The Deadline: A Novel About Project Management

The effects of pressure People under pressure don’t think any faster. Extended overtime is a productivity reduction tactic. Short bursts of pressure and even overtime may be a useful tactic as they focus people and increase the sense that the work is important, but extended pressure is always a mistake Perhaps managers make so much use of pressure

Conflict: Whenever there are multiple parties to a development effort, there are bound to be conflicting interests. The business of building and installing systems is particularly conflict-prone. Most system development organizations have poor conflict resolution skills. Conflict deserves respect. Conflict is not a sign of unprofessional behavior.

Oh sure, there some easy bugs in the middle, totally local to that one module, but those are the ones that get picked up easily in inspections. The real bugs, the ones that take up your time, are the ones that have something to do with the interface between that module and the rest of its world.”

“That’s your power, Webster. If you use it on Dr. Menotti, you might just come away with what you need. I don’t guarantee it, because it is going to be a bitter pill for him to swallow. But at least you have a chance.” “I have to like him?” “You do. You can’t convince anyone whom you don’t like. Some people can, but you can’t. Don’t fight it.”

What are most of the people doing most of the time?” “Debugging, I guess. That seems to be the biggest category of work.” “That’s our challenge then. We have to subtract some of that debugging time.” “We have to learn how to do debugging more efficiently?” “No,” Kenoros corrected him, “we have to learn how to do design more efficiently.”

Ambiguous Specification: Ambiguity in a specification is a sign of unresolved conflict among the various system stakeholders. A specification that doesn’t contain a complete census of inputs and outputs is a non-starter; it simply doesn’t begin to specify. Nobody will tell you if a specification is lousy. People are inclined to blame themselves rat

Staff Level Early overstaffing tends to force projects into shortcutting the key design activity (to give all those people something to do). When work is divided over a large staff prior to completion of design, the interfaces among people and among work groups are not minimized. This leads to increased interdependence, meeting time, rework, and fr

“Well, of course we do design. Everybody does.” “Of course. But they don’t do it at design time. At design time, the team puts together a document. There is a bit of hand waving about ‘philosophy’ and maybe a file layout or two, and then a pro-forma review. What they’re doing is whatever it takes to get management off their backs so they can get on

Project Sociology Keep meetings small by making it safe for unessential people not to attend. A published agenda, rigorously followed, is the easiest way to make non-attendance safe. Projects have need of ceremony. Use ceremony to focus attention on project goals and ideals: small meetings, zero defect work, etc. Take steps to protect people from a