http://jrothman.com/blog/mpd/2005/04/schedule-game-8-pants-on-fire.html Management, especially good management, is hard to do. This blog is for people who want to think about how they manage people, projects, and risk. Mon, 01 Dec 2008 22:23:53 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.5 http://jrothman.com/blog/mpd/2005/04/schedule-game-8-pants-on-fire.html#comment-123 Meredith Courtney Tue, 03 May 2005 18:59:40 +0000 http://jrothman.com/blog/mpd/?p=8157#comment-123 Hi JR - my company, and my group in particular (testing) is plagued by these symptoms, but the cause appears to be coin-operated development of semi-custom software products, with insufficient staff (and profit margins) to allow us to keep working on an interrupted project that we know will be back, but the customer now wants it 6 months later. Got any advice for that situation? thanks Meredith Hi JR - my company, and my group in particular (testing) is plagued by these symptoms, but the cause appears to be coin-operated development of semi-custom software products, with insufficient staff (and profit margins) to allow us to keep working on an interrupted project that we know will be back, but the customer now wants it 6 months later. Got any advice for that situation?
thanks
Meredith

]]> http://jrothman.com/blog/mpd/2005/04/schedule-game-8-pants-on-fire.html#comment-124 Skip Tue, 03 May 2005 01:08:38 +0000 http://jrothman.com/blog/mpd/?p=8157#comment-124 Johanna, Are you sure you don't have a hidden camera into our organization? This Schedule Game really hits home to our greatest challenge -- Keeping Focus. We have the tendency in our organization to be reactive instead of proactive, always responding to the last phone call. We started to adopt some agile best practices in order to manage and execute iterative development properly, which has helped being able to react with less impact to people or projects. However, it would still be nice to be a little more proactive with a more defined strategy. I'm glad to see that we aren't alone in our struggle, thanks for pointing me to some good ideas. Johanna,
Are you sure you don’t have a hidden camera into our organization? This Schedule Game really hits home to our greatest challenge — Keeping Focus. We have the tendency in our organization to be reactive instead of proactive, always responding to the last phone call.
We started to adopt some agile best practices in order to manage and execute iterative development properly, which has helped being able to react with less impact to people or projects.
However, it would still be nice to be a little more proactive with a more defined strategy. I’m glad to see that we aren’t alone in our struggle, thanks for pointing me to some good ideas.

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