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How-much vs. How-little Thinking in Project Management
March 1, 2010 | Author: PM Hut | Filed under: Project Management Musings
How-much vs. How-little Thinking in Project Management
By Johanna Rothman
Many project managers (and senior management) still have the mindset of “How much can we fit into this project?” instead of “How little can we do?”
How-much thinking carries these assumptions (even if your managers don’t agree):
- People are a scarce resource, and that we should put all of them to use immediately, working like mad on the project.
- Schedule really doesn’t matter.
- Cost of development is not a driving factor.
How-little thinking carries these assumptions:
- Understanding the requirements is a scarce resource, and we should focus our energies towards delivering something that shows we understand the specific requirement and the value it has to our customer.
- Schedule is critical and we don’t have time to do it again, or build technical debt.
- Project cost is important, and we need to manage it.
What I find fascinating is that many managers say that the characteristics of how-little thinking are important, but they manage according to how-much. The next time you or your management asks how much, maybe you can ask how little. If nothing else, you can help clarify everyone’s assumptions.
The original article can be found at: http://jrothman.com/blog/mpd/2003/05/how-little-can-you-do.html
Johanna Rothman consults, speaks, and writes on managing high-technology product development. Johanna is the author of Manage It!’Your Guide to Modern Pragmatic Project Management’. She is the coauthor of the pragmatic Behind Closed Doors, Secrets of Great Management, and author of the highly acclaimed Hiring the Best Knowledge Workers, Techies & Nerds: The Secrets and Science of Hiring Technical People. And, Johanna is a host and session leader at the Amplifying Your Effectiveness (AYE) conference (http://www.ayeconference.com). You can see Johanna’s other writings at http://www.jrothman.com.
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1 person has left a comment
Thought provoking post.
In my experience what drives the “how much thinking” is the scarcity of project funding. It’s like an infrequent train, when it shows up, people try to put as much on it as they can, because they don’t know when it will come again. Hence a big scope management challenge.