Wednesday, November 07, 2007

Learn from project-management blunders

I like this on the best.. I have seen this foo hit the ceiling :)-

" Don't underestimate people issues"

I had a project that nearly came apart because I underestimated the impact of people issues within the project team. We had quite a few new developers, a few more experienced folks, and several contractors. The existing folks were part of a strong union and had adopted the "work to job description" mantra, whereas the contractors generally did whatever it took to get their deliverables done. This created a lot of tension within the team as the staff members felt the contractors were overstepping their boundaries (and really they were, in order to get stuff done), and the contractors felt they were carrying the "slackers" (and really they were, in some areas). A complete mess. However, none of it was obvious until the tension started to come to the surface. By then, the schedule was compromised and had to be reworked a lot."
Keep a better handle on the personal issues within the team. Ask more questions, more frequently, to get at them."

Via : ZDnet