Some Leadership Tidbits

My last role at Intel was leading a leadership development effort for a large group in the IT organization. I learned a lot about leadership, its development, and what it takes for such a development effort to succeed in an organization (not easy). As I surfed our blog site, I looked for leadership articles and was not able to find any that address a few key concepts that I think are critical for all leaders and, in our case, project managers.

As a West Point graduate, leadership has been something I’ve always used, sometimes unconsciously. After four years at the Academy learning how to lead, the habits are ingrained and come to me easily. But that is not the case for many who had not had such an opportunity. So I figured I would capture a few ideas that some of you may find useful. Send me a note at jose.solera@gmail.com if you would like to discuss these ideas more or post a response here.

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Dictated dates…not!

We’ve all been there. “Here’s a project. It needs to be done in three months!” You get that sinking feeling that you are already late and you don’t even know what it is that the project is trying to achieve.

How do you handle these situations?

In my experience, the worse thing you can do as a project manager is accept the dictated date. By doing that you are just delaying the inevitable. You’ll be late and then you’ll be in even more trouble for not raising it earlier. So, just say no!

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“We don’t need no stinking Gantt chart!”

Last year I wrote about Map Days (search for Solera and you’ll find my entries). You may recall that Map Days are the face-to-face sessions used to develop plans under NSPM (No Surprises Project Management by Timm Esque). During these sessions, all team members get together to develop a plan that builds on the group’s knowledge to deliver the results that a project requires.

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Measure Twice and Cut Once or Measure Once and Cut Twice?

What is it about software development projects that is different from many other types of projects? There are many things, but Scott Adams nailed on the head one of them with his March 16^th Dilbert cartoon which gave me the idea for this column’s title. In the strip, Pointy Haired Boss says “My management philosophy is ‘measure twice, cut once.’” To which Dilbert quickly points out why the reverse is true in software development: the cost of experimenting (trying something out to see if it works) is a lot cheaper than analyzing it until we are comfortable that it will work.

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There has to be a better way, II

As I was mulling the blogs to write this week, along came my regular email from Projects @ Work including a link to David Schmaltz “Unlearning Project Management” published on March 17, 2008 (you may need to register to get access). The article is a recap of a PMI-published study by Lauri Koskela and Greg Howell entitled “The Underlying Theory of Project Management is Obsolete”. I’ve downloaded the study ($10 for members/$15 for non-members) and Mr. Schmaltz does an excellent job of summarizing it.

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There has to be a better way

Early in my PM career, back in the 1980s, I was assigned the technical leadership of a software migration effort. I dutifully identified tasks, resources, and loaded those into the MS-DOS version of Microsoft Project (remember the days?) I then proceeded to assign the tasks and track their progress. Before that, though, I noticed that some of the team members were assigned more than full-time responsibilities, even though they were supposed to only work part-time in the project. So, knowledgeable person I thought myself to be, I applied resource leveling to the project. It became a mess and ended not having any reflection to reality! (more…)

Routines that Support

How many times have you read a book, or gone to a workshop and said “yes, this is useful, I’m going to do this” and then found that, well, nothing happened?

How to explain this? Too busy? Not motivated enough? Sure, those things may play a role, but I think there’s something deeper going on that, when clearly understood, is a very powerful platform for growth.

Dr. Jim Loehr, wrote a book that outlines a way to have the internal resources to actually implement new ideas. This book, “The Power of Full Engagement- Managing Energy, not Time, is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal” is summarized in a review on (more…)