Antiwork

[Kepler]

I am a believer in actual stand ups (disabilities allowed for obviously). I know I am a different speaker and listener when I have my butt in a chair than when I am up. I probably use 10% of the words to make the same point.

 

[MissThundercat]

My line lead: Your stats are important!

Also my line lead: *makes decisions which hurt my department's stats*

 

[LynahFan]

My PM advice: never go to your boss with problems. Go to him/her with a recommended solution that you would like them to endorse. Even if you are horribly wrong and they have to tell you to do something completely different, it's still way better than going in asking, "derrrrrr, what do I do now?"

 

[dxmnkd316]

My PM advice: never go to your boss with problems. Go to him/her with a recommended solution that you would like them to endorse. Even if you are horribly wrong and they have to tell you to do something completely different, it's still way better than going in asking, "derrrrrr, what do I do now?"

To an extent. I'd rather say I have no idea what I'm doing when it comes to XYZ. Do you know who our corporate experts are in CYZ?

The worst thing you can do is waste his or her time, the project's time, or money. Don't spend a week trying to figure something out and propose a solution that makes you look stupid.

 

[Kepler]

My PM advice: never go to your boss with problems. Go to him/her with a recommended solution that you would like them to endorse. Even if you are horribly wrong and they have to tell you to do something completely different, it's still way better than going in asking, "derrrrrr, what do I do now?"

I don't agree at all. In general, hiding is a bad solution.

 

[LynahFan]

I don't agree at all. In general, hiding is a bad solution.

I’m in no way talking about hiding. I’m just saying that when you do (as soon as you can) tell them about a problem/challenge, *also* tell them what you intend to do about it. I’m not talking about hiding the problem until after you have actually solved it - I’m saying go in with a plan for solving it.

 

[Kepler]

I’m in no way talking about hiding. I’m just saying that when you do (as soon as you can) tell them about a problem/challenge, *also* tell them what you intend to do about it. I’m not talking about hiding the problem until after you have actually solved it - I’m saying go in with a plan for solving it.

I meant hiding one's uncertainty.

I certainly ascribe to the cliche that bad direct reports bring their managers problems and good ones bring them solutions. But I read your statement as "if you don't have a solution keep quiet," and I do not agree with that. I'm much rather somebody who understands their limitations (and is willing to learn) than somebody who is trying to play superman (and believes admission of ignorance is weakness).

 

[jerphisch]

Kep, Project or Program? If Program your endless optimism will be erased by Friday. If Project and you want any help on RTX stuff or whatever you can look me up and msg me, 1132010.

 

[LynahFan]

I meant hiding one's uncertainty.

I certainly ascribe to the cliche that bad direct reports bring their managers problems and good ones bring them solutions. But I read your statement as "if you don't have a solution keep quiet," and I do not agree with that. I'm much rather somebody who understands their limitations (and is willing to learn) than somebody who is trying to play superman (and believes admission of ignorance is weakness).

Sigh. I am clearly unable to communicate on this topic.

Last try: Share *everything*, including unknowns, uncertainties, risks, and of course specific things that you need your boss to do for the project to succeed (resources, doors opened, etc), but do not expect your boss to do your job for you. I have seen that situation far too often - if the boss ends up wondering "what am I paying this guy for?" then he won't be asking that question for very long.

 

[Kepler]

Kep, Project or Program? If Program your endless optimism will be erased by Friday. If Project and you want any help on RTX stuff or whatever you can look me up and msg me, 1132010.

Project. Thanks!

 

[Kepler]

Sigh. I am clearly unable to communicate on this topic.

Last try: Share *everything*, including unknowns, uncertainties, risks, and of course specific things that you need your boss to do for the project to succeed (resources, doors opened, etc), but do not expect your boss to do your job for you. I have seen that situation far too often - if the boss ends up wondering "what am I paying this guy for?" then he won't be asking that question for very long.

I'm not trying to be difficult or even particularly oppose what you are saying. I think we are feeling different parts of the elephant. Hopefully consensually.

 

[MichVandal]

I really hate project managers. We waste so much time in meetings talking about process and presentations that we spend almost not time looking at data and making conclusions. And they tend not to go out of their way to understand much of anything other than "keep on the timing plan".

Horrible people.

 

[Kepler]

I really hate project managers. We waste so much time in meetings talking about process and presentations that we spend almost not time looking at data and making conclusions. And they tend not to go out of their way to understand much of anything other than "keep on the timing plan".

Horrible people.

Do you feel they aren't approaching their tasks (coordination of different functions, communication/clarifications of objectives and parameters from leadership to technical staff and of status, risks, and technical considerations the other direction) correctly, or that the tasks themselves don't exist? If they made you a PM at gunpoint, how would you do it?

 

[Swansong]

Kep, have you taken any courses in various PM methodology? I took a Scrum course a few years ago when I was between jobs and found it unbelievably valuable. Now, as a manager and sometimes PM, I use a lot of the ideas from that Agile/Scrum process. I don't do software development so it doesn't perfectly translate, but the real basic concepts of sprints/tasks and whatnot translate to almost anything.

 

[Kepler]

Kep, have you taken any courses in various PM methodology? I took a Scrum course a few years ago when I was between jobs and found it unbelievably valuable. Now, as a manager and sometimes PM, I use a lot of the ideas from that Agile/Scrum process. I don't do software development so it doesn't perfectly translate, but the real basic concepts of sprints/tasks and whatnot translate to almost anything.

Formal training limited to an overview course in Project Management sponsored by the PMI; then I have training in some related tools and tricks like EVM. There are elements of it from my CM background -- managing the CM lifecycle uses concepts that apply to anything from software to a hard hat construction project. And I have done Proposal work and so understand some of the business objectives -- I can write a mean BOE for example. I am very interested in approaches and resources to help me be more effective and not provoke the negative reaction MV voices -- since I come from a technical discipline I understand where he is coming from, and am aware how ubiquitous that impression of Project Management is.

I just joined the PMI and am reading through PMBoK, and I'm on PM groups on reddit, Discord, LinkedIn, and the PMI to lurk and absorb language and zeitgeist. I'm trying to build a support/resource group which at first I'm unashamedly just going to be a drain on, eating their brains. Anybody here interested in a Project Management thread? I'll start one -- I haven't been ingratiating myself to you folks for the last 20 years for nothing. It was all the Long Game.

As for Agile, Scrum, and Kanban, I can spell them. I am starting to read up on them, but beyond the common sense precursors that I've stumbled on myself they are naught but words that come up in job reqs so far.

 

[jerphisch]

I really hate project managers. We waste so much time in meetings talking about process and presentations that we spend almost not time looking at data and making conclusions. And they tend not to go out of their way to understand much of anything other than "keep on the timing plan".

Horrible people.

lol maybe you just have bad project managers. I see my whole purpose is to take care of that stuff as much as possible so the people doing real work can focus on it.

 

[jerphisch]

I have taken an overview course in Project Management and then I have training in some related stuff like EVM. There are elements of it from my CM background, I am very interested in approaches and resources to help me be more effective and not provoke the negative reaction MV voice -- since I come from a technical background I understand where he is coming from.

I just joined the PMI and am reading through PMBoK, and I'm on PM groups on reddit, Discord, LinkedIn, and the PMI to lurk and absorb language and zeitgeist. I'm trying to build a support/resource group which at first I'm unashamedly just going to be a drain on eating their brains. Anybody here interested in a Project Management thread? I'll start one -- I haven't been ingratiating myself to you folks for the last 20 years for nothing. It's the Long Game.

As for Agile, Scrum, and Kanban, I can spell them. I am starting to read up on them, but beyond the common sense precursors that I've stumbled on myself they are naught but words that come up in job reqs so far.

CM, they're the real enemy.

 

[Kepler]

CM, they're the real enemy.

Well, that is certainly my ambition.

 

[MichVandal]

Do you feel they aren't approaching their tasks (coordination of different functions, communication/clarifications of objectives and parameters from leadership to technical staff and of status, risks, and technical considerations the other direction) correctly, or that the tasks themselves don't exist? If they made you a PM at gunpoint, how would you do it?

If I were asked to be a PM, I would politely decline. Thankfully, in my career, I've never been asked- but then again, probably 20 years ago, they became an official position.

I'm not sure how to describe them, but we spend too much time worrying about the message to management vs. actually talking about the project. And because of that mindset in management, our section meetings have transition to us talking about our projects to mostly wasting time updating the one pagers for our managers.

Which means we have both PM's and managers to deal with instead of focusing on the actual project.

All of the PM's I've encountered are amazing at being passive aggressive to people- for every error state, they manage to blame everyone- thinking that if everyone worked on the issue at the same time, it would solve the problem. But that hardly ever does anything other than make people mad.

PM's tend to think they know about the technical details they are "managing" which makes them pretty dangerous when they hardly ever know enough.

 

[MichVandal]

lol maybe you just have bad project managers. I see my whole purpose is to take care of that stuff as much as possible so the people doing real work can focus on it.

Would be nice if all of our meetings were about the project. Too bad it never happens.

Then again, our system is so process oriented, it makes it hard to actually do a project. Just sat in a training session over the project tracking system we have- and I'm glad I never had to deal with that- I honestly could not figure out why that even had to be in place.

9 more months to go.