I'm starting to come to the conclusion that perhaps the most valuable thing about a project manager is the way they act as the "shield", protecting a group from becoming the direct pawn of an upper-level management person (CEO, VP, or what-have-you).
The president of one of the companies I worked for used to give all PM's a copy of the movie "Memphis Belle", and explain to them that they are now the pilot of a B-29 and their project is analagous to running a bombing raid and getting their plane back in one piece...
In fact, that is the role of the project manager. Project managers rely on the Tech lead, or the team as a whole to solve technical problems, create estimates, etc. Project managers do not need to be able to solve any technical problems. Project managers keep things on track, chart progress, adjust schedules, handle non-technical or resource/tool issues, and interface with the project's sponsor.
If you have a PM who's in there trying to solve technical problems, in there writing code, then you have a role problem, in that they're not being a project manager, but a team member, and there is a conflict there...
All projects can and should (although they rarely are) be broken down into a matrix between Deadline, Features and Resources and the relative flexibility of each. The project's sponsor *must* choose which of those three items is the most flexible, which one is in the middle, and which one is the least flexible. For instance, if the date is absolutely hard and fast, then the other two factors must be more flexible (i.e.: to reach x date, we have to be most flexible about the features, and reasonably flexible about resources)
This whole debate about whether PM's should be technical is immaterial. Good PM's actually know the fundamentals of project management, which is a discipline in it's own right. If you know your project management, you don't need to be technical to manage a software project. If you don't know your project management, then being technical won't help you at all.
Let me explain something: If you catch one of your so-called "project managers" using Microsoft Project to create tasks and schedules, without having planned this all out beforehand, then they don't know what they are doing. Tools like MS Project are great for *tracking* a project's progress, but they are not a substitute for group planning. The planning phase of a project involves not only the team responsible for developing the project, but *everyone* who is involved at *any* stage of the project. Projects are planned in rooms with white boards and lots of Post-Its, and this should all be done *before* you even open MS Project or other similar tool. Software projects are planned by teams, not by one person guesstimating what needs to be done and then arbitrarily entering them in to PM software.
Also, I noticed that someone was comparing software projects to structural engineering projects, and mentioned the technical competency of the PM better be there in terms of knowledge about physics, etc. That's only half the story: structural engineering project managers have to study to become project managers. This is unlike software companies, where project managers are often promoted from the ranks of developers. You would not want the project manager of a bridge to have been just promoted from within the ranks of the construction crews without formal training, yet many software outfits promote people to PM status with no training at all. That's the problem with software project managers (or many of them)...
That's because the modern field of organizational behavior has its roots in the military. All of our modern concepts about projects and org. theory can trace their roots back to one very important project: The Manhattan Project.
It was during the Manhattan Project that the first applications of the social sciences were applied to organizations. This was the first topic in my Organizational Behavior class (I'm studying for my MBA)...
Actually, that's kind of a soft rule. While it is technically bad grammar, you may end a sentence with a preposition if it makes the flow of the sentence work, or if you're writing fiction and are striving for an idiomatic effect.
The sentence you are responding to is totally legit, even though it ends in a propostion.
Well, you could have a rule that says that you cannot hold a position in the industry that you were once responsible for regulating for a period of time, say 5 years. This would hamper the temptation to skew your regulatory policies in anticipation of the personal gain that you would stand to make. This would have prevented Lynne Cheney from taking her position on the board of directors of Enron shortly after letting them write the regulations for their business.
Since it's obvious that the heads of these regulatory agencies are mainly out to line their pockets, I don't think it would be too out of line to say "Hey, go find a position in an industry *other* than the one you just finished regulating."
Actually, what you're talking about is called "at-will" employment. That's the basic contract that says "We don't need a reason to fire you and you don't need a reason to quit." To my knowledge, however, the "at-will" contract has not been fully put through all it's legal paces yet, and at some point in the future, some judge or jury may decide that they're not worth the paper they're printed on.
"Right-to-work" refers to unions. In a right-to-work state, an employee at a union shop does not have to join the union in order to work there, and the union can't force them to join.
Get your terminology straight before you start calling people dumbass, you dumbass.
That's more or less the point that Steve Jobs was trying to make when he responded to Michael Eisner's statements regarding the CD burning phenomenon.
Jobs' essential point was, "Hey, if your business model can't change to account for CD burning and MP3 swapping, then perhaps you don't deserve to be in that business anymore."
Record labels, publishers and artists will have to adapt to changing technology. You can't put the genie back in the bottle, so either the record companies will adapt, or be driven out of business by the ones who do, and the new companies that haven't even been founded yet but will be when they come up with a better was of handling the recording arts industry.
All these legal wranglings are simply the status quo acting to stave off the inevitable changes that will occur in this industry vis a vis the technological realities that they face. They did the same thing with recordable cassette tapes, and they eventually resolved that issue as well.
I'll take it a step further. College professors routinely package articles, excerpts and other previously published material in reading packets for their classes.
Please tell me the difference between doing this and burning CD mixes or even entire discs for your own personal use, or as a favor to a friend, aside from the fact that the distribution scale is much lower with the CDs you might burn versus reading packets. If you're not selling it, what's the problem?
A 35 year old having sex with a 17 year old may be a different story.
Why? If the 17 year-old wants and consents to sexual relations with a 35-year-old, what's wrong with that? How much older than a person do you have to be before it becomes somehow criminal? If it's consentual, then sex is between the participants. Period. It's not for anyone else to decide what is and is not ok. If both parties agree, then there's really nothing we can say. Even if the 35-year-old talks the 17-year-old into it, as long as there's no threat or coercion, the worst thing that can happen is that either one or both of the parties later regret it.
However, I have a friend who is a Deputy DA in a Bay Area county who explained to me that hardly anyone is ever prosecuted under those specific parts of the law. Just isn't worth their time. They'll pursue cases of coercion, rape, etc. but consensual relations between minors, although technically illegal, is simply not regarded as a law enforcement priority of any kind.
More than that, Rehnquist himself defined a strict constructionist as "Someone who favors the prosecution in criminal cases, and the defendant in civil cases."
Before you can even discuss software usage in the developing (3rd) world, you have to have electricity. Once upon a time, developing nations had to rely on companies like Bechtel to come in and build their infrastructure, and still do to some extent.
However, many African nations have begun to implement small-scale local solutions to problems that plague them. Villages now install solar cells to power themselves, rather than relying on the power grid and centralized power plants that need to be built by large multinationals.
This is but one example, but it is encouraging news. It shows that these nations are willing to look at cheaper, more effective local solutions. It suggests that when they finally get around to worrying about software and technology infrastructure, they may consider the cheaper alternative that fits within their meager budgets and has the added benefit of keeping the talent and expertise at home, rather than all the experts and capital leaving the country once the project is finished.
Re:Oh boy... Strap yourselves in for this post, Ki
on
Time Travel
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· Score: 1
UFT= unified field theory TOR= Theory of Relativity
We don't nationalize healthcare because in other countries it has failed to provide the level of care that we get in the US. In general we have better care because it is not nationalized
Unless, of course, you don't have health insurance. While it may be true that countries (and that's most countries) that have national health care may not have the best of the best, at least you can get it if you need it. People in the US who don't have insurance, or cannot afford it, don't get the benefits of our high standard of health care. What about them? National health care would at least ensure that people can get health care without having to resort to the emergency room when things get so bad they can't be ignored.
Initiatives for a national health care system were derailed in the early 90's by insurance companies using scare tactics, plain and simple. As someone who had to go without health insurance for a while, a national system would have taken quite a load off my mind.
What bothers me the most about living in the US is how everything has to be a business. Education, health care, utilities, why does everything have to make a profit? Not everything that we do has to be a money-making enterprise. Not everything that's worth doing is worth doing for money.
I don't know how AOL users fail to be insulted by their cutesy, PlaySkool approach to GUI design, but there you have have it. It's #1 because it's "easy to use". I have a friend who uses AOL because she thinks it's "easier" than clicking the dial-up icon. AOL is not any easier to use than a run-of-the mill dialup connection, but since they say its the easiest, it must be.
When more and more people get broadband connections, the ease-of-use argument will go away, and then AOLs user base will consist mainly of fat-butted housewives who like the bubble buttons.
I would have written it Hal'Kalash, just to make sure I got that glottal stop in there. You can't have a semitic language without that famous glottal stop!
If he's 26, he's old enough to remember being scared witless by the Reagan administration's rhetoric about the Soviet Union. I'm 29, and I remember the Cold War just fine. I remember being constantly frightened about nuclear war.
So glibly you make this reference to the "Philanderer in Chief".
Maybe you don't know, but there was this deal made between the Reagan campaign and the Iranians to keep the hostages longer so that Carter would look bad. Are you convieniently forgetting the death squads in Central America that were illegally funded by the CIA at the direction of Reagan and Bill Casey?
But somehow, Clinton's sexual escapades make him worse than Hitler, Stalin and Mao all wrapped in to one? Your ignorance astounds me. If our civilian and military infrastructure was weakened by any single administration in the last 20 years, you can look to Reagan. Because of their back-door shenanigans, there was a backlash against our intelligence agencies. That is what weakened their effectiveness, not Clinton's philandering.
It's not shocking that the DOD is working up new plans for the use of nukes. I'm sure they do it every couple of years or so.
What does shock me is that Bush and Co. seem so eager to find a situation in which to use nuclear weapons. Wasn't it just a few weeks ago that Bush stated in his State of the Union that countries that pursue development of weapons of mass destruction are members of this "Axis of Evil"? What does that make us if we're doing the same thing? I know, I know, we're different because we're good and they are evil.
I was all for the US and allies going in to Afghanistan. The Taliban were an odious regime and should have been deposed by an international force years ago. But up until 9-11, they were our pals. Up until the invasion of Kuwait, Saddam Hussein was our pal. When the Iranian revolution ocurred, the only ones to fill the vacuum left by the authoritarian regime of the Shah, our pal, were the ayatollahs. Year by year, in Iran, their power fades. That was, until a few weeks ago. North Korea was on the verge of being less belligerent, but Bush scrapped everything Clinton worked on with them simply because it was a Clinton administration plan.
Bush wants war. Lots of people want more war. Interestingly, Powell is the only voice saying "Wait a minute. If there's an alternative, we should go for that." That's because Powell was a soldier himself. He's seen it. He knows what it means. I find it interesting that whose who are chomping at the bit to create wars needlessly have never served in the military, and find it all to easy to commit my friends and neighbors in the armed forces to wars that don't need to be fought.
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The president of one of the companies I worked for used to give all PM's a copy of the movie "Memphis Belle", and explain to them that they are now the pilot of a B-29 and their project is analagous to running a bombing raid and getting their plane back in one piece...
If you have a PM who's in there trying to solve technical problems, in there writing code, then you have a role problem, in that they're not being a project manager, but a team member, and there is a conflict there...
This whole debate about whether PM's should be technical is immaterial. Good PM's actually know the fundamentals of project management, which is a discipline in it's own right. If you know your project management, you don't need to be technical to manage a software project. If you don't know your project management, then being technical won't help you at all.
Let me explain something: If you catch one of your so-called "project managers" using Microsoft Project to create tasks and schedules, without having planned this all out beforehand, then they don't know what they are doing. Tools like MS Project are great for *tracking* a project's progress, but they are not a substitute for group planning. The planning phase of a project involves not only the team responsible for developing the project, but *everyone* who is involved at *any* stage of the project. Projects are planned in rooms with white boards and lots of Post-Its, and this should all be done *before* you even open MS Project or other similar tool. Software projects are planned by teams, not by one person guesstimating what needs to be done and then arbitrarily entering them in to PM software.
Also, I noticed that someone was comparing software projects to structural engineering projects, and mentioned the technical competency of the PM better be there in terms of knowledge about physics, etc. That's only half the story: structural engineering project managers have to study to become project managers. This is unlike software companies, where project managers are often promoted from the ranks of developers. You would not want the project manager of a bridge to have been just promoted from within the ranks of the construction crews without formal training, yet many software outfits promote people to PM status with no training at all. That's the problem with software project managers (or many of them)...
It was during the Manhattan Project that the first applications of the social sciences were applied to organizations. This was the first topic in my Organizational Behavior class (I'm studying for my MBA)...
Actually, that's kind of a soft rule. While it is technically bad grammar, you may end a sentence with a preposition if it makes the flow of the sentence work, or if you're writing fiction and are striving for an idiomatic effect.
The sentence you are responding to is totally legit, even though it ends in a propostion.
Since it's obvious that the heads of these regulatory agencies are mainly out to line their pockets, I don't think it would be too out of line to say "Hey, go find a position in an industry *other* than the one you just finished regulating."
If you pay Salon money, the ads go away.
Actually, what you're talking about is called "at-will" employment. That's the basic contract that says "We don't need a reason to fire you and you don't need a reason to quit." To my knowledge, however, the "at-will" contract has not been fully put through all it's legal paces yet, and at some point in the future, some judge or jury may decide that they're not worth the paper they're printed on.
"Right-to-work" refers to unions. In a right-to-work state, an employee at a union shop does not have to join the union in order to work there, and the union can't force them to join.
Get your terminology straight before you start calling people dumbass, you dumbass.
That's more or less the point that Steve Jobs was trying to make when he responded to Michael Eisner's statements regarding the CD burning phenomenon.
Jobs' essential point was, "Hey, if your business model can't change to account for CD burning and MP3 swapping, then perhaps you don't deserve to be in that business anymore."
Record labels, publishers and artists will have to adapt to changing technology. You can't put the genie back in the bottle, so either the record companies will adapt, or be driven out of business by the ones who do, and the new companies that haven't even been founded yet but will be when they come up with a better was of handling the recording arts industry.
All these legal wranglings are simply the status quo acting to stave off the inevitable changes that will occur in this industry vis a vis the technological realities that they face. They did the same thing with recordable cassette tapes, and they eventually resolved that issue as well.
I'll take it a step further. College professors routinely package articles, excerpts and other previously published material in reading packets for their classes.
Please tell me the difference between doing this and burning CD mixes or even entire discs for your own personal use, or as a favor to a friend, aside from the fact that the distribution scale is much lower with the CDs you might burn versus reading packets. If you're not selling it, what's the problem?
A 35 year old having sex with a 17 year old may be a different story.
Why? If the 17 year-old wants and consents to sexual relations with a 35-year-old, what's wrong with that? How much older than a person do you have to be before it becomes somehow criminal? If it's consentual, then sex is between the participants. Period. It's not for anyone else to decide what is and is not ok. If both parties agree, then there's really nothing we can say. Even if the 35-year-old talks the 17-year-old into it, as long as there's no threat or coercion, the worst thing that can happen is that either one or both of the parties later regret it.
My uncle was molested by his mother. It happens. May not be as common, but it happens.
However, I have a friend who is a Deputy DA in a Bay Area county who explained to me that hardly anyone is ever prosecuted under those specific parts of the law. Just isn't worth their time. They'll pursue cases of coercion, rape, etc. but consensual relations between minors, although technically illegal, is simply not regarded as a law enforcement priority of any kind.
More than that, Rehnquist himself defined a strict constructionist as "Someone who favors the prosecution in criminal cases, and the defendant in civil cases."
However, many African nations have begun to implement small-scale local solutions to problems that plague them. Villages now install solar cells to power themselves, rather than relying on the power grid and centralized power plants that need to be built by large multinationals.
This is but one example, but it is encouraging news. It shows that these nations are willing to look at cheaper, more effective local solutions. It suggests that when they finally get around to worrying about software and technology infrastructure, they may consider the cheaper alternative that fits within their meager budgets and has the added benefit of keeping the talent and expertise at home, rather than all the experts and capital leaving the country once the project is finished.
UFT= unified field theory
TOR= Theory of Relativity
You know, I think they meant "gigawatts" and they were just mispronouncing it. Does anyone know what the script says?
I thought "To Die For" was pretty great. Kidman can be good. I'm sorry you didn't understand "Eyes Wide Shut".
We don't nationalize healthcare because in other countries it has failed to provide the level of care that we get in the US. In general we have better care because it is not nationalized
Unless, of course, you don't have health insurance. While it may be true that countries (and that's most countries) that have national health care may not have the best of the best, at least you can get it if you need it. People in the US who don't have insurance, or cannot afford it, don't get the benefits of our high standard of health care. What about them? National health care would at least ensure that people can get health care without having to resort to the emergency room when things get so bad they can't be ignored.
Initiatives for a national health care system were derailed in the early 90's by insurance companies using scare tactics, plain and simple. As someone who had to go without health insurance for a while, a national system would have taken quite a load off my mind.
What bothers me the most about living in the US is how everything has to be a business. Education, health care, utilities, why does everything have to make a profit? Not everything that we do has to be a money-making enterprise. Not everything that's worth doing is worth doing for money.
Still is.
Yeah, but was yours an RPN model? Mine was. RPN rocks.
I don't know how AOL users fail to be insulted by their cutesy, PlaySkool approach to GUI design, but there you have have it. It's #1 because it's "easy to use". I have a friend who uses AOL because she thinks it's "easier" than clicking the dial-up icon. AOL is not any easier to use than a run-of-the mill dialup connection, but since they say its the easiest, it must be.
When more and more people get broadband connections, the ease-of-use argument will go away, and then AOLs user base will consist mainly of fat-butted housewives who like the bubble buttons.
I would have written it Hal'Kalash, just to make sure I got that glottal stop in there. You can't have a semitic language without that famous glottal stop!
So glibly you make this reference to the "Philanderer in Chief".
Maybe you don't know, but there was this deal made between the Reagan campaign and the Iranians to keep the hostages longer so that Carter would look bad. Are you convieniently forgetting the death squads in Central America that were illegally funded by the CIA at the direction of Reagan and Bill Casey?
But somehow, Clinton's sexual escapades make him worse than Hitler, Stalin and Mao all wrapped in to one? Your ignorance astounds me. If our civilian and military infrastructure was weakened by any single administration in the last 20 years, you can look to Reagan. Because of their back-door shenanigans, there was a backlash against our intelligence agencies. That is what weakened their effectiveness, not Clinton's philandering.
"Nothing fails like prayer."
It's not shocking that the DOD is working up new plans for the use of nukes. I'm sure they do it every couple of years or so.
What does shock me is that Bush and Co. seem so eager to find a situation in which to use nuclear weapons. Wasn't it just a few weeks ago that Bush stated in his State of the Union that countries that pursue development of weapons of mass destruction are members of this "Axis of Evil"? What does that make us if we're doing the same thing? I know, I know, we're different because we're good and they are evil.
I was all for the US and allies going in to Afghanistan. The Taliban were an odious regime and should have been deposed by an international force years ago. But up until 9-11, they were our pals. Up until the invasion of Kuwait, Saddam Hussein was our pal. When the Iranian revolution ocurred, the only ones to fill the vacuum left by the authoritarian regime of the Shah, our pal, were the ayatollahs. Year by year, in Iran, their power fades. That was, until a few weeks ago. North Korea was on the verge of being less belligerent, but Bush scrapped everything Clinton worked on with them simply because it was a Clinton administration plan.
Bush wants war. Lots of people want more war. Interestingly, Powell is the only voice saying "Wait a minute. If there's an alternative, we should go for that." That's because Powell was a soldier himself. He's seen it. He knows what it means. I find it interesting that whose who are chomping at the bit to create wars needlessly have never served in the military, and find it all to easy to commit my friends and neighbors in the armed forces to wars that don't need to be fought.