the trouble is that everyone working on the project recognizes the stupid but those making the decisions either don't see it or don't care. like the pms in India. the solution is to have project meetings at 8am and 8pm. people complain, but then management says "we're a global company, deal with it." and unfortunately that's the only way to handle it when half the team is based in India. that's a bigger lump of stupid to solve than just the pm being based out of India...but they save so much money moving whole teams to India that management doesn't care.
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[WORK] Project Managers of TW
- Thread starter brutal
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Who Replied?the trouble is that everyone working on the project recognizes the stupid but those making the decisions either don't see it or don't care. like the pms in India. the solution is to have project meetings at 8am and 8pm. people complain, but then management says "we're a global company, deal with it." and unfortunately that's the only way to handle it when half the team is based in India. that's a bigger lump of stupid to solve than just the pm being based out of India...but they save so much money moving whole teams to India that management doesn't care.
After spending over a decade in IT, I've come to the conclusion that project management in this field can often be ineffective and a poor use of everyone's time. As others have stated, most meetings could be avoided by answering a few questions through email, but people who are bad at communication ruin it for everyone else.
IT projects can be extremely unpredictable, which I think makes things harder on the PM's. Sometimes a simple task can turn into a rabbit hole and eat up valuable time. On top of this, most execs view IT departments as a cost center and not an asset. The direct result of this is that the PM may not have sufficient staffing resources to complete his/her project on time.
As an example, I'm an employee that is constantly drawn into different projects. I currently have six on my plate right now. Each one requires a significant amount of my time. All of the projects have weekly meetings and smaller sub-team meetings. I'm expected to attend all of them. This easily eats up 20+ hours of my week, just in meetings. Then I have to perform the actual project work. I never have time for this, because I'm either in a meeting discussing the project or I'm doing my regular day job, which is making sure the business is running and resolving any daily issues.
My entire team is like this, so we have to exaggerate the amount of time that it takes to complete even the simplest tasks. This gives us breathing room and makes us look like "heros" instead of failures, but the projects end up taking forever and sometimes reflects poorly on the PM's from a management perspective. I think this view is nonsense, because the PM's have no control over staffing, resources or the other demands of the business. They only have limited control over their assigned project.
If there are resource constraints, then there's also the issue of what project is more important than the other. I can't count how many times a project has been assigned as a "top priority" and then a month into the project we get blindsided with another top priority project, which causes us to miss all of our dates on the original project. Again, this somehow can reflect poorly on the PM depending on which company they work for and management usually gets a free pass. This often creates some serious political issues, but that's another story.
So in the end, it seems like "project management" in IT is just arbitrary task tracking with unreliable completion dates. It's not the fault of the PM, but it has more to do with IT as a field and how it's managed from the top down.
I think the most effective PM's I've worked with seem to understand a neutral stance. Give people their objectives and let them run with it. If they fail to meet their objectives, then it's a management or resource problem. If they need specific answers for tasks, they will contact the person directly and then update the plan. All staff is not always required for weekly meetings. Be as efficient as you can be and learn to work with different personalities.
IT projects can be extremely unpredictable, which I think makes things harder on the PM's. Sometimes a simple task can turn into a rabbit hole and eat up valuable time. On top of this, most execs view IT departments as a cost center and not an asset. The direct result of this is that the PM may not have sufficient staffing resources to complete his/her project on time.
As an example, I'm an employee that is constantly drawn into different projects. I currently have six on my plate right now. Each one requires a significant amount of my time. All of the projects have weekly meetings and smaller sub-team meetings. I'm expected to attend all of them. This easily eats up 20+ hours of my week, just in meetings. Then I have to perform the actual project work. I never have time for this, because I'm either in a meeting discussing the project or I'm doing my regular day job, which is making sure the business is running and resolving any daily issues.
My entire team is like this, so we have to exaggerate the amount of time that it takes to complete even the simplest tasks. This gives us breathing room and makes us look like "heros" instead of failures, but the projects end up taking forever and sometimes reflects poorly on the PM's from a management perspective. I think this view is nonsense, because the PM's have no control over staffing, resources or the other demands of the business. They only have limited control over their assigned project.
If there are resource constraints, then there's also the issue of what project is more important than the other. I can't count how many times a project has been assigned as a "top priority" and then a month into the project we get blindsided with another top priority project, which causes us to miss all of our dates on the original project. Again, this somehow can reflect poorly on the PM depending on which company they work for and management usually gets a free pass. This often creates some serious political issues, but that's another story.
So in the end, it seems like "project management" in IT is just arbitrary task tracking with unreliable completion dates. It's not the fault of the PM, but it has more to do with IT as a field and how it's managed from the top down.
I think the most effective PM's I've worked with seem to understand a neutral stance. Give people their objectives and let them run with it. If they fail to meet their objectives, then it's a management or resource problem. If they need specific answers for tasks, they will contact the person directly and then update the plan. All staff is not always required for weekly meetings. Be as efficient as you can be and learn to work with different personalities.
www.smartsheet.com
only been using it for a few weeks, but its' streamlining the companies ability to communicate and get things done in a timely manner.
only been using it for a few weeks, but its' streamlining the companies ability to communicate and get things done in a timely manner.