Comments on: Starting Out in Project Management

By: Jim Vernon

Jim Vernon — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 18:11:12 +0000

Meri,
I didn’t know where I could ask this question, so I’m putting it here hoping you will give me your input.
I’m reading your book on Project Management and I’m about 1/3 of the way through it.
Here’s my question! In the planning section you talk about a rolling wave approach. You say that you can’t give accurate time estimates beyond 8 weeks which I agree with. But if you have a project that has a ball park time frame of 5 months what do you tell upper management when they want to know first how much is this project going to cost, and during the project, are you on budget.
Especially if beyond the first 8 weeks the estimates are very rough or broad-based as you have said in your book.
I really believe your focus is correct concerning the people issues and the real world estimates on time to delivery.
Do you understand my question? How do you communicate cost and budget to those above you who may consider you arriving on budget as the most important issue?

Jim

By: PM Hut

PM Hut — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 20:35:04 +0000

This article was pretty much a standard introduction to Project Management until you started talking about the mistakes first PMs make, where it really got interesting.

I am interested in republishing this article on PM Hut, in case you’re OK with this, then please use the “Contact Us” on the PM Hut site and we’ll take it from there.

By: The Relentless Stream of Consciousness - Archive - Project management skills

The Relentless Stream of Consciousness - Archive - Project management skills — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 14:05:14 +0000

[...] The post on Geek|Manager is here. [...]

By: Meri

Meri — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 11:37:46 +0000

@Roger: Sure, feel free If you could let me know via email if it turns out useful I’d appreciate it: blog AT meriwilliams DOT com

By: Roger

Roger — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 05:19:17 +0000

May I used this post in my teaching? I teach computing at Toongabbie Christian School Sydney Australia. I’d like to be able to print off and produce handouts – giving you credit. Thanks

By: Meri

Meri — Sat, 24 Feb 2007 22:54:12 +0000

Rich, to be honest I have to agree. In my defence, I work in an organisation where people are part of an organisational team first and project teams second … so they are “team members” in one arena and “project resources” in another

By: Rich

Rich — Sat, 24 Feb 2007 22:38:12 +0000

While I agree with almost all of this, I’ve never liked calling people “project resources” (or for that matter calling personnel departments “human resources”). I know it’s only management geek jargon, but it still strikes me as vaguely dehumanising.