Category: Project Management
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Choosing Manual Scheduled or Autoscheduled in Microsoft Project
A Microsoft Project task has many options and I am often asked how to choose the correct ones, Task Mode can be, “Auto Scheduled” or “Manual Scheduled” and task Type can be “Fixed Work”, “Fixed Units” or “Fixed Duration”. and Auto Scheduled tasks can be Effort Driven (or not) You can display these parameters for…
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How to build a 100 m skyscraper in 30 days
In the past I worked in project management in the construction industry and having seen the traditional process I find the idea of modular and factory building very attractive. Here is a video from a leading Chinese exponent. It is also a really interesting example of business model design. Mr Broad made air conditioning systems…
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Add Snagit printer to your workflow
I have just found out that Snagit printer can be of great benefit to project managers. As a project manager document control is a big part of what I do. Final versions of documents are always PDFs. One common problem is combining information from different Microsoft Office applications. Although pasting from Excel to Word has…
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Lean software development: Minimum Marketable Feature and Minimum Viable Product
In an earlier post I talked about Eric Reis’ game changing book The Lean Start-up and Minimum Viable Product. This excellent blog post from Jeff Patton provides another layer of detail. [Agile] Stories must be minimal marketable features The term “minimal marketable feature” was first used in the book Software by Numbers. This book placed…
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The difference between “policy” and “strategy”
I am writing a book on project management (ElephantPM) and I have been looking for a succinct explanation of the difference between “policy” and “strategy”. The project management function itself is operational (project managers have line managers and do the same thing everyday) and is governed by the organization’s Project Management Policy. However, projects themselves…
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How to price software products – think brand
I recently gave a presentation to the UKCFUG entitled “How to make and sell software products”. This talk was sponsored by Fog Creek because I offer training in the UK and Europe for FogBugz and Kiln. I thought I would write a bit more about software pricing and then I found that Joel Spolsky of…
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Project Management Joke
Q. What’s the difference between a project management methodologist and a terrorist? A. You can negotiate with a terrorist.
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Doctor-IT creates ElephantPM brand
Doctor-IT has created the ElephantPM brand to market its project management services. ElephantPM nows offers FogBugz and Kiln (Mercurial) installation and training in addition to hands on project management. Request to readers: To get ElephantPM into the Google index I would be very grateful if you could mention http://www.elephantpm.com in your blog or on your…
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A week in the life of a development team manager – in song
For many years I was a development team manager. I recently heard Flanders and Swann’s “The gas man cometh” and as a tribute to them and all software development teams everywhere, I composed this little ditty. ‘Twas on a Monday morning the coder came to call. The programme wouldn’t run – it wouldn’t work at…
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Who should own the IP in a new venture?
The most contentious part of any new product development is often the question of who should own the existing IP (intellectual property). This is wrong, what each party should concern themselves with is who should own the future revenue. Personally, I would be happy for my partner to own all the IP if I get…
Dr James Bayley 