15
Person-month is politically correct synonym for Man-month.
It's mean amount of work performed by the average worker in one month.
So, if:
project requires 12 persons-months of development time
all team members do only pure development activity (i.e. they are telepaths and they don't need to spend time for communication with each other). [note: this is not ...
13
Slight frame challenge: consider providing your estimates as the wide-end of a cone of uncertainty rather than a discrete number.
"I need a [vague thing], how long would it take?"
"Okay, I discussed it with my team, and we think it'll take somewhere
between 2 and 7 weeks."
"I need an exact estimate."
"Then we'll need exact ...
9
To add onto nvogel's correct answer.
Besides for providing itemized deliverables, you need to add in the standard functions that are forgotten, overlooked but necessary and very time + resource consuming, hence they affect both the timeline and the budget.
Functions like design, functional spec, graphic design & sign off, integration, (bug fixing as a ...
7
Not to be pedantic, but the correct way to write the term would be person-month, or man-month. The distinction is that person/month implies units of people per month. This is inaccurate.
A person-month is a unit of work that's calculated by multiplying the number of persons by the number of months they work. So a team with three developers working on a task ...
7
Firstly, you could use different methods/frameworks to run projects. Scrum wouldn't necessarily be the solution here as your prime concern is around the line in responsibilities between these two, both different and both required, roles. As well as getting the right level of communication set up.
I have grasped something from the tone of your question that ...
7
Attach each estimate to an itemised deliverable rather than a named scope of work, that way there's less room for doubt about what was estimated. Use relative estimation (points) at the item level and then aggregate the points values and convert to an absolute time and cost as required. The best estimates are usually created and owned by the development ...
6
In my professional experience, the single point of contact is a gatekeeper or clearinghouse, rather than a sole resource. This person functions as a spokesmodel for the contract, but may certainly delegate responsibilities or facilitate communications between parties as needed.
This point of contact is the first call you should make with questions, and ...
6
The number of communication channels in the Chief-Programmer model is theoretically n-1 because it assumes that everyone communicates with the central chief-programmer role and he delegates work out and that no communication needs to happen between the other roles.
That model does not address real-life complexities and assumes that the chief programmer is ...
5
Pankaj Jalote in the book "An Integrated Approach to Software Engineering" describes three types of team structures:
Ego-less team (aka democratic team).
Chief-programmer team.
Controlled decentralized team.
Ego-less team have no leader. All decisions in it are making through discussion and with consensus.
Every member of democratic team have ...
5
Two key expectations from a PM are:
Assess, track and report Risk
Manage Stakeholder's expectations
You are doing all the risk management, and it seems the second part could be improved. So, you could take some actions, such as
Consider and cost, on your original plan, the risk of going 50% beyond schedule. With this, you'll be agreeing upfront the ...
5
There is nothing wrong with having several people from the project team contacting the client. As you already pointed out, some people are naturally more appropriate. If you developers are interfacing with the client's systems and there is a specific coding problem, then the dev might need to talk to a client dev contact.
Normally, the client will have ...
5
It is highly unlikely that your "single point of contact" (SPC) is the only stakeholder [person with an interest in the outcome your project]. Although contracts will identify a SPC such as a contracting officer or contracting officer's technical representative, this responsibility is a contractual requirement to ensure that contracts are not modified by ...
5
Your issue requires two things that are 100% owned by YOUR company, and only these two things: 1) You need to insert legalese-type language that accompanies your estimate that this is a high-level, rough order of magnitude estimate based on what was known at that time that is subject to change when requirements become more known and firm; and 2) YOUR company ...
4
From my experience, I would say the problem here is "leadership". I am just taking couple of points from your statement.
Team not successful in convincing clients when requirement creeps
Team do not give importance to communication skills and they believe it is not a part of their job
These are things that should be driven by a strong leader. The leader ...
4
I'm going to read between lines a bit here, but I think the issue that management has is not explicitly that the mitigation strategy is too reactive- mitigation, almost by definition, has to be reactive. I think the issue is that the way you are handling the project is demonstrating that you don't really know what the budget or timescale should be and that ...
4
Communication should be as clear as possible if you want to avoid misinterpretations, that's not impolite but simply professional. What about a prominent note
This is a rough estimate based on incomplete requirements.
It is intended to support your decision process, but it's not binding
and should not be used in budget or schedule planning.
in your reply e-...
3
TL;DR
Should I include the developers in these emails or not?
Increased direct communications, if done effectively, can improve the viability of a project. However, there are often pros and cons that must be considered. A lot depends on your project management framework, your project communications plan, and on the type of relationship you have with your ...
3
If you are talking about how to manage effective meetings, your best bet is to call out when what the two managers are contributing isn't adding value. You can do this by politely taking the first opportunity (when they pause to catch their breath?) to ask them to take their discussion offline and come back to the next meeting with a recommendation. ...
3
To be blatantly honest, if your project has a non-technical project manager who is not very strong on the business logic or functional aspects of the project and is also involved with other projects, his involvement in the project should be no larger than that of managerial tasks – which is a nicer way of saying – "Getting the crap out of your team’s way and ...
3
I understand that the situation are:
You are a technical lead (TL),
You report to a PM that has no or almost no domain knowledge, technical knowledge.
The PM does not understand you.
"A non-technical PM cannot identify certain dependencies because they have no idea that they exist.": He doesn't have to. I think it is your main responsibility to explain the ...
3
This should be documented in the communications plan. There are almost as many answers to your question as there are combinations of clients and providers, which is why each project should have a communications plan that summarizes who talks to whom about what.
In your shoes, I'd create a template communications plan for the company, and then validate key ...
3
Is it wise to send email meeting invites in advance for each of these 3 meetings?
Yes. It allows the attendees to plan their own diaries and helps to ensure they will be available at the time of the meetings, which is good for your projects
Should we include this in our Communications Management plan?
That depends on practise at your organisation. Some ...
3
That's something I have seen a lot. It happens when the dust settles and the teams are grown up and everything is save and sound. And even the most performing team needs to be evolved and facilitated and is going through changes constantly - but this is taken care of in half the workday. And now you have a bunch of Scrum Masters that feel redundant and ...
2
This is a facilitation problem. It is not an issue between the different approaches. I would suspect you have other issues in your meetings, too, if you do not have a strong facilitator running the meetings.
Different mental models are valuable. You do not want to squash it. Deploy a strong facilitator role in these meetings, somebody that knows how ...
2
Ideally you should have a Business Analyst who should be communicating to clients.. Because Business Analyst has more insights and knowledge about a project since he is activly involved in the project..
And if you need any technical help you can always go back your tech team..
2
Different Organisation follow different process for the active projects so based on that I can just give an answer that projects are always initiated with the Technical Architects and PM and QA Manager.
When the active projects are finalised with reviews etc then its proceeded with the developement and if any changes are needed then the concerned Lead will ...
2
PM should be single point of communication for status, schedule and scope
As Mark pointed out, this depends on the size and complexity of the project. However, here are some tips from my experience in managing software projects.
For technical issues, it is OK for the tech to talk to the client tech. However, if I were the PM, I will want to listen in on ...
2
I will assume in my answer that you are primarily concerned with communications between the Vendor (you) and a foreign Customer and not your internal communications.
In the short term you can identify the team members that can best communicate with your customers. This is both in terms of English language skills and also whatever technical skills they need ...
2
Few things like this you can try:
Arrange an English course training to team to improve to next level. Influence management to get this training conducted and show your plan of improvement etc..
Use translators before sending emails, i.e they can type first in English, team can also type in their first language and use translators and get the English ...
2
The status report that I have used to update management and team includes a variant of a quadrant report. This will address the key concern and also the need to know status for the management and team. I have successfully managed to bring across key concerns and also highlight job well done by the team to management
Is as follows -
HighLights (Bring Good ...
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