I've had this discussion almost verbatim with several project directors (the guys that project managers report to).
It's scary when they ask you to explain why adding manpower would make it later, and they don't understand. It's called Brooke's Law, and any project director who doesn't understand it doesn't understand project management.
It's scarier when they ask you to explain it, and they DO understand Brooke's Law, but they're just asking specific details about the project.
It's scarier because if you can't explain it, you have no justification for them not throwing another resource onto the barbie, which will make you later. If you can explain it, you're quite possibly talking yourself into a "promotion" to a project manager position you don't want.
At one company, I'd had this discussion with two different project directors a total of seven times on seven failing projects. The result was I had two standing offers to become a PM if I ever wanted to throw my hat in the ring. On the upside, having the ear of your PM's boss does come in useful, especially when the PM tries to pin failures on the engineering team...
I've had this discussion almost verbatim with several project directors (the guys that project managers report to).
It's scary when they ask you to explain why adding manpower would make it later, and they don't understand. It's called Brooke's Law, and any project director who doesn't understand it doesn't understand project management.
It's scarier when they ask you to explain it, and they DO understand Brooke's Law, but they're just asking specific details about the project.
It's scarier because if you can't explain it, you have no justification for them not throwing another resource onto the barbie, which will make you later. If you can explain it, you're quite possibly talking yourself into a "promotion" to a project manager position you don't want.
At one company, I'd had this discussion with two different project directors a total of seven times on seven failing projects. The result was I had two standing offers to become a PM if I ever wanted to throw my hat in the ring. On the upside, having the ear of your PM's boss does come in useful, especially when the PM tries to pin failures on the engineering team...
PMs think if they assign a pregnancy to nine women, the baby will be born in one month.