manage well

What is worse then an anarchy ? You might say that is the absolute abyss, but I think blind allegiance is even more dangerous (and that includes following the letter but tweaking the spirit – things like ‘creative accounting‘ or its parallels in every field). Anarchy at least allows for things to become ‘better’ in order to survive – whether it is the idealogy, resistance, or even musclepower, or any other ills (and hopefully at some point, social forces of constructive destruction take over). But in a land where unquestionable compliance and blind allegiance rule the roost, IMNSHO, is like a terminal patient off the ventilator support. When people are on their deathbed, they don’t regret things that they did but much rather the things they did not do!

In project management, life is no less colorful. We have process pundits (read “prescription police”) shouting from the rooftop with a megaphone on how heavens will strike them bone dead with lighting if they ever as much as strayed from the ‘standards’. When projects are being postmortemed, we don’t often ask what or why the project did something that they did, but why they did not do things that they did not do. And quite often, you find answer in the map itself – because the map did not factor-in those conditions that were actually encountered on the terrain, the blind followers just followed the Pied Piper and danced their way into the river of death. What a terrible waste of human talent.

Why do we get stuck with methods so much that our result-orientation takes a back seat ? I think there might be many answers, but some that deserve merit:

Continue reading ‘Our methodology is 100% pure, our result is another thing!’ »

It’s not about the project management methodology anymore. Frankly, it never was, even though it has triggered off some of the most senseless wars in the history of project management. Starting with Frederick Winslow Taylor‘s Scientific Management to Henry Ford‘s assembly-line based mass production system and eventually landing in a ‘flavor-of-the-day’ methodology (CMM, ISO, Agile, XP, Scrum, Lean, Kanban….and add your favorite one here), project management community, especially in software field, has seen it all…and still counting! All these project management methodologies have been eulogized as silver bullets in their heydays (and some still continue to be worshipped as we speak), and have subsequently been improved upon by the next wave of innovation driven by ever-evolving business needs, state of technology and the sociological changes at the workplace. However, each predecessor has been uncharitably rejected and unceremoniously relegated to trash by every successive methodology champs. However, that doesn’t seem to have stopped project woes, certainly not – going by the claims made in their marketing brochures . So, whom are we to trust – the overzealous champs or their ever-evolving methodologies ?

For most practitioners, novices and experienced folks alike, project management methodology became this one large target to shoot at, the advertisement to get the project deal, the crutches to hold the project on to, the lame excuse against change in project specs, the insurance against failures, perhaps the…raison d’être for project managers ? “Sorry, the manual says do it this way, we can’t change that”. “The process handbook says we can’t take any changes anymore – tell customers to wait until the next release which is just six months away”. “You are not approved to prototype, so stop that effort”. “Our company’s org structure doesn’t allow an engineer to manage the project – the risks are too high”. “Our metrics are within the control limits, so I don’t understand why engineers fear a project delay”. Goes without saying, they come in all hues. 

Little did we realize that the ‘problem’ was a moving target. We continued to ‘evolve’ our ‘solution’ blissfully unaware that the problem was also upgrading itself. Every new fix has led to a newer generation of problem that seems to have outpaced the development of solutions – so far, and I see no good reason why we will never have a ‘perfect solution’ for every type of problem. So, it doesn’t amuse me when people on Agile / Scrum discussion boards try to indiscriminately apply those principles to just about every type of problem under the sun, and then when, predictably, things don’t work, they blame that Agile / Scrum is not being applied in its spirit. Have you ever seen a project manager so baptized that he won’t think beyond the book ? I think those blind preachers are just living like a frog in a well.

Continue reading ‘Does your project management methodology lets you free think?’ »