The Problem with Performance Reviews

Probably everyone accepts that a business rarely has the same priorities during an extended period when performance objectives apply, whether it’s 6 months, 12 months, or some other duration, right? Unless you’re in a very long-established business (and even then, departmental priorities can change focus over such durations), it’s likely that what priorities you understood (and negotiated with your manager) at the start of a performance period will morph over the course of that review period, and be out of date at the end of the review period.

This is all common sense. We know this. Yet we all seem to “live the lie” and pretend this is OK and fair for performance evaluation & review.

(more…)

Why Outsourcing Fails, Even with Good Project Management

The programming press and IT journals are full of stories about the failure of software outsourcing. The statistics are sobering. Less than 50% of outsourcing meets financial objectives. The outsourcing of many business processes besides software development also has the same less-than-stellar results.

Forrester reports the top three causes of outsourcing failure are: (more…)

Project Management For Dummies Horror Story

Wow, I guess they’ve got a for dummies book on everything now.  Awesome.  There is also of course the 10 minute project manager book in case you find yourself dubbed project manager 10 minutes before the kick off meeting.  (more…)

If you’re happy and you know it clap your hands

Having made a moniker name called theUnknownPM kinda makes it impossible for me to push my own products so instead let me do the next worst thing for a moment and engage in random philosphy.  How do you know if you are a success or a failure at what you are doing?  Are you a good witch or a bad witch and how do you know the difference?  I mean how do you judge these things and should you?   Yeah the easy answer is don’t but then how do you improve anything if you don’t have any metrics?  OMG the person sitting next to me just read the title and started clapping his hands… which makes me laugh.   He’s happy evidently but is that the company that makes him happy or the excess sugar from the special K he is chewing on that is really making him clap? (more…)

Be positive - Be happy…………..build the team…

OK here is the scenario - Do you pass the “ink blot test”??.

It is Friday afternoon on the day before a holiday weekend. You are on the telephone to a venture capital company in New York wanting to know about RoHS impact. The project you are working on since October and which has had three design revisions is finally about to exit manufacture and be ready for test. It is actually running to the revised plan of record and the ETA for the boards is 4-30 pm and the whole management team is looking for results.

Oh and did I mention  that you are in the process of buying a house in the horrendously expensive silicon valley and things are not going well…….And the phone rings and Sandra from UC Santa Cruz says “Hi John can you be a drop in blogger this weekend” and the answer is ………..”of course”…………..8-) (more…)

“Vivo Per Lei”

During an intermission of Andrea Bocelli’s concert tonight, I was comparing his concert tour project manager job to my own high tech project execution. How much difference, how big of a headache would it be and would I want to do it, I asked myself. (more…)

Scrappy Project Management is BIGGER than the PMBOK . . .

. . . well, kind of . . .

Holy guacamole! Two weeks ago I had a ridiculous notion creep stealthily into my noggin’ . . . and, as is my habit, I set yet another seemingly impossible goal (one of my bad habits!) . . . to have my book be MORE popular than the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK). [ Blasphemy, I know . . . but, having the PMBOK be the #1 project management book is like having the Oxford English dictionary be the best selling English literature book. Hideous!] When I first set that lofty goal I had a “Wayne’s World Moment”, and thought “Yah, sure, right! And monkey’s might fly out of my butt!” But today it happened . . . only in Japan, not the US. Jumpin’ geezus on a pogo stick! Yes, it’s true . . . for a few brief hours today my “Scrappy Project Management” book was MORE popular among non-translated books on Amazon Japan than the PMBOK. (#544 vs. 1900 or so . . .)

Setting impossible goals is the first step to reach them. What seemingly “impossible” goal stands before you beckoning to you cunningly? Don’t let fear of failure stop you from taking the first step toward what seem like ridiculously ambition or unobtainable goals. As human beings, we typically tend to underestimate what we are capable of. Lurch fitfully if you must! Remember, even a woman with a limp moves forward! (more…)