The Clueless Project Manager: A Case of Project Management Reality - Softcover

Trivedi, Abhay V.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1467061913 ISBN 13: 9781467061919

Verlag: AuthorHouse, 2011

Inhaltsangabe

The Clueless Project Manager is a humor book on project management written for project managers, managers and anyone interested in getting a chuckle out of the work environment. It emphasizes the many trials and dilemma of a project manager as he tries to deal with problems on all fronts: his boss, the customer, the people who work under him, the suppliers and the entire world that surrounds him. The hero of the book "B.S." is a goofball with no understanding of the formal techniques of project management but outshines his "guru" by presenting him with thoughts that can only come from true understanding of human interactions. The book is written with the intent of sharing some of the best practices of project management as defined and perceived by different individuals. The book is also a reminder that most projects fail not due to a lack of understanding of the technical subject matter as they due to the lack of dealing with people. Lack of humor in the workplace can be the biggest hindrance to a successful and "high blood pressure free" environment.

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The Clueless Project Manager

A Case Of Project Management RealityBy Abhay V. Trivedi

AuthorHouse

Copyright © 2011 Abhay V. Trivedi, Ph. D.
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4670-6191-9

Contents

The Setup.....................................................1Sheer Luck....................................................7The Lure......................................................19The word is Perception........................................23Learning to Pay Attention.....................................35Back to Process...............................................41Baselines are Only a Guideline................................47Motivation does not need a Reason.............................53Managing a Rural Team.........................................59Success is not so Successful..................................63The "Why Bother?" Generation..................................71The Idea Factory..............................................79The Softer Side of Estimation.................................85Over Optimism=Under Performance...............................93Big "E"—The happening Formulae..........................101Failure is not all that Bad...................................107Change Management is for Consultants..........................115Risk Owners are Idiots........................................121Did Quality Kill the Japanese?................................129The Customer is either a King or an Idiot.....................135Outsourcing is not a Fad......................................143How Critical is the Path?.....................................149The Closing Thought...........................................155The Job Offer.................................................161

Chapter One

The Setup

The intra terminal shuttle at the world's busiest airport was on strike. It was the Friday before the Fourth of July weekend and the airport was chaos. I was running as fast as I could to catch the last flight to Los Angeles. It was not a smart move. I took a tumble. Overweight and out of shape I could barely walk let alone do an end run through the crowd. As I lay flat, watching the beautiful ceiling of the airport, a sign flashed by my eyes—"last call to Los Angeles." I thanked my lucky stars. It could have been worse. All those people in a hurry could have trampled me. I had recently read that the airport was the place to vent and there were plenty of frustrated people around.

My whole life was a total mess, but Fridays were generally good to me, signaling the end of the work week and unwinding at the local watering hole. I had disciplined myself to absolute abstinence from any intelligent activity on Fridays. This Friday however was shaping up to be different. Instead of my regular "night at the bar" my boss had me flying to meet him in Los Angeles for an important Saturday meeting.

The thought of spending an entire weekend with a sixty year old recently divorced and pretty much arrogant and selfish man was not exciting. The thought of missing the flight was even worse.

Robert Frost III was my boss. He also owned the company. As far as I knew he was the baddest man in the whole darn South. The last time I had missed a meeting Mr. Frost had me assigned to Crexton, Ohio, a place so depressing even the mayor had to be motivated to stay in town.

The Fit-Food company had been my humble abode for the past many years. Our mission at Fit-Food was to maximize profits by minimizing quality. When you make food for the obese you needn't worry about quality. This demographic is happy to oblige at the sight of any food in front of them.

There were some definite perks working for the Fit-Food company. One of them was meeting celebrities who regularly advertised our diet products. The celebrities who advertised for Fit-Food, however, were known only in the South, where anyone with a full set of teeth is generally considered a celebrity. Most of our celebrities worked for NASCAR as tire changers. In this neck of the woods most would recognize NASCAR tire changers but not the Governor. You can't blame the people, though; most of our governors have a branch office in South America or Europe where they conduct most of their affairs anyway.

The Fit-Food company was in the right place at the right time. The demand for diet food had skyrocketed in the past decade. Fit-Food was flourishing. Mr. Frost, as he liked to be called by all of his employees, was the sole owner of Fit-Food. He had inherited the company from his father, who killed himself in fear of seeing his only son destroy his legacy.

Mr. Frost had no clue how to run the weight loss business; he didn't have to. As long as there were Waffle Houses in the South the business was recession-proof or idiot-proof. The weight loss business was like the computer industry of the eighties; a lot of hype and a lot of mediocrity, however, both made you money.

The Fit-Food brand was recognized as one of the most powerful names in the South. The "Fit-Food" name was recognized by more people in the South than the "Swoosh" in Beaverton, Oregon. In fact, the "Swoosh" in the South was referred to as a carbonated drink. It doesn't take much of a genius to recognize why the South had lost the war

The Fit-Food company employed over a thousand employees, mostly in a volunteer capacity. They worked over sixty hours a week, but got paid as volunteers. They were promised excellent benefits after they served the company for twenty years. The hope was that after twenty years of hard labor they would not need any benefits. No wonder Mr. Frost's reading list only consisted of Mao Tse Tung's Philosophies on Humanity.

Some of us at Fit-Food fell in the category of project managers. A project manager at Fit-Food was defined as someone with a whole lot of responsibility and a much greater probability of getting fired with every project. Mr. Frost had read somewhere that anyone who had read "The Seven Habits of Smart People" was a certified project manager. I was one of the first project managers Mr. Frost had hired. I had the book in my hand during the interview. Mr. Frost believed in hiring the least qualified person at the lowest salary.

The first question Mr. Frost always asked his interviewees was, "What is the lowest salary you would accept?"

No wonder we had the most unqualified workforce in the entire South. Most of them I believe were ex-Waffle House employees or their cousins. I realized living in the South, the word cousin referred to everyone. Everyone was somehow related.

Recently Fit-Food had embarked upon a revolutionary idea of selling diet food. Mr. Frost had created a new line of "green" diet products, targeted at the new generation of "politically correct" obese people. The sight of politically correct obese people scared the daylights out of me, but it worked. The politically correct psychos had concluded that a cow packed in a green box made it holy and healthy to eat.

As the project manager for the "green" product lines, I was well aware of the requirements capture process from the stakeholders. In Fit-Food's case we had only one real stakeholder Mr. Frost. In a requirements gathering interview session he had commanded that the "green" line had to have all products packed in a green carton. The inside didn't matter. Mr. Frost had figured that the best way to fool the already food deprived customer was to color all the food cartons green. If the customer got too hungry he would eat the carton considering it to be another...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: AuthorHouse
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2011
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1467061913
• ISBN 13: 9781467061919
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 176
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: KreGa Onlinehandel GmbH; 4950000000000; info@krega-onlinehandel.de; ; Birkenweg 31; Brakel; 33034; Deutschland