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.
At least I'll be used to the environment 🤷♀️
I served my time. 🔥 Not anymore. 😈
I mean there are more evil hell holes… meetings without agenda.
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.