I had a PM parachute in to work on a failing project. The outgoing PM blamed engineering, of course, so the new PM held a meeting with just the engineering department to get our take on why we were only progressing at 40% of the expected (and budgeted) rate of development.
We pointed out that there were two one hour status meetings every day, we had to fill out a six page status report at COB every day, we were required to fill out the group status spreadsheet every hour (eight times a day), and there was a 3pm-5pm status meeting on Friday.
Spending 15 hours out of every 40 hour work week (37.5%) reporting status might have something to do with it, we said. The fact that we had to stop work every hour to report status didn't really help productivity, either.
I'm not sure if the new PM believed us, originally. She asked the outgoing PM for the last month's status reports, expecting the usual 10-15 pages. When she almost 1,000 pages of daily engineer updates, 44 pages of meeting minutes, and a spreadsheet with over 3500 updates (22 engineers times forty hourly updates times four weeks), she said that she'd worked on a three year project with as many engineers and barely produced that much paperwork.
She cancelled all of that, and scheduled a single 3pm Friday weekly meeting for two hours. She said it should be only an hour, but booked it for two in case it run late. She also asked every engineer to send her a daily email before they went before for the day, just saying what they were working on, and if there were any blockers or issues. Other than that, she stayed out of our way.
In a matter of three weeks, "despite" not reporting status every hour, we somehow nearly doubled productivity. We weren't at 100% (something like 84%), and there were definitely other issues to deal with, but the new PM confirmed that the biggest impediment to the project had been... the project manager.
Spot on. The amount of twaddle I’ve seen in Product Manager reports is unbelievable. They have been forced to measure more metrics than could possibly even exist, just to justify the paltry funding given them.
I worked for a company that ordered PMs to measure performance. What tools should they use? No answer. What metrics were to be measured? No answer. As one PM put it, he was ordered to "just measure something".
A co-worker at a second company was at a remote location, and produced a weekly report for head office, where I was. When he visited our office, he discovered he couldn't update the network location. He couldn't even read it. He discovered that no one could. The location was only accessible from the remote site where he worked, it turned out. He'd spent 18 months writing reports for head office and putting them in a folder that no one at head office had access to, and no one had even mentioned it.
At a third company, I got so tired of the demands for weekly status reports that I knew weren't being read that I filled one page with "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy", a second page in pig latin, the third page in iambic pentameter, the fourth page was a screenshot from the Voynich manuscript, and in the indicia on the last page, I included "I have three overdue projects, 18 annoying co-workers, 1200 rounds of .556 and 15 pounds of ammonium nitrate in my truck; this place is going down". I made paltry cosmetic changes, but essentially submitted the same weekly report for seven months and no one said anything. It was only when I got a new manager and he read the backlog that anyone read it, and he said the fact that no one had commented on any of my reports told him more about the department than anything in any of the reports.
I served my time. 🔥 Not anymore. 😈
I mean there are more evil hell holes… meetings without agenda.
At least I'll be used to the environment 🤷♀️
I had a PM parachute in to work on a failing project. The outgoing PM blamed engineering, of course, so the new PM held a meeting with just the engineering department to get our take on why we were only progressing at 40% of the expected (and budgeted) rate of development.
We pointed out that there were two one hour status meetings every day, we had to fill out a six page status report at COB every day, we were required to fill out the group status spreadsheet every hour (eight times a day), and there was a 3pm-5pm status meeting on Friday.
Spending 15 hours out of every 40 hour work week (37.5%) reporting status might have something to do with it, we said. The fact that we had to stop work every hour to report status didn't really help productivity, either.
I'm not sure if the new PM believed us, originally. She asked the outgoing PM for the last month's status reports, expecting the usual 10-15 pages. When she almost 1,000 pages of daily engineer updates, 44 pages of meeting minutes, and a spreadsheet with over 3500 updates (22 engineers times forty hourly updates times four weeks), she said that she'd worked on a three year project with as many engineers and barely produced that much paperwork.
She cancelled all of that, and scheduled a single 3pm Friday weekly meeting for two hours. She said it should be only an hour, but booked it for two in case it run late. She also asked every engineer to send her a daily email before they went before for the day, just saying what they were working on, and if there were any blockers or issues. Other than that, she stayed out of our way.
In a matter of three weeks, "despite" not reporting status every hour, we somehow nearly doubled productivity. We weren't at 100% (something like 84%), and there were definitely other issues to deal with, but the new PM confirmed that the biggest impediment to the project had been... the project manager.
Spot on. The amount of twaddle I’ve seen in Product Manager reports is unbelievable. They have been forced to measure more metrics than could possibly even exist, just to justify the paltry funding given them.
I worked for a company that ordered PMs to measure performance. What tools should they use? No answer. What metrics were to be measured? No answer. As one PM put it, he was ordered to "just measure something".
A co-worker at a second company was at a remote location, and produced a weekly report for head office, where I was. When he visited our office, he discovered he couldn't update the network location. He couldn't even read it. He discovered that no one could. The location was only accessible from the remote site where he worked, it turned out. He'd spent 18 months writing reports for head office and putting them in a folder that no one at head office had access to, and no one had even mentioned it.
At a third company, I got so tired of the demands for weekly status reports that I knew weren't being read that I filled one page with "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy", a second page in pig latin, the third page in iambic pentameter, the fourth page was a screenshot from the Voynich manuscript, and in the indicia on the last page, I included "I have three overdue projects, 18 annoying co-workers, 1200 rounds of .556 and 15 pounds of ammonium nitrate in my truck; this place is going down". I made paltry cosmetic changes, but essentially submitted the same weekly report for seven months and no one said anything. It was only when I got a new manager and he read the backlog that anyone read it, and he said the fact that no one had commented on any of my reports told him more about the department than anything in any of the reports.