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Product Description
All of your projects and programs make up your portfolio. But how much time you actually spend on your projects, and how much time do you spend responding to emergencies?
This book will introduce you to different ways of ordering all of the projects you are working on now, and help you figure out how to staff those projects--even when you've run out of project teams to do the work.
Once you learn to manage your portfolio better, you'll avoid emergency "firedrills." The trick is adopting lean and agile approaches to projects, whether they are software projects, projects that include hardware, or projects that depend on chunks of functionality from other suppliers.
You may be accustomed to spending time in meetings where you still don't have the data you need to evaluate your projects. Here, with a few measures, you'll be able to quickly evaluate each project and come to a decision quickly.
You'll learn how to define your team's, group's, or department's mission with none of the buzzwords that normally accompany a mission statement. Armed with the work and the mission, you can make those decisions that define the true leaders in the organization.
About the Author
Johanna Rothman helps leaders solve problems and seize opportunities. She consults, speaks, and writes on managing high-technology product development. She enables managers, teams, and organizations to become more effective by applying her pragmatic approaches to the issues of project management, risk management, and people management. Johanna publishes The Pragmatic Manager, a monthly email newsletter and podcast, and writes two blogs: Managing Product Development and Hiring Technical People. She is the author of several books: - Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management - Behind Closed Doors: Secrets of Great Management (with Esther Derby) - Hiring the Best Knowledge Workers, Techies & Nerds: The Secrets and Science of Hiring Technical People - Corrective Action for the Software Industry (with Denise Robitaille).
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This slim volume is a refreshing look at something that I am not used to seeing. I am involved in one project at a time, occasionally more. A project overseer has to have a different view.
If there are several projects, these could potentially have demands on the same (limited) resources. Johanna Rothman has an aversion to context switching, and rightly so, as this produces unproductive time as a change between what was current and what is now current occurs. She makes a forceful argument in favour of allocating resources (machine, people, budget, etc.) to the highest priority item that is to be worked on without distraction, working down a list. It is therefore necessary to rank projects. It is only when ranking has been undertaken that it is known which is the highest priority item. The aim has to be to create release-able running tested features.
Of course, any ranking is not permanent. Rankings change over time, and a high priority item that is not completed may subsequently take a very low priority as the reason for its (early) completion has now disappeared. Rankings have to be reviewed, and Rothman uses the three-fold categorisation of projects, to decide what should be worked on. For each item under consideration, a decision needs to be made; commit, kill or transfer. She strongly advises against any other decision; never say maybe to a portfolio request. When you say maybe, your manager hears `yes'. Your peers and staff hear `no'. You are then placed in a no-win situation.
Part of the commit, kill transform decision can involve recognising projects that can and will not succeed - doomed projects. Killing your own (doomed) project is very different from killing a senior manager's pet project. There are good pointers throughout the book to helpful sections elsewhere, and these are both forward and backward looking, and deal with just this kind of knotty problem.
The resource allocation process that Rothman advises includes never committing more than 50% of your staff for 3 months or more to the same project. Can the project be broken down into something that can produce demonstrable results in under 3 months? If so, it is something that could be contemplated (and may go on to a second, third, fourth stage.) Something larger than 50% of your people and/or longer than 3 months could end up being a `bet the organisation' decision.
In amongst the words are some little gems. She talks of individuals manipulating scoring regimes and metrics - they will do this if there is any advantage in it. Therefore it is very important to watch your metrics, to see if they are telling you the right thing. She advocates Project Managers to start somewhere, but most of all to start. Finally, she advises all against using any form of ultimatum with a senior manager. Her wise words are that these rarely result in anything except a career-limiting conversation for you. That probably means there will be one less person on the payroll - and YOU will be the one leaving.
The view from 30,000 ft is different to that from 500 ft. This book is more about that high level aspect. Knowing about life from that height can actually make more sense of life at 500 ft.
Peter Morgan
If there are several projects, these could potentially have demands on the same (limited) resources. Johanna Rothman has an aversion to context switching, and rightly so, as this produces unproductive time as a change between what was current and what is now current occurs. She makes a forceful argument in favour of allocating resources (machine, people, budget, etc.) to the highest priority item that is to be worked on without distraction, working down a list. It is therefore necessary to rank projects. It is only when ranking has been undertaken that it is known which is the highest priority item. The aim has to be to create release-able running tested features.
Of course, any ranking is not permanent. Rankings change over time, and a high priority item that is not completed may subsequently take a very low priority as the reason for its (early) completion has now disappeared. Rankings have to be reviewed, and Rothman uses the three-fold categorisation of projects, to decide what should be worked on. For each item under consideration, a decision needs to be made; commit, kill or transfer. She strongly advises against any other decision; never say maybe to a portfolio request. When you say maybe, your manager hears `yes'. Your peers and staff hear `no'. You are then placed in a no-win situation.
Part of the commit, kill transform decision can involve recognising projects that can and will not succeed - doomed projects. Killing your own (doomed) project is very different from killing a senior manager's pet project. There are good pointers throughout the book to helpful sections elsewhere, and these are both forward and backward looking, and deal with just this kind of knotty problem.
The resource allocation process that Rothman advises includes never committing more than 50% of your staff for 3 months or more to the same project. Can the project be broken down into something that can produce demonstrable results in under 3 months? If so, it is something that could be contemplated (and may go on to a second, third, fourth stage.) Something larger than 50% of your people and/or longer than 3 months could end up being a `bet the organisation' decision.
In amongst the words are some little gems. She talks of individuals manipulating scoring regimes and metrics - they will do this if there is any advantage in it. Therefore it is very important to watch your metrics, to see if they are telling you the right thing. She advocates Project Managers to start somewhere, but most of all to start. Finally, she advises all against using any form of ultimatum with a senior manager. Her wise words are that these rarely result in anything except a career-limiting conversation for you. That probably means there will be one less person on the payroll - and YOU will be the one leaving.
The view from 30,000 ft is different to that from 500 ft. This book is more about that high level aspect. Knowing about life from that height can actually make more sense of life at 500 ft.
Peter Morgan
Format:Paperback
Aiden, a woebegone software developer, sits forlornly at his desk, wondering how to complete three recently assigned, top priority projects. Yesterday morning, the boss told him that the first project was due soon. At noon, the boss popped in to insist that the second one had to be completed immediately. At 5 p.m., the boss announced that Aiden should finish the third piece of work right away. Faced with these mutually exclusive, idiotic demands, Aiden stopped working, updated his résumé, surfed the Internet and played a little solitaire. In the software development world, this sad story is all too typical. The answer, according to software management consultant Johanna Rothman, is project portfolio management. Her book details the numerous benefits of this proven approach to project management. Although Rothman wrote this slightly repetitive guide specifically for the IT world - hence the jargon - anyone who regularly juggles an array of tasks with burning deadlines can pick up some useful fundamentals from her solid report. getAbstract recommends this savvy manual to software development managers, software engineers and related IT professionals, as well as project managers in other fields.
Format:Paperback
The premise of the book; the fewer number of active projects you have, the less competition the projects have for the same people. That lack allows them to finish projects faster. Sounds great doesn't it? It does! JR explains how to manage your project portfolio. That's not an easy task, but you have to do it. No worries, the book helps you step by step; drafting, prioritizing, and reviewing.
I like the concept in chapter 6: funding projects incrementally. Very interesting point!
I like the concept in chapter 6: funding projects incrementally. Very interesting point!
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