We've all heard the term project management. But how about project leadership?
Project management is often solely that, management. It's concerned with tracking, measuring, and reporting on progress. It answers questions like "how much work has been completed", "how much work is left according to original project scope", and "how fast is work getting done". Put another way, examining the past. Hopefully these activities are performed with the goal to better predict the future.
This kind of past-oriented project management may work great when the work you did in the past is very similar to the work you will do in the future. But when is the last time you built the same software solution twice? Hopefully never. That's one of the benefits of software. Once it's built it can be reused and installed over and over.
So, in software, a past-oriented project management approach produces a team of victims. The team believes it has no control over its destiny, the release date, the project scope, or its velocity. They will meander along and will be done when they're done or will be forced to cut scope or quality when it comes to crunch time.
Sure there's value in past experiences, but only when you learn from and improve upon it. I'm not talking about things like estimates vs actuals at the agonizing detail of each individual's hours. Perhaps there are folks out there that have experienced those metrics being worth the effort to track, but I haven't. I'm talking more about the team dynamics. Did the team enjoy working on the project? Was the customer thrilled with what was delivered? Exploring those kind of subjective questions is what will improve a team's health and future project successes.
Now about the future. Stop being victims of the past. Look to the future, share a vision and a plan of the project. Ask yourself and others how the project should go. Have a plan for if (and likely when) the unexpected happens. Be proactive in providing options and recommendations. Do you add resources? How long will it take for those additional resources to ramp up? Do you carve out scope? Is there a way to work faster? Do you push the date? Don't fall into the blame game or run away from issues. Be honest. Practice project leadership.
Project management is often solely that, management. It's concerned with tracking, measuring, and reporting on progress. It answers questions like "how much work has been completed", "how much work is left according to original project scope", and "how fast is work getting done". Put another way, examining the past. Hopefully these activities are performed with the goal to better predict the future.
This kind of past-oriented project management may work great when the work you did in the past is very similar to the work you will do in the future. But when is the last time you built the same software solution twice? Hopefully never. That's one of the benefits of software. Once it's built it can be reused and installed over and over.
So, in software, a past-oriented project management approach produces a team of victims. The team believes it has no control over its destiny, the release date, the project scope, or its velocity. They will meander along and will be done when they're done or will be forced to cut scope or quality when it comes to crunch time.
Sure there's value in past experiences, but only when you learn from and improve upon it. I'm not talking about things like estimates vs actuals at the agonizing detail of each individual's hours. Perhaps there are folks out there that have experienced those metrics being worth the effort to track, but I haven't. I'm talking more about the team dynamics. Did the team enjoy working on the project? Was the customer thrilled with what was delivered? Exploring those kind of subjective questions is what will improve a team's health and future project successes.
Now about the future. Stop being victims of the past. Look to the future, share a vision and a plan of the project. Ask yourself and others how the project should go. Have a plan for if (and likely when) the unexpected happens. Be proactive in providing options and recommendations. Do you add resources? How long will it take for those additional resources to ramp up? Do you carve out scope? Is there a way to work faster? Do you push the date? Don't fall into the blame game or run away from issues. Be honest. Practice project leadership.
