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I'm having a job interview tomorrow with a group that typically has projects between 3-5 days in length. Of course, I'm not sure what exactly my duties will be, but I'm more used to projects around 2 months in length.

I was hoping that someone might suggest strategies or resources for dealing with projects so short in length?

*edit

Sorry, it's a job interview, though the company is fairly small. I do know that there is a tech lead, and that the job is mostly managing projects, not people. The focus is IaaS/Cloud networking.

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    Welcome to PMSE! Is the work done by one person or a team? What type of work is it - is it software development? Please add more details. This will help users here familiar with the topic to respond to your question.
    – Ashok Ramachandran
    Apr 22, 2014 at 21:00

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I'm having a job interview tomorrow with a group that typically has projects between 3-5 days in length. Of course, I'm not sure what exactly my duties will be, but I'm more used to projects around 2 months in length.

Generally, shorter projects require shorter iterations, but shorter iterations create more process overhead and reduce the amount of work that can be accepted into each iteration. It's a trade-off.

Additionally, I'd question whether entire projects are really only a week long. In that range, it seems more likely that what you have is a repeating process rather than actual projects. If that is the case, then Lean or Kanban might be a better fit than a project-based framework. Your mileage will vary.

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The good news is that all of the same techniques work in short projects as longer ones. I've done a number of week-long projects.

When we did it, we usually did either 2 stand-ups per day or just one if we were collaborating heavily on most tasks. We did need very heavy product owner involvement and talked to him a few times a day. Lots of reviewing, adapting, and pivoting, but a ton of fun too.

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  • What sort of product owner involvement did you require? I'm wondering if the job is going to be more product management than project.
    – Lirason
    Apr 22, 2014 at 21:09
  • It's the same stuff as normal - prioritize work, sign-off, get feedback from users/customer, etc. It's just that with incredibly short projects like that, losing a few hours waiting on feedback or a decision (let alone a day or two) can have severe consequences. Many teams I've been on will wait until the next stand-up to ask PO questions, but with those projects, that was usually too long to wait.
    – Daniel
    Apr 22, 2014 at 21:13

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