Project management

What is Project Management? You could go to the Project Management Institute for the answer - but they are an industry association which sells the training and certification for PMP, which may be a good thing or slightly biased depending on your point of view.

If you're interested in Project Management as a career, have a look at the Occupational Outlook Handbook of the US Bureau of Labor Statistics for Project Management Specialists.

If you have decades of experience working on real-life projects, then you know that there are some basic fundamentals like the 3 C's that define Project Management.

3 C's[edit]

There are 3 C's which are pillars of project management, crucial for successful project delivery.

Communication[edit]

Effective communication ensures everyone on the project team and stakeholders are informed and aligned. This includes clear and timely updates on project progress, issues, and changes.

This is why I made sure to create a weekly summary for the NASA upgrade project.

Coordination[edit]

Coordination involves aligning the various aspects of a project, including resources, tasks, and timelines. It ensures that all project activities are synchronized and work together effectively. I learned coordination when I was a builder. You had to have foundation work completed before you could begin framing. You needed to have electrical inspections done before you could do drywall. Coordinating things, and making adjustments for everyday variables like weather are what keep you moving toward your milestones.

Collaboration[edit]

Collaboration emphasizes teamwork and working together to achieve project goals. It involves sharing knowledge, expertise, and ideas to develop innovative solutions and address challenges. I default to collaboration mode. I'm not a secrets, power and control type of guy. I've literally been specializing in MediaWiki software for 20 years which is the open source collaborative knowledge system.

These three C's are interconnected and work together to foster a productive and successful project environment. A good project manager will focus on communication, coordination, and collaboration.

PPT[edit]

Another way to describe Project Management is to focus on PPT - which does not stand for PowerPoint. Here is refers to Process, People and Tools.

Process[edit]

Try to be as nimble and responsive as possible. What that usually means is using a so-called Agile development methodology. I'm used to doing rapid deployments and using an iterative process to incrementally build and improve upon the existing. A good process is facilitated by clear and open communication emphasizing transparency - especially when something doesn't work or takes extra time.

Investing time up-front in prototyping, mapping, planning, describing, questioning can pay off by making actual results much easier to do and easier to accept.

Estimates are hard. If you want an estimate for something that's been done thousands of times, then I can provide a fairly good estimate. The problem with software, or for anything novel is that the uniqueness of the challenge means that estimating (the breakthrough) is a SWAG or more intuition and feeling than a mathematical method.

People[edit]

Like Football, it's a team effort to successfully deliver a project. I tend to think like an owner - the big picture - success for the organization, the whole team. When you zoom out, it's obvious you need to rely on specialists to get certain skills and functions that comprise the project. Working successfully with all the 'players' in the organization - from finance and administration to engineering and development to sales and marketing - is the key to delivering on projects again and again.

As a project leader, you need to partition the project into milestones, phases, and/or types of activity. This is similar to how building a house has many trades that must be coordinated and phased.

Some aspects - like testing, quality control, customer acceptance are cross-cutting processes that need to happen for each item.

Tools[edit]

There are both simple tools and elaborate, complex tools for Project Management. Choose the right tool for the job. A sticky list will suffice for a groceries. A carefully selected, configured (and integrated) suite of tools is the norm for projects within companies of any significant size.

I'm deeply familiar with all the software forges - GitHub, GitLab, Tuleapp, Launchpad, Sourceforge, Phabricator. By deeply familiar, I mean I've spent years selecting them, hosting these services, customizing them and making integrations with other applications.

My Project Management software like MS Project or TaskJuggler + Issue tracking + Wiki + Mind Mapping and diagrams + reporting

Integrate your tools like Eventum to TaskJuggler

Mind Mapping is similar in some ways to sketching. As an artist, you sketch something lightly in pencil, and as the composition takes shape, you not only refine the lines, but make them darker and more solid.

Misc resources[edit]