The IT Project Confessional, part 5 – Advice to give *after* a sin has been committed

When a project manager “sinner” sits down to talk with his or her IT “confessor-priest,” one of two situations usually exists: either the sin has already been committed — i.e., the project manager has already made a mistake — or it has not. We’ll discuss these two situations in separate blog postings.
Assuming that the conversation [...]

The IT Project Confessional, part 4 – ethical responsibilities of the confessor priest

Imagine that I’m the “confessor priest” in an IT project confessional environment, and a troubled project manager walks into my office, and tells me that in a fit of rage, he has just shot an obnoxious, uncooperative, unproductive members of his project team — point blank, right between the eyes. What should I do?
Or consider [...]

The IT Project Confessional, part 3 – where do you find the sinners?

What would a priest do if he sat alone in his confessional box all day long, and nobody showed up to confess his sins? Perhaps he would just shrug, and come back again the next day. But eventually, he would … well, I’ll let someone who knows more about the protocol and procedures of organized [...]

The IT Project Confessional, part 2 – History and the basics

Yesterday, I introduced the concept of a “project confessional,” where troubled IT project managers could confess their “sins” and ask for help.
Before we delve into the more subtle issues associated with such a confessional, I want to cover the basics … and before I do that, I want to acknowledge that this is not some [...]

The IT Project Confessional, part 1

Imagine that you’re an IT project manager, and that you’ve just discovered you’ve made a terrible decision. It wasn’t deliberate, and perhaps it wasn’t even conscious; maybe it was a momentary outburst at an uncooperative programmer, caused by all the pressure and exhaustion from overtime. But now your uncooperative programmer has quit in a huff, [...]

Whither IT, part 13 – Social/cultural trends

To anticipate the social impact of future IT, it would help to be an expert sociologist with a perfect crystal ball. I don’t have such expertise, so I’ll restrict my comments to specific areas where I think I have some vague idea of what I’m talking about … and aside from that, I’ll simply recommend [...]

Boston SPIN talk: Death March Projects in Today’s Hard Times

I’m giving a one-hour presentation Tues evening (Mar 16th) on “Death March Projects in Today’s Hard Times,” at the regular monthly meeting of Boston’s Software Process Improvement Network (SPIN) chapter. It will take place in one of the buildings of MITRE’s campus in Bedford, MA, somewhere in the vast wilderness north of Route 128. You [...]

Rome presentation: “Strategic Planning for Enterprise 2.0″

I’m here in Rome this week, participating in a conference on “Enterprise 2.0” for Technology Transfer Institute. You should be there so you can hear the presentations from all of the speakers, as well as the comments and questions from the participants. But if you’re stuck in some other part of the world, or you couldn’t [...]

“Death March” seminar in Rome

I’m here in Rome this week, presenting a two-day seminar on  “Managing Death-March Projects” for Technology Transfer Institute. You should be there so you can hear whatever clever jokes may occur to me while I’m presenting my material, as well as the comments and questions from the other participants. But if you’re stuck in some [...]

The Politics of Metrics

I’m giving a presentation on “The Politics of Metrics” at the Software Best Practices Conference sponsored by the IT Metrics and Productivity Institute in Ft. Lauderdale, FL on Nov 17, 2009. You should be there so you can meet and hear some of the other great speakers at the conference, as well as whatever clever jokes may occur to [...]