newest technologies often forget about little things like

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Says the Cranky Product Manager, those obsessed with the newest technologies often forget aboutlittle things like deadlines. This thing needs to be DONE in two weeks and we don’t have time for thedeveloper to learn the latest resume-enhancing technology on the job while that clock is ticking,” sheexplains.

This phrase often goes hand-in-hand with “Let’s use this new, untested method instead,” when“untested” anything can be the bane of any project manager’s existence, says Thomas Cutting, aproject manager who blogs at Cuttings Edge.

5. “I was too busy firefighting to finish.” More than a ‘dog ate my homework’-level excuse,employees assigned to projects that are only one piece of their grueling jobs is an unfortunate reality that project manager constantly deal with.

“I’d hear all the time that they had to put out a fire in their day job and they couldn’t meet thedeliverable on your project,” explained Nehme Abouzeid, who spent more than four years as projectmanager before becoming the assistant director of business development at Las Vegas Sands. “At theheart of it, most people on your projects don’t report to you all the time, and you can’t control theirschedules or blame them if they are stuck doing their other work… You will really need to use every trick in your arsenal to work around these limitations.”

6. “I’ve been reassigned.” It always happens to the person you need the most.

“You’re on a very important project and you come into work one day and your chief architect says‘I’ve now been assigned to Project X and it’s been nice working with you,” said Fichtner, somethingthat can set a project back weeks or months while the project manager scrambles to find a fittingreplacement.

7. “Let’s add more people to this!” Published first in 1975, The Mythical Man Month was written by a software project manager at IBM. The central teaching of the book was that adding more peopleto a project that is already behind schedule will make it later, but despite these warnings, projectmanagers are often told that this will be the solution to their scheduling problems.

“1 programmer for 12 months does not equal 12 programmers for 1 month,” reads the book’sintroduction. “The performance of programming teams, in other words, does not ’scale’… The way toget a project back on schedule is to remove promised-but-not-yet-completed features, rather thanmultiplying worker bees. ”

8. “It would be technically impossible.” Phrases like this are all smoke and mirrors, says oneproject manager.

“When a developer claims that something is ‘technically impossible,’ in my experience, developersonly claim that the really boring stuff is technically impossible,” explains The Cranky ProductManager.

“Saying something is ‘technically impossible’ makes marketing and non-tech types shake in their boots. … Perhaps the way the developer thinks is the ideal is technically impossible, but almostalways the customer requirements can be met via a different, more earth-bound implementation.”

9. “Do you want full functionality or on time?” Telling a project manager that they need tochoose between quality and executing on time is the quickest way to put them in a really bad mood,says Saeed Khan, a project management veteran who blogs at On Product Management.

“I’ve heard, look, we can deliver on time or with full functionality, or with high quality. Which ONEdo you want?” says Khan. “Answer: I want a new development team that has a clue.”

10. “It’s not really what I expected.” Though it sounds just like that comic strip where the

of 310 things your IT project manager never wants to hear | The IT Grind | ZDNet.com

28/7/2008http://blogs.zdnet.com/careers/?p=133



customer is billed for a roller coaster but only needed a tire swing, these words come out all the timein the final unveiling.

“If this happens, you’re not doing a good job because it should have happened a lot earlier, first walk-through show preliminary results to customer. Once the house is built, it’s a lot more of a disaster,like one of those redecorating shows where people are shown their redesigned living room and hateit,” said Fichtner.

Are there any they’ve missed?Deb Perelman is a journalist in New York City with a focus on tech and the daily grind. See her full profile anddisclosure of her industry affiliations.

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of 310 things your IT project manager never wants to hear | The IT Grind | ZDNet.com

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newest technologies often forget about little things like

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