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Lessons Learned for Project Managers - Part I

November 3, 2008 | Author: PM Hut | Filed under: Lessons Learned, Project Management Best Practices, Project Management Musings

Lessons Learned for Project Managers - Part I (#1 in the series 128 Lessons Learned for Project Managers)
By Jerry Madden

  1. There is no such thing as previously flown hardware, i.e., the people who build the next unit probably never saw the previous unit; there are probably minor changes; the operational environment has probably changed; and the people who check the unit out will in most cases not understand the unit or the test equipment.
  2. Most equipment works “as built,” i.e., not as the designer planned. This is due to layout of the design, poor understanding on the designer’s part, or poor understanding of component specifications.
  3. The source of most problems is people but damned if they will admit it. Know the people working on your project, so you know what the real weak spots are.
  4. Most managers succeed on the strength and skill of their staff.
  5. A manager who is his own systems engineer or financial manager is one who will probably try to do open heart surgery on himself.
  6. One must pay attention to workaholics — if they get going in the wrong direction, they can do a lot of damage in a short time — it is possible to overload them, causing premature burnout, but hard to determine if the load is too much, since much of it is self-generated. It is important to make sure such people take enough time off and that the workload does not exceed 1-1/4 to 1-1/2 times what is normal.
  7. Your company’s programs compete for budget funds — they do not compete with each other, i.e., you never attack any other program with the idea you should get their funding. Sell what you have on its own merit.
  8. Contractors respond well to the customer who pays attention to what they are doing, but not too well to the customer that continually second-guesses their activity. The basic rule is: a customer is always right, but the cost will escalate if a customer always has things done his way, instead of the way the contractor had planned. The ground rule is never change a contractor’s plans unless they are flawed or too costly, i.e., the old saying, “better is the enemy of good.”
  9. Never undercut your staff in public, i.e. don’t make decisions on work that you have given them to do in public meetings. Even if you direct a change, never take the responsibility for implementing away from your staff.
  10. The project has many resources within itself. There probably are five-to-ten system engineers considering all the contractors and instrument developers. This is a powerful resource that can be used to attack problems.

Reprinted with permission from NASA. This article first appeared in NASA’s ASK Magazine, the NASA source for Project Management and Engineering Excellence.

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This entry was posted on Monday, November 3rd, 2008 and is filed under Lessons Learned, Project Management Best Practices, Project Management Musings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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