ii. Software is designed to addict users<br />
1. Eg phones addict users due to collective expectations<br />
2. Eg project <br />
iii. Share affirmation, recognition<br />
iv. Channel<br />
1. Pain: catch gaps and <br />
2. Passion<br />
3. Fame: recognize progress and the people who enable it<br />
4. Fun: “this week we have only 6 overdue items, down from 10 last week!”<br />
v. Tools can be low tech<br />
1. Eg sticky notes on a calendar <br />
2. Key: everyone needs to use it; it must fit their workflow<br />
a. Gunner re “passive-aggressive non-adoption”; users often resist innovations<br />
b. The more complicated the tool, the tougher the adoption barrier<br />
d. Hosted software tools sometimes get bought or <br />
i. Hollywood marriage relationship: assume divorce as a given<br />
1. Vendors lie<br />
2. Consider future acquisition<br />
ii. If you can’t get your data out, might not make sense to put your data in<br />
1. Check the export function<br />
2. Interoperability: Test it to make sure that the export is in a useful format<br />
a. Try importing it to other platforms<br />
b. Major platforms export into an csv, which can be re-imported into a spreadsheet<br />
iii. To shift to a new project management platform<br />
1. Finish old projects on the old project management tool<br />
a. Migrating project management data might not make sense; a lot of project data expires quickly<br />
b. Time to migrate is often unnecessary <br />
2. Launch the new tool with new projects<br />
e. What is your information model?<br />
i. What is the scope of the information you’re managing<br />
ii. How might it be organized?<br />
iii. Tools are transient…but processes should transcend the moment<br />
iv. Model at the outset how you would extract / export and use your data on new platform<br />
1. Engage all your stakeholders in the dialog<br />
f. Don’t use free online tools: they have problems<br />
i. Free stuff will let you down<br />
ii. Free stuff is designed to spy on you<br />
1. “If you’re not paying for the product, you are the product.”<br />
iii. If you need something, pay for it<br />
1. Costs may be justified only in terms of data resiliency. Compare the cost against the cost of needing to recover all your project management tools<br />
2. If a free account loses data, you won’t likely get help from customer support<br />
3. This happens all the time. For-profit companies don’t care about you<br />
iv. Threat modeling<br />
1. Watching a kid who just learned to walk forces parents and caretakers to do threat modeling in real-time<br />
2. Putting strategy docs online allows gov transparency<br />
3. Greenpeace used Google for its data…and it’s classified as an eco-terrorist org…so Google is presumably leaking everything the org has to the gov</div>Evelyn