I realize I work in a unique domain compared the majority of highly vocal voices in the software development world - the agile software development world. Some times I get to connect to the software development world of small groups of individuals. Our software world is highly structured and sometimes over burdened with the formality of process - all for good reasons.
I attended the Pikes Peak PMI meeting Thursday to hear Dr. James Brown speak on two topics. He's a very good speaker, experience program manager, and thought leader in the domain of Program Management. His book, The Handbook of Program Management, is one of my favorites.
He had many "stories," and anecdotes directly applicable to our current situations. I'll use many of them in our daily practices and a few in our efforts to move our firm forward. More importantly was the re-connection with the project management community outside the local focus on IT. The Colorado Springs PMI community is more diverse than our Denver world of mostly IT.
I came across a posting tonight which reinforces this notion of a "project," that is not defined by an emerging set of activities hoping to stay connected with the customer. It's a small project compared to our mega projects - I just finished our section for a proposal valued at multi-billions for the USAF. I'm jealous in some ways for those working projects that have direct beneficial outcomes in a short ot moderate time.
This project is Beach B200 King Air with two instruments. The project has aircraft, sensors, software, flight planning, data capturing and processing, science, and other tangible, measurable beneficial outcomes.
What Does All This Mean
After a long week of preparation for RED TEAM for a very large proposal effort, looking a small projects connects the dots between the universal aspects of success.
- Do we know what done looks like in some measurable form meaningful to the buyer?
- Is there some tangible evidence that we're making progress?
- When we say we're making progress, can we point to physical deliverables that represent that progress?
- Are the risks to this progress continuously be mitigated in some way to remove them from impacting our outcomes?
- Do we speak about progress toward the "first flight," "mission success," "be on station," words like that?
While these types of projects are confined to specific domains, where general IT projects are just that general, they are examples of the core project management processes. I'd strongly suspect that project manager and her support aren't arguing about the definition of "method" versus "methodology," or the purity of one processes over another.
Nope, they got to get that beach B200 in the air and "on station," at the time they told the flight planners they said they would
