Comments on: It’s great; unless you screw it up http://pmstudent.com/its-great-unless-you-screw-it-up/ Helping new and aspiring project managers reach their career goals! Sun, 20 May 2012 01:38:56 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.2 By: Glen B. Alleman http://pmstudent.com/its-great-unless-you-screw-it-up/#comment-16758 Glen B. Alleman Thu, 12 Nov 2009 20:53:23 +0000 http://pmstudent.com/?p=4545#comment-16758 Matt, What we have learned in the aerospace business is to reduce coupling and increase cohesion for the programmatic architecture. This means the "management of interfaces" is King. This is a Systems Engineering discipline. The interfaces are always defined in an ICD (Interface Control Document). This significantly reduces the need to have responsive communications. Manily because high levels of communications slows down progress. Invest in a sufficinet level of detail so the individual teams can run 100% for some period of time - say a month. Within the co-located teams face-to-face is of course maximized. We work at the Programmatic Architecture (the program equivalent to system architecture) to maximize the decoupling of the communication processes. A periodic (monthly sometimes) TIM (Technical Interchange Meeting) is done for DoD and NASA programs. Regarding "having all the stuff available from the meeting" - maybe. All the stuff needs to be more formal on our programs, in the form of documents - specs, models. All under change control, all access through the network, but all formally classified and sorted. This is the "performance management" paradigm, not often found in commercial IT, which seems more "fling it out on the share drive." The actual number of meetings - while it feels high on our large flight software programs - is very low compared to the "cluster style" meetings on our IT programs. The culture of "engineering the solution" has a different rhythm than we see in the code development for commercial IT systems world. So my personal take on Web 2.0/PM 2.0 is it is a solution to the problem of undisciplined project and engineering management. Become more disciplined and you don't need constant chatter to keep the project going in the right direction. Careful, thoughtful analysis before any work or change to work is done. We hold cost and schedule as king, while high compliance to technical specification. There is a large banner in the second lobby of one of our buildings (after security) 100% MISSION SUCCESS - that focuses the mind. Matt,
What we have learned in the aerospace business is to reduce coupling and increase cohesion for the programmatic architecture.

This means the “management of interfaces” is King. This is a Systems Engineering discipline. The interfaces are always defined in an ICD (Interface Control Document). This significantly reduces the need to have responsive communications. Manily because high levels of communications slows down progress. Invest in a sufficinet level of detail so the individual teams can run 100% for some period of time – say a month. Within the co-located teams face-to-face is of course maximized.

We work at the Programmatic Architecture (the program equivalent to system architecture) to maximize the decoupling of the communication processes. A periodic (monthly sometimes) TIM (Technical Interchange Meeting) is done for DoD and NASA programs.

Regarding “having all the stuff available from the meeting” – maybe. All the stuff needs to be more formal on our programs, in the form of documents – specs, models. All under change control, all access through the network, but all formally classified and sorted. This is the “performance management” paradigm, not often found in commercial IT, which seems more “fling it out on the share drive.”

The actual number of meetings – while it feels high on our large flight software programs – is very low compared to the “cluster style” meetings on our IT programs. The culture of “engineering the solution” has a different rhythm than we see in the code development for commercial IT systems world.

So my personal take on Web 2.0/PM 2.0 is it is a solution to the problem of undisciplined project and engineering management. Become more disciplined and you don’t need constant chatter to keep the project going in the right direction.

Careful, thoughtful analysis before any work or change to work is done. We hold cost and schedule as king, while high compliance to technical specification.

There is a large banner in the second lobby of one of our buildings (after security)

100% MISSION SUCCESS – that focuses the mind.

]]> By: Glen B. Alleman http://pmstudent.com/its-great-unless-you-screw-it-up/#comment-25679 Glen B. Alleman Thu, 12 Nov 2009 20:53:00 +0000 http://pmstudent.com/?p=4545#comment-25679 Matt, What we have learned in the aerospace business is to reduce coupling and increase cohesion for the programmatic architecture. This means the "management of interfaces" is King. This is a Systems Engineering discipline. The interfaces are always defined in an ICD (Interface Control Document). This significantly reduces the need to have responsive communications. Manily because high levels of communications slows down progress. Invest in a sufficinet level of detail so the individual teams can run 100% for some period of time - say a month. Within the co-located teams face-to-face is of course maximized. We work at the Programmatic Architecture (the program equivalent to system architecture) to maximize the decoupling of the communication processes. A periodic (monthly sometimes) TIM (Technical Interchange Meeting) is done for DoD and NASA programs. Regarding "having all the stuff available from the meeting" - maybe. All the stuff needs to be more formal on our programs, in the form of documents - specs, models. All under change control, all access through the network, but all formally classified and sorted. This is the "performance management" paradigm, not often found in commercial IT, which seems more "fling it out on the share drive." The actual number of meetings - while it feels high on our large flight software programs - is very low compared to the "cluster style" meetings on our IT programs. The culture of "engineering the solution" has a different rhythm than we see in the code development for commercial IT systems world. So my personal take on Web 2.0/PM 2.0 is it is a solution to the problem of undisciplined project and engineering management. Become more disciplined and you don't need constant chatter to keep the project going in the right direction. Careful, thoughtful analysis before any work or change to work is done. We hold cost and schedule as king, while high compliance to technical specification. There is a large banner in the second lobby of one of our buildings (after security) 100% MISSION SUCCESS - that focuses the mind. Matt,
What we have learned in the aerospace business is to reduce coupling and increase cohesion for the programmatic architecture.

This means the “management of interfaces” is King. This is a Systems Engineering discipline. The interfaces are always defined in an ICD (Interface Control Document). This significantly reduces the need to have responsive communications. Manily because high levels of communications slows down progress. Invest in a sufficinet level of detail so the individual teams can run 100% for some period of time – say a month. Within the co-located teams face-to-face is of course maximized.

We work at the Programmatic Architecture (the program equivalent to system architecture) to maximize the decoupling of the communication processes. A periodic (monthly sometimes) TIM (Technical Interchange Meeting) is done for DoD and NASA programs.

Regarding “having all the stuff available from the meeting” – maybe. All the stuff needs to be more formal on our programs, in the form of documents – specs, models. All under change control, all access through the network, but all formally classified and sorted. This is the “performance management” paradigm, not often found in commercial IT, which seems more “fling it out on the share drive.”

The actual number of meetings – while it feels high on our large flight software programs – is very low compared to the “cluster style” meetings on our IT programs. The culture of “engineering the solution” has a different rhythm than we see in the code development for commercial IT systems world.

So my personal take on Web 2.0/PM 2.0 is it is a solution to the problem of undisciplined project and engineering management. Become more disciplined and you don’t need constant chatter to keep the project going in the right direction.

Careful, thoughtful analysis before any work or change to work is done. We hold cost and schedule as king, while high compliance to technical specification.

There is a large banner in the second lobby of one of our buildings (after security)

100% MISSION SUCCESS – that focuses the mind.

]]> By: Andrew Filev http://pmstudent.com/its-great-unless-you-screw-it-up/#comment-16287 Andrew Filev Thu, 12 Nov 2009 07:14:37 +0000 http://pmstudent.com/?p=4545#comment-16287 As one of the person's who's been writing for quite a while about the ways Enterprise 2.0 and PM entangle, I'd love to add more, but it's all well said by Bas, Matt, Tuyen and others. Cheers, Andrew As one of the person’s who’s been writing for quite a while about the ways Enterprise 2.0 and PM entangle, I’d love to add more, but it’s all well said by Bas, Matt, Tuyen and others.

Cheers,
Andrew

]]> By: Andrew Filev http://pmstudent.com/its-great-unless-you-screw-it-up/#comment-25678 Andrew Filev Thu, 12 Nov 2009 07:14:00 +0000 http://pmstudent.com/?p=4545#comment-25678 As one of the person's who's been writing for quite a while about the ways Enterprise 2.0 and PM entangle, I'd love to add more, but it's all well said by Bas, Matt, Tuyen and others. Cheers, Andrew As one of the person’s who’s been writing for quite a while about the ways Enterprise 2.0 and PM entangle, I’d love to add more, but it’s all well said by Bas, Matt, Tuyen and others.

Cheers,
Andrew

]]> By: Matt Cogley http://pmstudent.com/its-great-unless-you-screw-it-up/#comment-16255 Matt Cogley Wed, 11 Nov 2009 16:31:26 +0000 http://pmstudent.com/?p=4545#comment-16255 Glen, I couldn't agree more. Face-to-face is king and will always remain king. No doubt about that. But what if team members are separated by oceans and face-to-face is simply not possible? Besides, will it not be helpful to have all the stuff that you discussed at the meeting right there in your project management system? So that you don't have to search for this knowledge across numerous files with meeting records and all your team members can dig into it anytime? Glen,
I couldn’t agree more. Face-to-face is king and will always remain king. No doubt about that. But what if team members are separated by oceans and face-to-face is simply not possible? Besides, will it not be helpful to have all the stuff that you discussed at the meeting right there in your project management system? So that you don’t have to search for this knowledge across numerous files with meeting records and all your team members can dig into it anytime?

]]> By: Matt Cogley http://pmstudent.com/its-great-unless-you-screw-it-up/#comment-25677 Matt Cogley Wed, 11 Nov 2009 16:31:00 +0000 http://pmstudent.com/?p=4545#comment-25677 Glen, I couldn't agree more. Face-to-face is king and will always remain king. No doubt about that. But what if team members are separated by oceans and face-to-face is simply not possible? Besides, will it not be helpful to have all the stuff that you discussed at the meeting right there in your project management system? So that you don't have to search for this knowledge across numerous files with meeting records and all your team members can dig into it anytime? Glen,
I couldn’t agree more. Face-to-face is king and will always remain king. No doubt about that. But what if team members are separated by oceans and face-to-face is simply not possible? Besides, will it not be helpful to have all the stuff that you discussed at the meeting right there in your project management system? So that you don’t have to search for this knowledge across numerous files with meeting records and all your team members can dig into it anytime?

]]>