Managing Product Development

PM Boulevard has my 5Qs on Agile, and Manage It! review. (They like it!) You might need to log in to see all the content.

Bob Payne interviewed me in this podcast at Agile 2007. We mostly talked about project management, some specifics from Manage It!, and also talked about hiring for an agile team.

Greg Wilson posted a lovely review, Managing, Reviewing, and RESTing. I particularly like this part:

Her new book is her best yet: personal without being chatty, and informative without being dry, it covers everything a technical manager needs to know about running a development project.

Thanks Greg, and I’ll make sure my editor sees that quote. We worked hard to make it readable.

Labels: Manage It

Tech Republic has the estimation chapter from Manage It!.

There’s a great Manage It! review at Book Review: Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management.

Michael Fransen enjoyed Behind Closed Doors: Secrets of Great Management. He posted a review. The session he took at Agile 2007 was “Hiring for an Agile Team,” based on Hiring the Best ….

Labels: Behind Closed Doors, Hiring the Best Knowledger Workers, Manage It

Some lovely reviews of Manage It! were posted when I was traveling last month, and I didn’t remember to blog them. Sigh.

Wagnerblog has a great review, focused the on schedule games chapter. (That chapter was a blast to write.)

My good friend an colleague, Ken Flowers, wrote this review. Here’s the sentence I like the best:

Each part gives multiple suggestions about how to be successful in most common project management situations.

There is No One Right Way to manage projects. What works for me might not work for you, so keep thinking.

Labels: Manage It

The good folks at Projects@Work have posted an excerpt from Manage It!. The excerpt is Make Your Organization Work for You. There’s no facility for comments there, so do leave comments here.

Labels: Manage It, Projects at Work

I don’t have much use for Gantt charts; if you’ve determined the tasks in enough detail and far enough out to really see the critical path, you’ll be wrong in 24-48 hours. If you don’t put in that much detail, it’s a pretty picture, but not enough information to manage the project. (Of course, Gantt charts are used by people other than the project manager and the project team–but mostly for nefarious purposes

Tate Stuntz in The demise of the Gantt Chart in Agile Software Projects has a great article about why Gantts are not useful in Agile projects.

Aside: I’m happy to report there are no Gantt charts in Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management. That’s because there are other charts that provide much more detail, with more accuracy.

Labels: Manage It, project management

I’m pleased that here are several nice reviews of Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management.

See the most recent: The Library’s post.

Labels: Manage It, project

While teaching a management class recently, one participant came up to me at a break, and said, “Why are you teaching us project management with this portfolio stuff? This is supposed to be a management workshop.”

Portfolio management, determining which projects to fund and when, is management work. The best managers actively manage the portfolio, saying yes, no, and when to projects.

When project managers try to do portfolio management, many of them feel torn when they try to balance when to start each project. They can see the reasons for each project, and may not have enough information to be able to actually determine the strategy behind what the portfolio should be.

If you’re a project manager, it’s possible you have to define the portfolio of projects, just to keep your sanity. (That’s why there’s a chapter about portfolio management in Manage It!) But it’s not project management. Your managers need to make those strategic decisions about what to do and when.

Labels: Manage It, portfolio management, project management

Drum roll please…

Manage It! Your Guide to Modern Pragmatic Project Management is available. (I don’t know when it will be available from Amazon. Soon, I suspect.)

See the press release. I’m sooo excited.

Labels: Manage It, project management