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DrupalCon San Francisco 2010

project management

Project management: Designer versus Programmer

Pegboard CMS's picture
By Pegboard CMS - Posted on 18 November 2009

It’s ShowTime again, the project manager looks grim, the programmer struts in “I’m gonna break ya” … the designer stares him down, the bell rings… smackdown, and its only morning tea break!

If your design studio resembles a scene from wrestlemania, take heart, you’re not alone!  There is mortal combat out there between two creative forces butting heads over the creation of an online masterpiece. The Project manager aka “the Ref” is breaking into a sweat over burgeoning budgets, wasted time and a design project that looks light-years from delivery.

The two parties that pay for the showdown, the client and the design studio owner, are stuck in the audience looking on wringing hands, the anxiety levels are rising. The problem is that once the cycle gets going it’s hard to stop, the lateness of delivery looks bad to the client, upcoming projects get pushed back to a later starting date. Clients complain and do your business untold damage as your reputation wavers.  Stress levels peak at all levels of your business, even the work experience kid is having a crap time, productivity and staff moral are non-existent, and the boss is sweaty palmed and manic. Profits dry up, no movie night this month for the staff, hey that’s cool, they hate each other anyway.

So why the opposition?

Tips for implementing Web content management

Bryan's picture
By Bryan - Posted on 07 November 2009

Tony Pietrocola, Bridgeline Software, posted on their blog seven ways to "Avoid These Common Mistakes When Implementing WCM". Two of the tips he gives have been giving me trouble lately.

2. Have the requirements from all stakeholder groups been accounted for? One of the critical issues that sink CMS investments in the organization is missing all necessary input and buy-in.

3. Trying to solve too much from the very beginning and be all things to all people is a recipe for disaster. In order to be successful, work in manageable phases. Don’t be afraid to upset the apple cart and prioritize.

What do you do when all the stakeholders buy into the CMS but see everything on their laundry list as a priority for implementation? Sometimes having all the stakeholders involved is why tip #3 can be very difficult to do and maintaining a WCM can bring no joy. There is a lot of negotiation skills involved to make WCM implementation and maintenance happen. Unfortunately, not all IT project leaders are good at the negotiation table.

I will have to ponder on these issues a bit more...

Book on simplifying PHP Project Development for your Team

amits's picture
By amits - Posted on 25 October 2009

Packt is pleased to announce PHP Team Development, a new book that helps PHP developers work effectively as a team by breaking up complex PHP projects into manageable sub-parts. Written by Samisa Abeysinghe, this book is a precise guide with examples to illustrate practical benefits and to effectively use PHP frameworks to achieve project success.

PHP is a widely used, general-purpose scripting language that was originally designed for web development, to produce dynamic web pages. This free software can be embedded into HTML and generally runs on a web server, which needs to be configured to process PHP code and create web page content from it. PHP has evolved to include a command line interface capability and can also be used in standalone graphical applications.

The PHP Team Development book reduces development time by using MVC to break down complexity in PHP projects and helps catch and eliminate bugs early using source control and bug tracking tools, thereby reducing the development time. This book helps apply techniques related to process models, collaboration among team members, and continuous long-term improvement.

Getting more work done through less innovation

Bryan's picture
By Bryan - Posted on 03 July 2007
The biggest reward I get from working on IT projects is the opportunity to take new ideas and new strategies and piece them together into something that has never been done before.  Even when I'm not the one originating the new idea, I like helping other innovative people bring their ideas to the table.  I have ideas, dreams, and aspirations to help take my workplace to the next level of where it should be via innovative use of what I know best, information technology.  How could innovation and all these wonderful ideas I have in my head not be anything but a good thing for my organization?  A recent article in the Wall Street Journal answers just that question by saying that there are negatives for an organization that innovates too much.

In "How Innovation Can Be Too Much of a Good Thing", George Anders writes about how companies and business consultants are rediscovering that less innovation can produce better business results.  Companies that used to push the limit in efficiency are finding that they're "jamming too many new ideas into a product pipeline, without enough slack time to ensure that critical tasks stayed on schedule".

Similar insights have been standard wisdom on the manufacturing floor for decades. Factory managers learn about bottlenecks through the formal discipline of queuing theory. That teaches them to keep a little slack in the system to handle the unpredictable -- but inevitable -- crunch times.