Scott Berkun offers a great excerpt from his book Making Things Happen. He views project management as basically managing priorities:
- Everything can be represented in an ordered list. Most of the work of project management is correctly prioritizing things and leading the team in carrying them out.
- The three most basic ordered lists are: project goals (vision), list of features, and list of work items. They should always be in sync with each other. Each work item contributes to a feature, and each feature contributes to a goal.
And he has some excellent nuggets on management too:
- There is a bright yellow line between priority 1 work and everything else.
- Things happen when you say no. If you can’t say no, you effectively have no priorities.
- The PM has to keep the team honest and keep them close to reality.
- Knowing the critical path in engineering and team processes enables efficiency.
- You must be both relentless and savvy to make things happen.
Go and read it now and then send the link to the pointy-haired boss in your life.
If there are any computer savvy people who know how to create a website and compter game, e mail me. It would also help if you had sports knowledge, football in particular. I have an idea for an online game that I think could be pretty popular. I know a lot about the sport and how I would want the game to be setup. Let me know if your interested in being partners.
Well sometimes things just happen without our interference and we make them to stop. That is our priority … weird …
“Everything can be represented in an ordered list.” This is a good quotation that I can use with my situation right now.