Project managers

Moley · 26 May 2009 at 14:07

Having worked for/with project managers a lot over the years I have to say that the vast majority out there seem to be just average in their PM skills. You get some really terrible ones and the odd brilliant one who can not only get a project delivered on time and within budget, but do it in such a way that everyone else involved in the project is happy with having done a good job at the end. Not all project managers are bad - most are simply average.

However perhaps nero's real problem isn't the fact that his PM asked him to attempt to accurately quantify the amount of time his piece of work might take - perhaps its the fact that if someone else is keeping track of the time he is taking to do his work he won't have as much time to post on forums as he would like?

For example: 27 posts in this thread alone between 10:00am this morning and 1:54pm.

With non-work related use of the internet like that, no wonder the PM wants to know how long it will take to to do a piece of work.....

Audigex · 26 May 2009 at 14:23

Take a tip from Scotty

"How long did you say it'll take"
"2 hours"
"And how long will it actually take"
"2 hours"
"nonononono"

Always slightly over-estimate, it makes you look good :-)

Personally I think too much emphasis is put on the programmer to do the predicting - I regularly get asked for delivery dates, but have no real clue how long the planning, development and testing, never mind documentation and deployment, will take. I can tell them approx how many hours (to the nearest 5/10) >I< will need, but am regularly expected to know how long the rest of the team will too.

THAT is the sign of a bad project manager, not knowing who's role is who's.

Caseh · 26 May 2009 at 14:28

nero120 said:
I'll shut up now.

Act upon this please.

nero120 · 26 May 2009 at 14:29

Moley said:
For example: 27 posts in this thread alone between 10:00am this morning and 1:54pm.

With non-work related use of the internet like that, no wonder the PM wants to know how long it will take to to do a piece of work.....

Guess you haven't heard of a little thing called 'compile time'.

~J~ · 26 May 2009 at 14:31

nero120 said:
Guess you haven't heard of a little thing called 'compile time'.

Give over!! This is the 21st century, not the mid-80's when a COBOL program needed 30mins or so to go through several passes.

Moley · 26 May 2009 at 14:37

~J~ said:
Give over!! This is the 21st century, not the mid-80's when a COBOL program needed 30mins or so to go through several passes.

^ WHS

Moley · 26 May 2009 at 14:39

nero120 said:
Guess you haven't heard of a little thing called 'compile time'.

I was going to come back with Guess you haven't heard of a little thing called 'work' but that would have been totally hypocritical of me - sitting here at my desk.

But I have completed all my required tasks for the day and don't have other people waiting on my output to enable their project to move forward....

Can you say the same?

Basher · 26 May 2009 at 14:42

nero120 said:
Guess you haven't heard of a little thing called 'compile time'.

Can you not use this 'Compile Time' to think abut more accurate estimations for the required tasks?

nero120 · 26 May 2009 at 14:49

~J~ said:
Give over!! This is the 21st century, not the mid-80's when a COBOL program needed 30mins or so to go through several passes.

A minute of compile time is easily long enough to reply to some half witted post

nero120 · 26 May 2009 at 14:50

Basher said:
Can you not use this 'Compile Time' to think abut more accurate estimations for the required tasks?

Lol, typical PM response. Yeah a minute's break is easily enough for me to stop what i'm doing, move onto something else, engross myself in the architectural and logical components of a project and refine my estimation. Bloody hell.

Guys, at least try to engage brain before posting.

nero120 · 26 May 2009 at 14:53

The biggest irony of all, is that having looked through the previous devs code on this project I am now thinking of starting a thread called 'Crap Devs :mad:

'

Cambofrog · 26 May 2009 at 14:54

Moley said:
I was going to come back with Guess you haven't heard of a little thing called 'work' but that would have been totally hypocritical of me - sitting here at my desk.

But I have completed all my required tasks for the day and don't have other people waiting on my output to enable their project to move forward....

Can you say the same?

I suppose if we are talking about developers (programmers) and their task would take a significant amount of time to implement, the programmer should offer up an interface (possibly with stub functions) for other people to work with until the interface is fully impemented and fleshed out.

Caseh · 26 May 2009 at 14:55

nero120 said:
Guys, at least try to engage brain before posting.

If you aren't going to, why should everyone else?

RDM · 26 May 2009 at 14:55

nero120 said:
Lol, typical PM response. Yeah a minute's break is easily enough for me to stop what i'm doing, move onto something else, engross myself in the architectural and logical components of a project and refine my estimation. Bloody hell.

Guys, at least try to engage brain before posting.

For your next PDP "Need to work on multi-tasking skills".

[TW]Fox · 26 May 2009 at 14:55

nero120 said:
The biggest irony of all, is that having looked through the previous devs code on this project I am now thinking of starting a thread called 'Crap Devs '

It must be hard being the brightest person in your organisation but right at the bottom of the hierachy. So much angst.

nero120 · 26 May 2009 at 14:57

[TW]Fox;14149876 said:
It must be hard being the brightest person in your organisation but right at the bottom of the hierachy. So much angst.

Don't worry, they love me! I'm just taking it out on you guys

p.s. as a certified MOSS developer, I'm actually a ways up

-Ad- · 26 May 2009 at 14:57

a1ex2001 said:
The PM only needs a figure in terms of days or half days, it is to allow him to predict when work will finish and schedule further work that could be dependant on your code. If you can't estimate to this extent then may I suggest your not quite the top developer you think you are?

nero120 said:
Lol, thought I smelled the stench of decay. So you must be one of them. If you expect developers to:

a.) Be able to read minds
b.) Be able to read the future
c.) Be your friend

then you are sadly mistaken. If a rough estimate isn't good enough for you then as I said, jog on. Here's a digit to stick in your stupid excel spreadsheet/MS Project chart/Gantt chart you sodden nose hair!

Great attitude, maybe work on your people and influencing skills.

Cuchulain said:
As a dev/designer I have no problems with project managers, in a corporate environment "I guess a couple of days" doesn't cut it, all I do is over-estimate the time scale and deliver before the deadline.

This

jmhduck · 26 May 2009 at 15:02

nero120 said:
A minute of compile time is easily long enough to reply to some half witted post

Agreed see this

.

Basher · 26 May 2009 at 15:03

nero120 said:
Lol, typical PM response. Yeah a minute's break is easily enough for me to stop what i'm doing, move onto something else, engross myself in the architectural and logical components of a project and refine my estimation. Bloody hell.

Guys, at least try to engage brain before posting.

You need to work on your multi-tasking skills.

smelf1 · 26 May 2009 at 15:14

bloody hate pmgrs.

We moved a physical server to a vm one and exact copy using vm converter. The tool starts saying everything is different as the times when the files were created were different to the original times on the other server.

He could not understand why they were different even after explaining and practically draing a picture for him.

He kept us 1-2 hours longer with this crap : (