August 2009
Beginner
252 pages
6h 2m
English
Content preview from 97 Things Every Project Manager Should Know
Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
Chapter 77. Should You Under-Promise, or Over-Deliver?
AT THE END OF THE PROJECT, deliver less than you said you would, and you are a bad software project manager. Deliver more than you said you would, and you're the hero. Actually, you should strive to deliver exactly what you promised. No more, no less.
New project managers, eager to please, let business people/customers continue to add features, even as the team's capacity to deliver them shrinks. The business people, thinking that the project manager has things under control, take advantage of this opening, and the onslaught of new features continues.
Afraid to show weakness, the green PMs just sweat it out and hope they can deliver. But as the project end date draws near, it may become obvious that the features list will not be finished. The process of cutting features, not necessarily the newest additions, grudgingly begins. The formerly happy business people are now planning the termination, or at least the post-release punishment, of the project manager.
The experienced PMs know that they are going to have to be firm from day one. Anything that resembles a new feature, or a change in scope, will be met with pushback from the PM. He/she reminds the business owners that only so many features will fit into each release.[24] If something new comes up, it must be deferred to a future release or substituted for a planned ...
Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.
Read now
Unlock full access
More than 5,000 organizations count on O’Reilly
O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.Amir M.
I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.