New software project manager on the road (8)-fans of the deadline

The deadline is beyond the reach of every project manager.

1. Little story

Zhang Li is a newly released project manager. After the Spring Festival at the end of February, Zhang started the C Project, which is an integral part of a large project. In early March, the leader confirmed that the delivery period for large projects was middle April. Zhang Lijie is broken, and the project process, personnel, and technology are all new. She is not sure to guarantee the delivery of the project. Instructor Zhang gave her an idea to accept the goal delivered by the leader in middle April, but to break down the goal and check whether the goal can be achieved every half month. Zhang Li reports the actual progress and obstacles to the leaders every 30 months. Project C was not completed on schedule in middle April, and the entire project was not completed on schedule. The Leader proposed a new deadline. In May middle May, it was about to arrive in May middle May, but project C was stuck and the deadline could not be reached.

2. conventional ideas

The deadline reminds me of a classic problem. If you are a project manager and the project team is not able to finish the work before the deadline, you are:

1. prioritize projects and sacrifice people

2. Ensure people are given priority and sacrifice Projects

3. Both projects and people

For most project managers, the project is the main target of their services. Of course, it is the priority to ensure that the deadline is reached. Overtime has become a common means. Of course, this is also a favorite of many bosses, especially when they do not need to pay overtime. As a result, the project is urgent and overtime has become the norm of the IT industry.

3. Continue Thinking

There is indeed a deadline. It is appropriate to take overtime as an effective alternative and use it occasionally. However, the idea of confrontation between projects and people is actually ridiculous. The so-called project and deadline are nothing more than the expectations of the customer, the boss or market personnel, but still a human problem.

Unreasonable deadlines are often reflected in a culture of accountability that will eventually lead to local optimization. The members of the project are only responsible for their own scope. After completing their work, it is safe. It is also a problem for others to complete the entire project. When problems occur in the final stage, they are mutually motivated to take responsibility. Ultimately, it will damage the quality of project completion and lead to poor team morale.

Unreasonable deadlines also result in a reduction in communication. People tend to use documents to clarify the scope and responsibilities, resulting in more document work. The use of documents as the main communication tool will lead to a lot of misunderstandings, resulting in a lot of waste. The result is that the project is getting slower and slower. What should we do? Simple: to change this situation, the lead will propose a new deadline to pressurize the project team, resulting in more overtime. In the above C Project, the lead tried to set a deadline to accelerate product development, and finally failed to reach the goal.

4. Reference Cases

4.1Reference case 1

This is the first project that really makes sense when I started my business. When new technologies, new products, the first project implementation, and many other new situations lead to the launch, the entire invoicing system can only work with warehouse picking orders, and the internal accounting data is still wrong. What should I do? The deadline has come, and the only way to get online is to stick to your head. Our entire team is stationed at the customer's site, and sometimes the customer's business documents (only one warehouse picking ticket) can be used by manually modifying the data. After work, the team must work overtime to solve the problems exposed throughout the process and prepare the new features that the customer will use. The customer's middle-level and grass-roots personnel complained for days, but the leadership was still insisting (after the leadership, it was also frustrating ). During the entire month, I worked overtime and often stayed up all night. The project was finally able to run properly (there were no external problems, and there were still many internal data problems ).

This customer became the most firm customer in the company and cooperated well in the maintenance and upgrade process. Of course, there are more examples of failure in the deadline.

4.2Case 2

Project C adopts the SCRUM methodology for development, early determining the deadline for the first release and the main features to be released. As time approaches, the development progress of the project team is not as expected. Product owners and teams discuss the original main functions, but the implementation of the functions should be simplified as much as possible to reduce the workload. Even so, before the first release, the project team added two classes and reduced their communication, focusing on function implementation and bug fixing. Finally, the product was successfully released. After the release, the project team switched back to the normal working method and spent some time clearing the technical liabilities caused by the release as soon as possible.

4.3Case 3

The R project is a project that has lasted for many years. In essence, it is to repair and supplement a large system. The advantage is that the customer pays for it based on working hours. The working method is that the customer puts forward bugs or improvement requirements, the project team estimates and submits estimation documents, and the customer approves the documents and determines the deadline. The project team must release the documents on schedule. The project team tends to estimate the length, so that it can receive more money, of course, it must pass the customer's review. Occasionally, the demand is unclear. If the estimation is too short, you can only swallow your teeth in your stomach.

The project team has numerous specifications and tends to develop more. The popular accountability culture in the project team makes it a common practice to shirk responsibility among employees and customers.