Managing Product Development

I am happy to report that Manage It! is at the printer, both the book and the cover. We’re looking sometime in June as a ship date. Just thought you’d want to know

Labels: Manage It, project management

After speaking with Mary Poppendieck at the Software Development conference a few weeks ago, I instigated a name change for Successful Project Management with Andy and Dave. Mary said the name was boring, and I had a number of cutesy suggestions. Luckily, Dave cut through the cute, and we decided on “Manage It!: Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management.” I’m much happier with this name. We have a new cover too. Yes, this project is winding it’s way towards done.

Labels: Manage It, Successful Project Management

During the past few week, while editing Successful Project Management, I had an opportunity learned to discover other ways I weaken my writing.

I already knew about “get” and “put” and “do”–any words you can command a computer–are weak verbs. It’s ok to use them to start writing, but my writing is stronger when I change those verbs to describe what I really want. I’d changed “Get people” to “Acquire people.” Luckily, Esther reminded me we don’t acquire people in organizations; we recruit, attract, or hire them, but we don’t acquire them. (That’s why we have review

I also knew about the “lullaby” words: “just” is my favorite.

But I hadn’t realized I was so enamored of “in order to,” “So,” or “Now.” I managed to find all the “in order to” and remove the “in order”. That helped me see what I really wanted to say. “Find a large wall in order to post your project dashboard” became “Find a large wall to post your project dashboard” which became “Post your project dashboard on a large wall.” (That’s an example, not a quote.) I started too many sentences with “So;” so I removed them all. (I might have 2 left, in dialogue.) Now, With those edits complete, I could attack the “now” removals. I used “now” as a way to sequence actions, without making a list.

I’m sure I have more strengthening to do can strengthen my writing more. The copyeditor is great, so I’ll have lots of ideas/fixes when the copyediting is complete.

Labels: Manage It, Successful Project Management, writing

Successful Project Management is off for copyediting. While reviewing, Esther and Daniel found some of my take-space words: So and Now. I just did a find-in-project (thank goodness for TextMate) and excised most of them. We’ll see if the copyeditor leaves the few I left, or if she has a better idea.

If I can organize my thoughts, I’ll post about take-space words that weaken writing.

Labels: Manage It, Successful Project Management

I’m in what I hope is final editing for Successful Project Management. (I”m still doing gross editing, final copyediting is one more stage. But I’m not supposed to change ideas in that stage

If you want to know how to write a book, read PragDave’s series of So You Want to Write a Book. I’m rewriting several chapters that I didn’t get right early in the writing. I had not yet found my voice. I think I now have. Here’s a link to what Dave says about Finding Your Voice.

Roy says Writing A book Is Like Developing Software. I completely agree.

So my challenges now are to keep to topic and not add more. (It’s already long enough.) I actually have release criteria for the book. (Bet you’re not surprised

Once I receive more feedback from my editor, to see if the changes I’ve made are good, I’ll be able to get into the small markup editing. I won’t be making April 2 as a release date. Sorry.

Labels: Manage It, Successful Project Management, writing

The PM book has a title: Successful Project Management: Modern, pragmatic techniques that work. And, it has a cover!

Cool, eh? I’m done with this round of editing, and am waiting for Andy’s comments before we go to technical review.

Labels: Manage It, Successful Project Management

I’m happy to report I met my Jan 1 date to finish the manuscript draft for Successful Project Management. I wrote many words last week. So many that I have no idea whether they are good words or not I’ve been blathering at my editor, who is probably ready to shoot me if he hears one more word of excuse.

The ms is about 300 pages long right now, and I’m very sure it will get shorter as we edit. It better. That’s longer than I wanted the book to be. And I’m still not sure I put everything in that I wanted. Sigh.

I’m very close to “crossing the desert” syndrome. I’ll blog separately about that.

I hope you all had lovely holidays and are enjoying this New Year.

True confessions: I was hoping to finish the draft (of Successful Project Management) for technical review today. I didn’t. I knew on Tuesday and called Daniel to let him know where I was.

This past week I focused on finishing chapters. I have about 16 chapters and one appendix. I don’t know if the book will keep its current architecture; I removed one chapter yesterday. I have three chapters to finish (somewhere between 10,000-15,000 words) and three to rewrite (changing about 15,000 words? and a bunch of pictures). When I’m cranking, I can write close to 5000 words a day. Oh, and in case you’re wondering, I’m writing in markup language, so I don’t know how many of those words are markup and how many are content words. (This is similar to the problem of comments vs code when you count lines of code

I’ve noticed these patterns in my writing over the last couple of months:

• When I know something cold, I use a form of mental shorthand. I write using that shorthand, losing my readers. I need reviewers to let me know I’ve lost them.
• When Daniel reviews my writing, he helps me refactor (yes, simplify) and I typically lose 10% of the words.
• I’m getting better at seeing when a piece is mis-organized, but I’m still not so hot at organizing it until I get feedback from someone.

So my next deadline is Jan 1, to finish this draft and have the book ready for tech review. It will be tight, but do-able.

I’m writing part of the PM book, and said this about the minimum requirements for a configuration management system (CMS):

Modern CMSs can branch, label, automatically merge multiple authors’ changes, and allow for developers to work in their own private workspaces (sandboxes). If your CMS can’t do that, dump it and obtain a new one.

The reason I’m saying this is because I still see people using CMSs that don’t allow for sandboxes, don’t branch easily, and don’t perform automatic merging well. It slows development (and the project) down dramatically. Did I miss anything?

Update as of Dec 1: I changed the acronym in the book to SCM. Did a global find and replace and it’s done. Phew!

I’m busy writing the PM book, and saw these great posts. So instead of making myself crazy trying to write more good stuff for you, I decided you should read these.

What is managing software development? is a great read. BTW, the working definition I have of project manager is: the person who knows what “done” means and can steer the project to accomplish “done.”

Difference Between Planing and Scheduling talks about the difference. For me, project management planning is the identification of release criteria and other prose about the project. Scheduling is the WBS, whether that’s on yellow stickies or not.