About a year ago, I got feedback from my team that I needed to clarify what I meant by “drive this effort” or “lead that effort”. So I decided to create a quick document explaining what I meant. Below is that document. I later converted the document to a slide-deck, which I will publish shortly too. There are *a lot* of books on project management. From that point of view, there is nothing special about the techniques below – all of them are pretty much common sense and all of them can be found in those books. What is special about the post that follows is the condensed presentation (my goal is to essentially save you from reading a PMP book) and the fact that we actually used every single one of these techniques to manage the WPF 4 and Visual Studio 2010 products, which we released in April 2010. The techniques listed below are:Over-communication
Scorecard
Trend (and glide-path)
Backlog / Burn-down List
“Branded” status emails
Schedule in Excel
Schedule in Visio
Enjoy!+++ General Notes
Project management is a skill that can (as any other skill) be acquired and improved. Really most of our work and a significant part of our personal lives boil down in one way or another to project management. Every project has a life-cycle, consisting of several standard phases:Initiating
Planning and kick-off
Executing
Monitoring & Controlling
Closing
Post-mortem learning
An effective PM[1] understands and actively manages the life-cycle of a project. The Meaning of “Drive This”
When I ask somebody to “drive” this or that, what I really mean is “be an effective PM of this effort”, exhibiting the following:Independence and accountability
Ability to construct, communicate and get approval for a clear and well-though-out plan for the project, including:
Timelines
Scope, goals / non-goals and success criteria
Internal and external “unmovables” and requirements
Stakeholders
Costs and funding
Risks and mitigations
Ability to set the project in motion, keep the project in motion and close down the project
Proactive contribution of directive energy to the project, creating excitement, and identifying and removing road-blocks.
Active monitoring of the progress of the project
Proactive communication of status
Ability to reach the desired results
Read more: Ivo Manolov's Blog
Scorecard
Trend (and glide-path)
Backlog / Burn-down List
“Branded” status emails
Schedule in Excel
Schedule in Visio
Enjoy!+++ General Notes
Project management is a skill that can (as any other skill) be acquired and improved. Really most of our work and a significant part of our personal lives boil down in one way or another to project management. Every project has a life-cycle, consisting of several standard phases:Initiating
Planning and kick-off
Executing
Monitoring & Controlling
Closing
Post-mortem learning
An effective PM[1] understands and actively manages the life-cycle of a project. The Meaning of “Drive This”
When I ask somebody to “drive” this or that, what I really mean is “be an effective PM of this effort”, exhibiting the following:Independence and accountability
Ability to construct, communicate and get approval for a clear and well-though-out plan for the project, including:
Timelines
Scope, goals / non-goals and success criteria
Internal and external “unmovables” and requirements
Stakeholders
Costs and funding
Risks and mitigations
Ability to set the project in motion, keep the project in motion and close down the project
Proactive contribution of directive energy to the project, creating excitement, and identifying and removing road-blocks.
Active monitoring of the progress of the project
Proactive communication of status
Ability to reach the desired results
Read more: Ivo Manolov's Blog
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