Microsoft Senior Manager's website project management experience

Microsoft | project

This is the project management experience of Microsoft Senior project manager Stephen Maguire. Software development and Web site development have a very similar place, we can learn to understand a lot of knowledge.

Chapter One foundation of effective team

1, concentrate on improving products

Companies pay designers to develop quality websites at a reasonable time, but designers are often occupied by other things.

Typically, designers spend a lot of time preparing for meetings, attending meetings, reading and writing meetings and progress reports, replying to emails, and so on, which do not improve the work of the site, although some of them are the initiative of the designers themselves, but the larger part is the command of the project manager.

Although the project manager's intentions are good, they violate the project manager's basic code: The task of the project manager is to work hard to eliminate all obstacles to the designer's work, and to allow the designer to focus on what is really important work---website development.

This is not a shocking discovery of the world, just simple truth, but how many project managers do it?

2, the elimination of interference

If you want the team to complete the site within the deadline, it is important to eliminate all unnecessary work as much as possible. Before you assign a job to a team member, ask yourself, is this work 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 for the team members to write reports. Working 8 hours a day, it's possible to spend 4 hours writing a report. and the normal development work has to do overtime.

Please don't get me wrong, I'm not saying I don't need a progress report, just reminding the project managers not to focus too much on the "project process" and ignore the real product----your site. One of my tips is: Learn about progress in a new way, it's easy to write, and it doesn't take time.

1 When a designer completes a function (sub project), send an internal email to everyone;

2 when the project schedule may fall behind, and I communicate in private, discuss the solution.

　　3. Clear Target

What kind of goal is a clear goal? In fact, it is not necessarily profound, as long as the detailed enough to ensure that the project in the right direction can be. Typically, a project leader can develop a detailed project goal as long as it takes hours or days. For example, this site:

Goal 1: Create a website that is subject to site project management. Evaluation: The goal has been clearly defined, but it is still not detailed enough.

Goal 2: To provide an Exchange platform for website project management enthusiasts. Evaluation: The target locates the service object and the main function. But it does not reflect the deep purpose of our website creation.

Goal 3: To provide a learning exchange for website project management enthusiasts, and to work together to develop a detailed specification platform. Evaluation: A clear goal that identifies the object of service, the most important function and the purpose of the website itself.

After the goal is determined, we adhere to this general direction, which is conducive to achieving the goal of the first completion, such as: forum, normative articles. Unrelated to or not related to the goal, can not do or postpone doing, such as talent exchange, beautiful interface and so on.

4, the design is the first consideration

We need to establish the following basic concepts: project objectives to guide the direction of the project, and the design of the order to affect the design process.

Depending on the specific situation of each project, the priorities of the consideration are also different, and generally the priority table for programming considerations is:

1) Size (size)

2) Speed

3) Security

4) testability

5) Easy to maintain

6) Concise

7) Re-use sex

8) Portability

In addition to prioritizing the order, you should also establish quality specifications for the points of consideration. If you can determine the most appropriate order of priorities, and establish quality standards, the team will not waste time, the overall style of the site will be more consistent.

　　 Chapter II Effective mode of operation

1. When to modify the error

　　 Microsoft's Experience is: (1). The later the bug clears, the more time is spent, (2). Immediately after the development process to remove worms, you can learn early experience, and then do not make the same mistake; (3). If you can guarantee that there are no errors, you can accurately estimate the completion time of the project. Therefore, the designer should consider to find the mistake as an important thing, do not delay for any reason.

2, the time trap of email

Reply to the email to do in batches, a morning to work, noon break, or before work to see all can, but do not have nothing to keep watch email.

3, the method lets everybody share

As a supervisor, you should encourage your team members to suggest improvements in productivity. It is also important to guide the team to think. For example, the following two questions:

A. Why is progress always lagging behind?

B. What is the way to avoid future slippage?

The first possible answer is that there are too many interdependent jobs, tools too hard, bosses are idiots, and so on; the second answer may be: Reduce the interdependence of work, buy better tools, and strengthen communication with the boss.

The direction of the two problems is different, the first one is to explore the cause, lead the complaint, the second is the future improvement of the way to guide the solution.

The more accurate the problem, the more powerful the problem, the more useful it is to achieve the goal of the project, and let's look at three more questions:

A. How do I keep the project on schedule every time?

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

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

The third way to ask is to force people to come up with really creative thinking and a serious review of the work itself worthy of improvement. A more precise question than a single one can stimulate the process of thinking and inspire more creative answers.

4. Senseless Punishment

Punishment is a psychological negative reinforcement, punishment is to the staff scold, reprimand and threats, like the whip horse to make it obey the master's orders. Such management is reprehensible, and it would be a big mistake if executives were trying to make their team work harder. This kind of scolding will only arouse the anger, Xiunao and frustration of the team members. In fact, often the problems of these projects are in the management, the goal is not clear or too ambitious, the designer is only unlucky to encounter a bad supervisor, in fact, their ability is not worse than the other project designers. So give up scolding, scold will only make the project worse, absolutely no improvement effect.

　　 Chapter III Maintenance Progress

Even the most successful projects can not be implemented exactly as planned, but if you let the plan go on and on, one day you suddenly find that the project has been derailed too far, too late to complete. Project is like a rocket aimed at the moon, as long as there is a little less accurate, then can not hit the target, horseshoes, lost thousands of miles, it is really necessary to be cautious. Smart executives know this, they will often pay attention to the accuracy of the project, at any time to revise the direction, keep the project does not deviate from the plan. This chapter describes some of the most effective strategies to help keep your project up to speed.

1. Look ahead

I've always believed that the main reason the project went off the rails was because people didn't think hard about how to keep the project going. If there is no rainy day, just wait for the problem to happen, then it will be too late. Without spending 30 minutes thinking about the problem one months ago, it may be time to waste a few hours or days correcting it. This is called "passive work".

The solution to this passive work is to take the initiative, explore potential problems in advance, and try to avoid them. There are many ways and techniques to train yourself to "look forward", but summing up is simply a matter of saying: Periodically suspend the work at hand, then think ahead and make the necessary corrections to avoid the big obstacles in the future.

I've had more than ten years of habits, and spent 10-15 minutes a day thinking about the following questions and listing the answers: Is there anything I can do today that will help the project go smoothly in the next few months?

2, clearly define the scope of the requirements

When people ask for something that is not what he really wants, be sure to decide what he wants to do before dealing with his demands.

In the development of the website project, often meet the customer or leadership to put forward some strange needs. Once, the chief designer panicked ran to me, told me the trouble came, the customer is not satisfied with the interface of the new design, request according to a famous website to touch the same design. If you do, it will take another one weeks to make it, but it's a short time from now. After listening to his presentation, I have to admit that if we do that, our progress will be over, and I am curious as to why clients have such a requirement, so ask the account manager to understand the reason for this requirement before I answer them or not. A moment later, the client manager came back grinning.

"They just took a fancy to the dynamic Pull-down menu of the site and found it more appealing."

Oh, I know what he is laughing at, such a dynamic menu we actually already have ready-made template, as long as it replaces the existing design on it. And our designers are not sure about their customers ' preferences.

It's too common for most customers not to explain why when they ask for a demand, even if it happens to your management. If you can't see their purpose from their request, you can ask them not to say yes before you know exactly what you want to do, but rather to reject their request and not waste it.