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WhatJohannaWouldTeachNewProjectManagers

Here's the context. This proposal is part of a graduate management degree. The assumption is that the students have not formally managed projects yet. The degree comes in two flavors: a two-year program (Fridays and Saturdays biweekly), and for masochists, a one-year program, which is every Friday and Saturday. The sessions are 9-12 and 1-4, with a 15-minute break in the middle.

First year content: Introduction to project management

• Planning
• Estimation
• Laying out a schedule
• Initial cut at risk list and ways to manage risk
• Monitoring the project (qualitative information about the project)
• Optional: one 3-hour segment on using scheduling software (either MS Project or Fast Track Scheduler)

Grading:

• 3 homeworks, each worth 25% of your grade
• Project management journal in which you write which decisions you made when under which circumstances.
• 1 exam worth 25% of the grade
  
  
  1. Introduction
     1. Review schedule, grading criteria.
     2. Define Project Management
     3. Project Manager?s role and job
  2. Define the project scope (project charter)
     1. Create and communicate the project vision
     2. Define the scope of the work
     3. Define success criteria and activity
     4. Start on requirements; Determine if there are also goals
     5. Review a project charter document
     6. Activity
     7. Homework #1: Select a project (either from work or one of mine.) Create a project charter with your team. Bring to next class. Start PM journal
  3. Debrief charter homework
  4. Estimation techniques
     1. Calendar time vs. work time
     2. Using historical data
     3. Wideband Delphi
     4. How to iterate on estimation and planning
  5. Plan the project, part 1
     1. Charter has defined your project scope: what?s in, what?s out
     2. Define milestones
     3. Estimate task durations (what and how to plan)
     4. Create a WBS (Work Breakdown Structure)
     5. Activity with stickies
     6. Create a schedule overview
     7. Homework #2: Create an initial WBS for your project with stickies. Bring into next class
  6. Plan the project, part 2
     1. Create initial risk list
     2. Create the project team
     3. Define release criteria
     4. Define how you ask people for status
     5. Define what you will report for status
     6. Budget and costs
     7. Homework #3: Create release criteria
  7. Optional: Learning how to use scheduling software. This module requires pre-work from students to lay out their projects (which they should have started as homework #1)
     1. Milestones, tasks, dependencies
     2. Rolling up sub-projects
        
        
     3. Homework (non-graded): use the tool to help you complete the project. Write down what works for you in the tool and what doesn't work.
  8. Discussion of project management to date
     1. Discussion of tool use
     2. What's working, what's not working
     3. Peer consulting on project planning problems
  9. Qualitative information about the project
     1. Assess project progress with one-on-ones
     2. Assess release criteria, success criteria
     3. Monitor risks
     4. Anticipate and solve problems
     5. Activity
  10. Review. Includes discussion from project management journal
      
      
  11. Open-book exam

Second year content: Managing project complexity

• Selecting a lifecycle (includes CMM and quality issues) and iterative planning
• Creating a project team
• Re-estimation and schedule games
• Metrics
• More on risk
• Monitoring the project (quantitative information about the project)
• What the project manager can expect from the testers
• Managing yourself
• Knowing when a project is complete
• Project retrospectives

Grading: 3 homeworks, each worth 25% of your grade Project management journal in which you write which decisions you made when under which circumstances. 1 exam worth 25% of the grade

1. Selecting a lifecycle
   1. Review lifecycles and when you'd use each lifecycle. Discuss non-software projects and iteration
   2. Software methodology
   3. Replan the project. What triggers a replan. How to replan. How to slip.
   4. Creating a project team
   5. Homework #1: Select a project (either from work or one of mine.) Develop a project charter with an explanation of the lifecycle you want to use, how you?ll staff the project, and what you need from management. Start PM journal
2. Debrief homework #1
3. Schedule games and how to avoid them
   1. Schedule Chicken
   2. Bring Me a Rock
   3. 90% Done
   4. Hope is Our Most Important Strategy
   5. Queen (or King) of Denial
   6. Activity
4. Metrics
   1. Creating a project dashboard around the six sides of project management: People, environment, cost, features, defect, date
   2. Earned value, Budgeted and Actual Cost of Work Performed, other financial measures
   3. Homework #2: On your project, develop your project dashboard
5. Present project dashboards to class, explaining what you measured and why
6. Managing risk during the project
   1. Actively looking for risks
   2. Measurements to collect during the project
   3. What the project manager can expect from the testers
   4. Adjusting the course of the project
   5. Activity
7. Managing yourself and your reactions
   1. In one-on-one meetings
   2. Project team meetings
   3. Activity
8. Project retrospectives
   1. Brief introduction and then we'll perform a retrospective
   2. Retrospective
   3. Homework #3: Perform a retrospective with your project team and be ready to discuss what you discovered.
9. Project retrospective debriefs
   
   
10. Review. Includes discussion from project management journal
    
    
11. Open-book exam

JohannaRothman 2003.03.09

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Good material here. My suggestion would be to put the "Managing Yourself and Your Reactions" up near the start of the course.

DwaynePhillips 9 March 2004

I have a concern that it's taken me several days to figure out how to say :-) When I became a project manager, I was absolutely positive that managing me and my reactions was just not an interesting problem. Even after I'd managed projects for several years, I still was sure project management was about the tasks and the other people. (I can now laugh out loud at this.) I don't know how to sell people on the idea that their actions and reactions are just as necessary to manage as other people's interactions -- until they've already tried managing projects and kept a journal.

Do you know how to sell people on this part of the soft side of project management before they've managed any projects? -- JohannaRothman 2004.03.14

[since the URL is broken, I removed it, which also has the nice side-effect of restoring line-wrap to a meaningful margin. --DaveLiebreich 2004.03.11]

You have to get it from the cache since it seems restricted on the website (is it going away soon?)

Sorry, the cache copy is gone. It was a slideshow of management issues that focused more on interpersonal then the administrivia. It was compatible with but different from the AYE conferernce isues.

KenEstes March 11,2004

CharlesAdams 2004.03.12

I have noticed the data problem also. But I don't think it's limited to collecting data after the project starts. After all, PMs and others change which data they collect when during the project. I think a lot of the problems arise when people think they'll be measured by the data, and they work on making their measurements improve their lot in the company.

JohannaRothman 2003.03.12

Defining who is the customer(s) is crucial for project communication. The customer may prefer to receive information differently than I do. The PM that adapts to the customer's preferences will connect better with the customer.

Part of the PM's job is to help the customer continuously sell the project to their management. If the PM doesn't help the customer define the outcome and their benefits, then a selling tool is lost.

I suspect that you may have much of the above points in your charter and scope section. But I feel that focus on the customer deserves its own section. And those ideas deserve to be talked about first.

I believe the outcome that the PM should focus on is the creation of a satisfed customer rather than creation of a lot of documents. The documents too often become the end point rather than the means to an end (satisfied customer).

SteveSmith 2004.03.12

JohannaRothman 2004.03.12