RE: Ever wonder why techwhirler lives seem so crazy? (a long rant)

Subject: RE: Ever wonder why techwhirler lives seem so crazy? (a long rant)
From: "Jeanne A. E. DeVoto" <jaed -at- jaedworks -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Thu, 18 Apr 2002 23:44:31 -0700


At 9:04 AM -0700 4/18/2002, Emily Berk wrote:
>On Tue, 16 Apr 2002 22:43:39 -0700, from a high and mighty peak,
>looking way down on us poor plebeians, "Jeanne A. E. DeVoto"
><jaed -at- jaedworks -dot- com> wrote:

(Excuse me? Where, if you don't mind my asking, did that come from? Gulp.)

>So, Jeanne. You've found a way, preferably in Microsoft Project,
>to compel the project managers to put only relative dates into the
>schedule? (Even when they've got a late-Spring skiing weekend
>planned for a date certain and that last, late snow won't wait?)
>
>Pray, please share.
>
>(Or, should I keep on looking for that magic wand I misplaced?)

No magic wand needed, as far as I've ever been able to tell. If when you
publish your schedule, the deadlines are clearly conditioned on development
milestones, and someone else on the team translates that into calendar
dates, doesn't shift your dates when your dependencies shift, and forgets
that you haven't committed to "May 5th, come hell or high water!", then
that is not your problem, is it? Your schedule is clear, and bad
assumptions on someone else's part don't constitute an emergency on your
part.

(I admit there are managers who would blame you anyway, despite a clearly
delineated published schedule...but they're not that common, at least in my
experience. The only time this hasn't worked for me is when I've had no
input into my schedule at all, but those situations have had other, larger
problems. "You VILL write a 1200-page manual in three days!" tends to cause
a high attrition rate, and not just among the writers.)

Of course, it goes without saying that if the development schedule slips
and you can possibly make up the slack, you do it. There are also
situations in which the company *must* get something out the door despite
the development schedule slipping, and if the docs quality suffers, oh well
- so you do what you can in the time you have - but this shouldn't be made
out to be somehow your fault. Making your dependencies explicit is one way
of making sure you're not blamed for someone else's slip. That doesn't seem
to me like a bad goal or one that ought to be sneered at.

--
jeanne a. e. devoto ~ jaed -at- jaedworks -dot- com
http://www.jaedworks.com



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