Making Things Happen: Mastering Project Management (Theory in Practice) PDF
Preview Making Things Happen: Mastering Project Management (Theory in Practice)
Making Things Happen Table of Contents SPECIAL OFFER: Upgrade this ebook with O’Reilly FOREWORD PREFACE Who should read this book Assumptions I've made about you in writing this book How to use this book How to contact us Safari® Books Online 1. A brief history of project management (and why you should care) Using history Learning from failure Web development, kitchens, and emergency rooms The role of project management Program and project management at Microsoft The balancing act of project management Pressure and distraction Confusing process with goals The right kind of involvement Take advantage of your perspective Project managers create unique value Summary Exercises I. PART ONE: PLANS 2. The truth about schedules Schedules have three purposes Silver bullets and methodologies What schedules look like Divide and conquer (big schedules = many little schedules) Why schedules fail Shooting blind from very, very far away A schedule is a probability Estimating is difficult Good estimates come from good designs The common oversights The snowball effect What must happen for schedules to work Summary Exercises 3. How to figure out what to do Software planning demystified Different types of projects How organizations impact planning Common planning deliverables Approaching plans: the three perspectives The business perspective The technology perspective The customer perspective The magical interdisciplinary view The balance of power Asking the right questions Answering the right questions What if there's no time? Catalog of common bad ways to decide what to do The process of planning The daily work Customer research and its abuses Bringing it all together: requirements Problems become scenarios Integrating business and technology requirements Summary Exercises 4. Writing the good vision The value of writing things down How much vision do you need? Team goals and individual goals The five qualities of good visions Simplifying Intentional (goal-driven) Consolidated Inspirational Memorable The key points to cover On writing well It's hard to be simple Writing well requires one primary writer Volume is not quality Drafting, reviewing, and revising A catalog of lame vision statements (which should be avoided) Examples of visions and goals Supporting vision statements and goals Visions should be visual Visualizing nonvisual things The vision sanity check: daily worship Summary Exercises 5. Where ideas come from The gap from requirements to solutions Quality requirements and avoiding mistakes Design exploration Fear of the gap and the idea of progress There are bad ideas Good or bad compared to what? Thinking in and out of boxes is OK Good questions attract good ideas Focusing questions Creative questions Rhetorical questions Bad ideas lead to good ideas Good designs come from many good ideas Perspective and improvisation Improvisational rules for idea generation More approaches for generating ideas The customer experience starts the design A design is a series of conversations Summary Exercises 6. What to do with ideas once you have them Ideas get out of control Managing ideas demands a steady hand Changes cause chain reactions Creative work has momentum Checkpoints for design phases How to consolidate ideas Refine and prioritize Prototypes are your friends Where do prototypes start? Prototyping for projects with user interfaces Prototyping for projects without user interfaces Prototypes support programmers Alternatives increase the probability of success Questions for iterations The open-issues list Summary Exercises II. PART TWO: SKILLS 7. Writing good specifications What specifications can and cannot do Deciding what to specify Who is responsible for specifications? Specifying is not designing Describing the final design versus how to build it Good specs simplify Ensure the right thing will happen Who, when, and how Writing for one versus writing for many When are specs complete? How much is enough? How to manage open issues The significance of hitting spec complete Reviews and feedback How to review a specification Who should be there and how does it work? The list of questions Summary Exercises 8. How to make good decisions Sizing up a decision (what's at stake) Finding and weighing options Emotions and clarity The easy way to comparison Discuss and evaluate Sherlock Holmes, Occam's Razor, and reflection Information is a flashlight Data does not make decisions It's easy to misinterpret data Research as ammunition Precision is not accuracy The courage to decide Some decisions have no winning choices Good decisions can have bad results Paying attention and looking back Summary Exercises 9. Communication and relationships Management through conversation Relationships enhance communication A basic model of communication Common communication problems Projects depend on relationships Defining roles The best work attitude How to get people's best work The motivation to help others do their best Summary Exercises 10. How not to annoy people: process, email, and meetings A summary of why people get annoyed The effects of good process A formula for good processes How to create and roll out processes Managing process from below Non-annoying email The good piece of email An example of bad email An example of good email How to run the non-annoying meeting The art of facilitation Facilitation pointers Three kinds of meetings The evil of recurring meetings Meeting pointers Summary Exercises 11. What to do when things go wrong Apply the rough guide Common situations to expect How to know you are in a difficult situation The list of difficult situations Make practice and training difficult Take responsibility Damage control Conflict resolution and negotiation Roles and clear authority Everyone should know who the decision maker is An emotional toolkit: pressure, feelings about feelings, and the hero complex Pressure Feelings about feelings The hero complex Summary Exercises III. PART THREE: MANAGEMENT 12. Why leadership is based on trust Building and losing trust Trust is built through commitment Trust is lost through inconsistent behavior Make trust clear (create green lights) The different kinds of power Do not rely on granted power Work to develop earned power Persuasion is stronger than dictation Be autocratic when necessary Trusting others Delegation of authority Trust is insurance against adversity Models, questions, and conflicts Leaders define their feedback process Trust and making mistakes Never reprimand in real time Trust in yourself (selfreliance) Summary Exercises 13. Making things happen Priorities make things happen Common ordered lists Priority 1 versus everything else Priorities are power Be a prioritization machine Things happen when you say no Master the many ways to say no Keeping it real Know the critical path Be relentless Be savvy Guerilla tactics Summary Exercises 14. Middle-game strategy Flying ahead of the plane Check your sanity Tactical (daily) questions for staying ahead Strategic (weekly/monthly) questions for staying ahead Taking safe action Breaking commitments The coding pipeline Aggressive and conservative pipelining The coding pipeline becomes the bug fix pipeline Tracking progress Hitting moving targets Dealing with mystery management Managing changes (change control) Summary Exercises 15. End-game strategy Big deadlines are just several small deadlines Defining exit criteria Why hitting dates is like landing airplanes Why it gets worse The rough guide to correct angles of approach Elements of measurement The daily build Bug/defect management The activity chart Evaluating trends Useful bug measurements Elements of control Review meeting Triage War team The end of end-game The release candidate (RC) Rollout and operations The project postmortem Party time Summary Exercises 16. Power and politics The day I became political The sources of power The misuse of power Process causes for misuse of power Motivational causes for misuse of power Preventing misuse of power How to solve political problems Clarify what you need Who has the power to give what you need? Make an assessment Tactics for influencing power Know the playing field Creating your own political field Summary Exercises A. A guide for discussion groups Introducing the project management clinic How to start your own discussion group Finding people Launching the group The follow-through Sample discussion topics Balancing my time with team time Customers versus team To innovate or not to innovate My boss is a blowhard Keeping meetings lean Death by disaster Train wreck in progress The fight against featuritis Ultimate fighting championship-style team meetings In-house or off-the-shelf Everything is urgent ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY ACKNOWLEDGMENTS For this revised edition From the previous edition PHOTO CREDITS SPECIAL OFFER: Upgrade this ebook with O’Reilly Making Things Happen Scott Berkun Editor Mary Treseler Copyright © 2008 Scott Berkun O'Reilly Media SPECIAL OFFER: Upgrade this ebook with O’Reilly Click here for more information on this offer! FOREWORD Something crazy happened with the first edition of this book. It sold lots of copies. It made several bestseller lists, was nominated for awards, and earned enough attention to send its author around the world to talk about ideas from the book. Then something crazier happened: the book's title needed to change. Taking this as an opportunity, the folks at O'Reilly and I agreed we should add more value to the book if it was going to have a second life with a new name. First published as The Art of Project Management, this text has been cleaned-up, enhanced, updated, and expanded for your pleasure. You may wonder why the title was changed. Here are some possibilities: 1. The Department of Homeland Security discovered a terrorist threat in the old title. 2. Tim O'Reilly realized his media empire could achieve instant world domination if he could just get owners of the first book to buy it a second time, under the ruse of a title change. 3. <Insert motive from your own imagination here.> Whatever the reason, here we are. I've done my best to improve this book without pulling a George Lucas Star Wars fiasco. Here's the bird's-eye view of what has changed: The text is revised for clarity and concision. It's a more confident, fluff-free book. The addition of more than 120 thought-provoking exercises, appearing at the end of every chapter. By popular demand, endnotes were promoted to footnotes, appearing within the chapter texts. There is a new discussion guide to help you form groups to keep learning. If you are new to this book in any form, the Preface will fill you in on everything you need to know. Since the first edition was published two years ago, I've been busy. I wrote another book called The Myths of Innovation; created various essays, podcasts, and videos; and I continue to run a popular blog on creativity and management. It's all up at www.scottberkun.com; I hope you'll stop by, as your purchase of this book helps make the many free things I produce possible. Cheers and best wishes, Scott Berkun Redmond, WA March 2008 PREFACE My favorite word in the English language is how. How does this work? How was this made? How did they do this? Whenever I see something interesting happen, I'm filled with questions that involve this small but powerful little word. And most of the answers I find center on how people apply their own intelligence and wisdom, rather than their knowledge of specific technologies or theories. Over years of building things and comparing my experiences to those of other managers, programmers, and designers, I've learned how to manage projects well. This book is a summation of those ideas. It includes approaches for leading teams, working with ideas, organizing projects, managing schedules, dealing with politics, and making things happen—even in the face of great challenges and unfair situations. Despite the broad title of this book, most of my working experience comes from the tech sector, and in particular, Microsoft Corporation. I worked there from 1994 to 2003, leading teams of people on projects such as Internet Explorer, Microsoft Windows, and MSN. For a few years I worked in Microsoft's engineering excellence group. While there, I was responsible for teaching and consulting with teams across the company, and was often asked to lecture at public conferences, corporations, and universities. Most of the advice, lessons, and stories in this book come from those experiences. Although I come from a software and web development background, I've written this book broadly and inclusively, calling on references and techniques from outside the engineering and management domains. There is great value here for people in the general business world. I'm convinced that the challenges of organizing, leading, designing, and delivering work have much in common, regardless of the domain. The processes involved in making toaster ovens, skyscrapers, automobiles, web sites, and software products share many of the same challenges, and this book is primarily about overcoming those challenges. Unlike some other books on how to lead projects, this book doesn't ascribe to any grand theory or presumptively innovative philosophy. Instead, I've placed my bet on practicality and diversity. Projects result in good things when the right combination of people, skills, attitudes, and tactics is applied, regardless of their origin or (lack of) pedigree. The structure of this book is the most sensible one I
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