Is there a joke in the comic anywhere? This is just an average morning in consulting.
My favorite is when project managers try to tell you it will be easier with more people.
For some things that’s true.
But for some, it really just takes a while.
I tried to explain to a PM that maybe we should ask his wife next time if she can split up her pregnancy between two women. Baby could be born in half the time.
He didn’t appreciate my feedback and wrote me up for it. Probably my proudest moment.
He’d never heard it? That’s like the oldest joke in project management…
The Ringelmann effect is the tendency for individual members of a group to become increasingly less productive as the size of their group increases
I’m not saying this for all instances. Maybe I’ve been fortunate. 100% of project managers I’ve worked alongside looked for parallel paths, and that’s their job. But once the feedback from tech SME is that these are linear dependencies, they said okay. Let’s move to discuss how to communicate this to leadership and customer.
My personal experience. Your mileage obviously may vary greatly. But a PM that doesn’t understand the mythical man month, isn’t much of a PM. Or even a competent team member.
The story I shared was from a terrible PM.
I’ve had great PMs and they understood their role well. Their job was to help communicate to the stakeholders what’s needed and why it’s taking so long.
They are far few in between. But when you have a good one, you can’t imagine your life without one.
wrote me up for it
Uh, that’s not a thing that matters. Unless you were going to be fired anyway. But also, don’t talk about people’s significant others at all.
That’s pretty much all this cartoon ever is … just states some obvious fact about office life involving stupid demanding bosses.
For most people, it’s a mildly funny observation on office life.
For project managers, it’s a statement on the nature of business and a testament to the banality of life itself.
I’m guessing you’re a project manager?
For you the joke isn’t in the comic, it’s in the mirror.
me: “then why don’t you assign this task to them”
bos: “nobody wants and/or is capable of doing this task except you”
me: “…”
I get that at work too and often it’s a trust issue. The other fella could get it done faster, but could he get it done equally well? Support time will eat future development time.
This is like when the customer loudly proclaims they can get the item cheaper somewhere else, and just stare at you like a cow in a field when you say they should go there then
Heard from management: We need more accurate estimates.
I think they forgot what estimate means.
It is not possible to give more accurate estimates.
Yes we understand it is not possible, but we really really want more accurate estimates so you need to make more accurate estimates.
Would keep adding a week until they got the message.
And for good reason. The estimate will usually get longer because the more you look the more tasks, questions and dependencies you find. I’m starting to think they don’t want accuracy at all.
It will definitely be done by… mashes buttons on calculator … the heat death of the universe
Well, maybe
Engineers: We need more accurate SOWs and less feature creep.
Management: Please add this other feature in the same time period
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I’ve always tried to estimate more time than I think a task will take unless I know it’s only like a simple task.
If I think it will take a few hours, I estimate a day. A day or so is 3. 3 or more becomes a week.
I’ve ran into way to many tasks somone else blindly put at a day and when we start to work the ticket we descover a ton of complications. I’ve seen so many 1-3 point tickets I’ve seen take multiple weeks because nobody thought about how deep the rabbit hole could go.
I also really like when they ask for an estimate on brand-new tech. How much time? I really, truly don’t know, because I’ve literally never worked with it in my life, nor anybody at the company. It could take 2 days or 2 weeks. Let’s just say I’ll tell you when I’m finished.
Ideally, tell them it will take 3 times your estimate and do it in 2 times your estimate. You’ll either look fast or correct.
Always multiply your estimates by a factor of 4, so you can gain a reputation as a miracle worker
That’s a rookie move. 2 hours can easily turn into 8 hours. If that happens, you still have to work on other things too. For a two hour task estimate a week. Two weeks to test and fix it when it breaks.
Never give firm estimates. It’s done when it’s done. Feel free to check in.
Customers kinda want to know in advance if a task will take 2 hours or 200 hours in advance
“adding a button to the front page? Yeah, it will definitively take less than 6 months to make. No promises though.”
The button must identity if there’s pigeon in the picture
Spitball. Keep’em posted. Be honest.
But nothing firm.
As someone who has been doing this for two decades, I disagree. Give a firm estimate, and always deliver before you said you would, just make sure you pad the fuck out of that estimate so that it would be virtually impossible not to accomplish it.
That one hits home.
“why don’t you listen to what you just said in your head, and let’s start this conversation over from before going into it with the wrong attitude” is a more polite version of “the fuck did you just say? Start over and drop the bullshit at the door.”
And I wholeheartedly recommend using it if the occasion pops up. It’s not rude, not confrontational, allows the person who said the dumb thing to hopefully realize their mistake and brush it off without being directly called on it. Any supervisor that is worth working for won’t bring it up again.
