Project management experience (Microsoft-Stephen Maguire)

Chapter 1. foundation of effective teams

1. Focus on Improving Products

The company pays the designers to develop excellent websites at reasonable time, but the designers are often occupied by other things.

The typical situation is that the designer needs to spend a lot of time preparing for meetings, attending meetings, reading and writing meeting records and progress reports, and replying to emails. These tasks cannot improve the work of the website, although some of them are self-developed by the designer, a larger part is the command provided by the Project Manager.

Although the project manager's intention is good, it violates the basic code of the Project Manager: the task of the project manager is to work hard to eliminate all obstacles to the designer's work, let designers focus on what really matters-website development.

This is not a shock to the world, but a simple truth, but how many project managers do it?

2. eliminate interference

If you want the team to complete the website within the deadline, you must try to eliminate unnecessary work. Before you assign a job to a group member, may you ask yourself, is this job really necessary for everyone to do? As a project manager, you must always ask yourself a question: "What is the purpose of my efforts ?"

It is common to ask team members to write reports. 8 hours a day, probably 4 hours spent on writing reports. However, normal development work has to work overtime.

Do not misunderstand what I mean. I am not saying that no progress report is required. I just remind the project managers not to pay too much attention to the "Project Process" and ignore the real product-your website. One of my experiences is: using a new method to understand the progress is easy to write, and it takes no time.

1) when a designer completes a function (sub-project), an internal email is sent to everyone;

2) When the project progress may lag behind, I will discuss the solution in private.

3. Define goals

What are specific goals? In fact, it is not necessarily profound, as long as it is detailed enough to ensure that the project is in the correct direction. Generally, a detailed project goal can be formulated as long as the project leader takes a few hours or days. For example:

Goal 1: create a website with the subject of website project management. Rating: The target has been clearly defined, but it is still not detailed enough.

Objective 2: To provide a communication platform for website project management fans. Rating: The target targets the service objects and main functions. But it does not reflect the deep purpose of building a website.

Objective 3: to provide a platform for website project management fans to learn and communicate with each other and to jointly develop detailed standards. Rating: the goal is clear, indicating the service object, the main function and the purpose of the website.

After the goal is determined, we will stick to this general direction, and we will be the first to achieve the goal, such as forums and specifications.Article. It has nothing to do with the goal or has little to do with it. It can be avoided or postponed, such as talent exchange and beautiful interfaces.

4. design priorities

We need to establish the following basic concepts: the project objectives guide the project direction, and the design consideration sequence affects the design process.

Different projects have different priorities. Generally,ProgramThe priority table for design consideration is:
1) Size)
2) Speed
3) Security
4) Testability
5) easy to maintain
6) Concise
7) Reuse
8) portability
In addition to priorities, you should also establish quality standards for various considerations. If you can determine the most appropriate priority in advance and establish quality standards, the team will not waste time and the overall style of the website will be consistent.
Chapter 2 effective operation methods

1. When to modify the error?

Microsoft's experience is: (1 ). the later the bug is cleared, the more time it takes; (2 ). immediately remove insects during the development process, so that you can learn the experience earlier without making the same mistake; (3 ). if there are no errors, You can accurately estimate the project completion time. Therefore, designers should regard finding errors as an important thing and do not delay for any reason.

2. Email time traps

The reply email should be done in batches. You can go to work early, take a break at noon, or take a look at it before work, but don't keep reading emails if you have something to do.

3. Methods for sharing

As a supervisor, you should encourage the team members to propose suggestions for improving work efficiency. It is also important to guide the team members in thinking. For example, the following two questions:

A. Why is the Progress always lagging behind?

B. Is there any way to avoid future lags?

The possible answer to the first question is: too much work is required, tools are too difficult to use, and the boss is an idiot. The second answer may be: reduce the dependency on work, purchase better tools and enhance communication with the boss.

The two problems have different directions. The first is to explore the causes and lead to complaints. The second is the future improvement method and the solution.

The more accurate the problem is, the more powerful the problem is. The more beneficial it is to achieve the project goal. Let's look at three questions:

A. How to keep the project completed on schedule?

B. How to complete the project on schedule without working overtime?

C. How to complete the task on schedule without working overtime or increasing manpower?

The third question force everyone to think creatively and seriously review what is worth improving. A more accurate question can stimulate the thinking process and stimulate more creative answers.

4. Meaningless punishment

Punishment is a kind of psychological reinforcement. Punishment is a scolding, reprimand, and threat to employees, just like sending a horse to obey the commands of the master. This kind of management means should be condemned. If the supervisor intends to make the team members work harder, it would be a big mistake. Such scolding can only arouse the anger, annoyance, and frustration of the team members. In fact, the problems of these projects are often in the management aspect. The goal is unclear or the ambition is too big. Designers just encounter bad supervisors. In fact, their abilities are not inferior to those of designers in other projects. Therefore, give up scolding. scolding will only make the project worse, and there is absolutely no improvement effect.

Chapter 3: Keep progress

Even the most smooth project can't be executed as planned. However, if you let the plan go, one day you suddenly find that the project is too remote to complete. The project is like a rocket targeting the moon. If there is not enough precision, it will not be able to hit the target at that time. Intelligent supervisors know this truth. They often pay attention to the accuracy of the project, correct the direction at any time, and keep the project from deviating from the plan. This chapter describes some effective policies to help you maintain the project progress.

1. Looking forward

I have always believed that the main reason for project derailment is that people are not seriously thinking about how to keep the project running smoothly. It would be too late to wait for the problem to happen if there were no preparations. I didn't spend 30 minutes thinking about this issue a month ago. Now it may take several hours or days to fix it. This is the so-called "passive work ".
To solve this kind of passive work, we can turn passive into active ones, discover potential problems in advance, and try to avoid them. There are a lot of ways and techniques to train yourself to "look forward", but in summary it is just a simple decision: regularly pause the work at hand, then think forward, and make necessary corrections at any time, to avoid major obstacles in the future.

I have been using it for more than ten years. I spend 10 to 15 minutes every day thinking about the following questions and listing the answer: What can I do today, what's more, it can help the project go smoothly in the next few months?

2. Clearly define the scope of requirements

People may not ask for what they really want. Before dealing with his requirements, be sure to determine what he wants to do.

During website project development, customers or leaders often encounter strange demands. Once, the chief designer came to me in a panic and told me that the customer was in trouble. The customer was not satisfied with the newly designed interface and required the same design as a famous website. If this is the case, it will take another week to complete it. However, the deadline is very short. After listening to his statement, I must admit that if we do that, our progress will be finished, and I am also curious about why the customer has such a requirement, so before I reply to them, ask the customer manager to find out the reason for this requirement. In a short time, the customer manager came back with a smile.

"They just took a fancy to the dynamic drop-down menu of the website and thought it was quite attractive"

Well, I know what he is laughing at. We have already had a ready-made template for such a dynamic menu. just replace it with the existing design. Our designers are not clear about the customer's preferences.

Most customers do not explain the reason when making a request. This is too common, and even your management will do the same. If you cannot see their purpose from their requests, you can ask them not to accept them rashly until they have figured out what they want to do, we 'd rather reject their requests than waste such time.

3. No

When a customer or superior has unreasonable demands, the Project Manager may reluctantly agree to their requirements. Due to some pressure, supervisors prefer to consult people rather than stick to the best choice for the entire product or their own team.

Sometimes, the other party's request may be very reasonable, and you want to agree, but because your schedule is full, you can't help it, and you have to say "no" to them ". However, in my experience, many supervisors still accept such requests in order to avoid conflicts. They just don't know how to complete these tasks on schedule. I just want to talk about it later, the ship is naturally straight to the bridge head. In fact, things are rarely so easy-if the ship carries too many goods, it means that the ship's hull is straight and it cannot go through the bridge.

These supervisors do not understand and are reluctant to take over the tasks that they cannot accomplish. It is really a long pain instead of a short pain. At that time, they cannot be completed on schedule. Unfortunately, the entire team must work overtime. Therefore, the best way is to honestly take your schedule, and explain your remaining strength to the customer or superior, and try to arrange a compromise on the schedule or work content. This is much better than the result of making a request without any conditions.

4. You cannot satisfy everyone

As a project supervisor, you must understand the truth: If you want everyone to be satisfied, you will be overwhelmed and cannot do anything.

Remember: Do not hurt the work process to favor others. You should always make appropriate decisions based on your own goals.

Similarly, you should consider the advice to your superiors before making a decision. The project objectives should be given the highest priority. I do not advocate resistance to authority, but emphasize that superiors are also people and may make mistakes. Their suggestions are not necessarily the best. If you want to be a good supervisor, you must carefully measure all the suggestions. No matter who makes the suggestions, you must determine that they meet the project objectives before adoption.

If the superior asks you to do something and you think it is inappropriate, you should explain your thoughts to the superior before proceeding, maybe the superior will give up his suggestion after agreeing with your idea. Maybe the superior will approve your idea, but please still consider his opinion, no matter what the result is, at least communication is helpful to each other.

Remember: you are responsible for the project. Do not let anyone's suggestions hinder the Project, including suggestions from superiors.

The key to ensuring that the project goes as planned is that the project manager fully understands what to do and prevents improper interference.