“That’s ridiculous,” you say. “Don’t use more firepower [if any at all] than you have to”, and you’d be correct.
Okay, so how about taking the simplest project that should require a simple Run Book, with combined forms (covering all that is needed, of course), and turning it into a cacophony of templates that contain mostly headers and little else. IT’S NOT NEEDED!! Quality = fit for intended use. That’s it – nothing more.
So, what’s got me so pissed today? If you've read just about any recent Project Management article, and unless you have a $250 million project, everyone is mandating redundancy upon redundancy when it comes to documentation.
What’s happened to the fun in project management? The laughing, teasing, story telling, the swearing? What’s happened to the PM documenting everything that’s needed and no more? Since do PM’s have to use tons of fluff for the sake of ‘look at me, aren’t I great?’ What a sad state of affairs.
Don’t tell me that doesn’t happen. A while back (less than a hundred years) I was looking at a colleague’s Run Book, (always looking for best practices) when I realized that all the forms were there and each one contained one or two lines.
Well now, that’s a bunch of bullshit and a big waste of paper!
So, in looking into the project itself, it was barely medium and a straight up endeavor.
So, what’s got me so pissed today? If you've read just about any recent Project Management article, and unless you have a $250 million project, everyone is mandating redundancy upon redundancy when it comes to documentation.
What’s happened to the fun in project management? The laughing, teasing, story telling, the swearing? What’s happened to the PM documenting everything that’s needed and no more? Since do PM’s have to use tons of fluff for the sake of ‘look at me, aren’t I great?’ What a sad state of affairs.
Don’t tell me that doesn’t happen. A while back (less than a hundred years) I was looking at a colleague’s Run Book, (always looking for best practices) when I realized that all the forms were there and each one contained one or two lines.
Well now, that’s a bunch of bullshit and a big waste of paper!
So, in looking into the project itself, it was barely medium and a straight up endeavor.
So why all the fluff? Because it looked good on his book shelf with the other Run Books, when in reality, all he needed was about thirty (30) pages; he turned it into a three (3) inch thick binder.
So, what’s my point, you may well ask? When you document your project, make it FIT FOR USE (quality) and not something useless that perhaps makes you look good, until someone (like me) really looks at it. <evil grin>
So, what’s my point, you may well ask? When you document your project, make it FIT FOR USE (quality) and not something useless that perhaps makes you look good, until someone (like me) really looks at it. <evil grin>
And yes, I discussed the whole thing with the other PM and he was shocked, I tell you; shocked!
“Well, excuse me for being thorough!” he huffed.
“It’s bullshit and you know it,” I smiled.
“How would you have changed it?” he asked with his chin held high.
“I’d do away with all the cumbersome mostly blank forms and combine them as paragraphs into a document called: Project Management Plan.”
Dead silence as his eyebrows twitched. “It looks more substantial my way.”
“The SOX auditor comes in next week, you know. Let me know what she says.”
Then suddenly, he asked me to sit with him a bit and go over his books…. before next week.
Ah, good times….. good times.
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