Quality of Project Management

Introduction

There is a bad trend in the field of project management, that is, many people gradually lose themselves. In the field of sociology, if we believe more in theory than ourselves, it means that we begin to make mistakes. Project management is a different discipline from natural sciences such as mathematics. In mathematics, once someone proves that 1 + 1 = 2, this rule can be universally applied. However, project management is not good. A said that he had achieved great success by providing guidance in some way, but B may say that he has also used it, which is basically useless, however, they may be right at the same time. Although project management itself is not mysterious, it happens to have several layers of mysterious veil. to unveil this type of veil, we start from the essence of project management.

Essence of Project Management

The fundamental purpose of project management is to maintain the efficiency and stability of the team at the high end.

The significance of stability is that short-term goals need to be balanced with longer-term goals. The two different types of project management failures are "growth encouragement" and "beautiful future.

High-end means that the overall performance of the team is greater than the total performance of all individuals.

To achieve the above purpose, all management methods must be based on the characteristics of the project management, that is, the object to be managed: the basic characteristics of people and projects.

For a software project, the basic characteristics of the project are gradually reflected only after the participants are recognized. Therefore, people are almost everything in software project management.

For a team, the opportunity to improve performance lies in whether or not the performance of people can be improved. This is almost a final conclusion. Regardless of the computer's computing speed, the computer itself will never become the core competitiveness of the enterprise, and only the ability to calibrate.

While human beings are capable of coordination, integration, judgment, and imagination (creation), they may also have a negative consciousness that computers do not possess, such as negative, rejection, laziness, and so on. This makes the team ecology very different and has a very large scaling space for efficiency. While the team ecosystem can be guided, only management is the means to maintain the team ecosystem.

It is also because of the previous article that it was emphasized that it is the fundamental mission of project management to create an ecosystem and maintain the efficiency of the team on the high end for a long time.

In the process of fulfilling this mission, the value created by the project management itself can be reflected in the following two aspects:

On the one hand, in the management process, we can use measures such as supervision, punishment, criticism, and encouragement to curb negative emotions of people, so as to suppress the negative effects of internal consumption and ultimately create an ecosystem. In this ecosystem, all people are not only responsible for what they do, but also take the initiative to work to improve the efficiency of everyone.

On the other hand, once the above ecosystem can be achieved, the team will have a deeper understanding of the features of the project. After integrating this understanding into the management work, it will avoid a waste of time, ultimately, the goal of team performance is greater than the sum of individual performance.

The impact of management on the above two aspects is reflected in the various aspects of the project. Here are two examples:

Example 1:
Project-related elements often form a certain causal relationship. If such a causal relationship is chaotic, it will lead to idle or rework, and thus reduce the efficiency. Assume that the purchase is required for developing a program.
The purchase period of a device is one month. If you purchase a device in advance, the project will be smooth, but if you realize that you need to purchase the device before use, it is likely that all team members
It takes one month to wait.

Example 2:
The abilities, interests, and areas of expertise of the project personnel are different. If the project is executed to a certain extent, it is discovered that a person is doing a job that is not suitable for him at all, undoubtedly, the efficiency of the team will be reduced.
All problems in any project have the characteristics of Time and Space. Most of the time, problems are detected and dealt with early, and the cost is always found later. After the problem has become serious, the problem should be solved, low cost.

Whether or not the above two types of problems can be realized and pre-matched depends largely on the management of the created ecology.

Therefore, management can generate value mainly from the above two aspects.

In turn, if everyone is interested in working and enthusiastic, the value of management will be greatly reduced.

The article "Cathedral and market" specifically mentions management. After listing some basic management tasks (such as setting goals, monitoring, incentives, organizations, and resource monitoring, eric Steven Raymond said:

Obviously, all these goals are valuable. However, in the open-source mode and its social context, these goals will become surprisingly unreliable.

Eric Steven Raymond's statement is slightly exaggerated, because in that mode, basic management tasks such as task allocation are hard to be ignored, but it at least indicates that in some situations, management does not always have definite value.

However, in non-open-source communities, most of the time, some preconditions preset by Raymond are only ideal, so the management value is highlighted. We need to admit that in most teams in reality, the degree of investment in work and the understanding of the characteristics of the project are often insufficient.

In the cocomo model, multiple factors are related to one another. The major problems in the software industry are essentially focused on sociology rather than science and technology. In fact, these ideas are not in conflict with Raymond's views, all emphasize the importance of people in management. In reality, management is the main means of influencing people's efficiency.

It is often mentioned that the essence of project management is to make the project successful. In fact, this understanding is biased. Project Management never guarantees project success. It can only increase the chance of project success.

Because project management is ultimately responsible for efficiency, project management is essentially a practice rather than a theory. The criteria for determining the success or failure of project management should be performance, rather than matching a specific knowledge (such as cmme.

Principles of Project Management

Economists Cairns once said: the power of economists and political scientists is often unexpected. In fact, only these ideas govern the world.

This passage tells us a basic rule in the real society. History is created by people, while the direction of people is determined by thoughts. Therefore, it is still thought that ultimately influences the world process.

The project is also a human activity, so it cannot escape this rule, so the Project ManagementThe first principle is what kind of spirit the team needs. Based on this spirit, we can also deduce the code of conduct that everyone needs to abide.

When it comes to spirit or consciousness, topics are easily dispersed. Here is a reference for gathering topics.

The team spirit mentioned here can be very simple. For most teams, two points may be sufficient: responsibility and initiative.

A sense of responsibility is a kind of spirit that strives to do what you do well. At the same time, a sense of responsibility is also a prerequisite for mutual trust.

Initiative is a spirit of independent thinking. We face unknown problems independently and find out the answer, even if this is not within the scope of our responsibilities.

Although the spirit affects various activities in the project at all levels, the spirit never exists independently from the foundation of reality. Otherwise, the spirit will inevitably become a slogan. That is to say, it is not enough to have a good team spirit in the real operation of the project. We also need to solve such problems during the project operation.

Different people, different cultural backgrounds, and different fields of knowledge lead to different possible problems, which leads to that for management, universal rules always have only reference value, it is almost inevitable that universal rules can be used to solve all problems.

Therefore, the second principle of project management is:Do not blindly start from the objective environment, start from the reality, start from the specific problem, think independently, and take measures to solve the problem.

What we don't blindly say is not to trust this book or what it says. The content in the book will always be used for reference. Only when the body of the book integrates the knowledge in the book can the content in the book play a positive role in reality. Any methodology has its own roots and rationality. But the fact is that the two methodologies cannot be implemented at the same time. Which one do you choose?

Starting from the objective environment, Company A should face up to the reality. In the same case, Company A will succeed in the method, but company B may fail in the use. Ignoring these differences, it is wrong and dangerous to simply apply the ideas and concepts in pmbook or cmme.

Starting from the problem, we need to first find out what the essence of your problem is. For example, the core problem of Company A may be that the coding capability of the staff is insufficient. At this time, you need to use the process to solve the problem, isn't it the north?

In terms of management itself, the scope of work is often not constant, but restricted by the characteristics of people and projects.

For example, a team is mainly composed of scientists such as Einstein, whose research subject is whether the universe is bounded and infinite. Another team is mainly composed of technicians whose purpose is to produce the main board at the appointed time. Obviously, when managing these two teams, the details of the process, the degree of freedom of time of the personnel, and the team culture must be different. Otherwise, the project will be damaged.

In reality, the difference in Project characteristics and personnel between different software projects is not as big as that between the research team and the production team, but after all there are differences, this difference cannot be ignored.

This requires that the project management should eventually reach a kind of status, namely, not just the top, not the book, but the only reality.

When we apply the second principle to solve the problem, we will inevitably find that to solve the problem, we must first understand each other among the team members. Soldiers may not know the cause of many problems.

If a manager understands his team, the result is always twice the result with half the effort. But at this time, things also tend to be dangerous. Under such conditions, once a manager's choice tends to be utilitarian, lack of sincerity, lack of a win-win philosophy, it will be difficult to obtain support in the long term. In any cooperation, if one party's success is always on the premise of sacrificing the interests of the other party, and it is a kind of relationship between you and me, then such cooperation will inevitably be difficult for a long time. Sometimes, management can be seen as a collaboration between managers and managers.

A person with an incorrect mind may think of deception in this case, but in the face of time, secrets often do not become secrets.

Therefore, the third principle can be derived:We sincerely stick to the "win-win" philosophy and fairly resolve the affairs in the team.

Here, win-win refers to a win-win situation for individuals and projects.

Fairness has two meanings: one is the fairness between individuals and projects; the other is the fairness between team members and team members when handling internal affairs. The two meanings of fairness actually constitute the basis for a win-win situation.

Management can be roughly divided into two parts: one is biased towards technology, and the other is biased towards cultural construction. Biased towards technical scale estimation, task breakdown, calendar creation, progress tracking, reporting, etc. If you prefer culture, you need team building and culture building. However, for that part, what is lacking is often not a specific method, but a selection principle. This section is called the project management principle.

Summary

Management is actually not mysterious, but it will inevitably go astray if you start learning from PMBOK. In the final analysis, PMBOK focuses on management methods rather than the soul. Only these methods are enough if you really want to eliminate your passion. However, in reality, we may not see such a scene, so we must return to the origin to re-understand the project management, and then we can be able to control the many methods mentioned in PMBOK.

Finally, let's add one point. Click here and think about the entire space system.

Reposted from: leezy_2000 blog