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Lessons Learned for Project Managers - Part XVII
January 14, 2009 | Author: PM Hut | Filed under: Lessons Learned
Lessons Learned for Project Managers - Part XVII (#17 in the series 128 Lessons Learned for Project Managers)
By Jerry Madden
- Let your staff argue you into doing something even if you intended to do it anyway. It gives them the feeling that they won one! There are a lot of advantages to gamesmanship as long as no one detects the game.
- Some contractors are good, some are bad, but they seem to change places over time, making the past no guarantee of the future; thus, constant vigilance is a project requirement.
- It is rare that a contractor or instrumentor does not know your budget and does not intend to get every bit of it from you. This is why you have to constantly pay attention to the manpower they use and to judge their activities in order to assure that they are not overloading the system.
- People tend to ask for what they think they can get and not what they need.
- Too much cost data on a proposal can blind you to the real risks or forgotten items. On a project we thoroughly knew, we spent 6 months of government and contractor time validating the cost, had rooms full of data, and presented our findings to Headquarters. Two weeks later, the contractor found an “Oh I forgot” that costs $30 million. One should look at how past programs spent their money to try to avoid these traps.
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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2 people have left comments
Hi Jerry,
“People tend to ask for what they think they can get and not what they need.” - Excellent insight, and so very true for people working on projects. Many project managers also actively ask for what they think client can give in terms of timelines rather than what they need. More often, they do get additional time, and complacency sets in.
I want to know the meaning of Project loading.
where can I fine the formulas in Project management,
Thanks