A snappy skim through self inflicted PM disasters based on first hand observations. This talk was given on March 5 at Drupal South 2015.

1. The war within.
Ahmed Dhahbi
Client Services Director
Technocrat

2. The dream...

3. The dream... Reality...

4. Client inflicted
● Excessive documentation
● Confirmations and reconfirmations
● Meetings and more meetings
● Independent audits (!)
● Adversarial and aggressive behaviour
Self inflicted
● Lack of project-direction & comms
● Gold plating
● Generous requirement interpretation
● Un-budgeted innovation
● Lack of solidarity
● Trees and forests
● ‘It’ll take 2 hours’
The issue backlog...

5. Client inflicted
● Excessive documentation
● Confirmations and reconfirmations
● Meetings and more meetings
● Independent audits (!)
● Adversarial and aggressive behaviour
Self inflicted
● Lack of project-direction & comms
● Gold plating
● Generous requirement interpretation
● Un-budgeted innovation
● Lack of solidarity
● Trees and forests
● ‘It’ll take 2 hours’
The issue backlog...

6. True Story
(witnessed in a previous life)
The issue backlog...

7. BR-101
“Migrate website from current CMS, in its current form, to Drupal.”
Gold Plating

8. BR-101
“Migrate website from current CMS, in its current form, to Drupal.”
Gold Plating
Note:
● Existing website not responsive.
● Client has a hard deadline.
● No requirement for responsive migration.

9. instead
BR-101
“Migrate website from current CMS, in its current form, to Drupal.”
Gold Plating

10. instead
BR-101
“Migrate website from current CMS, in its current form, to Drupal.”
Gold Plating

11. BR-101
“Migrate website from current CMS, in its current form, to Drupal.”
● 1.5 month delay to launch, and:
● “The brand isn’t presented correctly in the responsive version.”
● “Can we change the responsive grid behaviour.”
● UAT x 3 “Here’s a backlog of 70 issues that need resolving.”
Unhappy client.
Gold Plating

12. Client inflicted
● Excessive documentation
● Confirmations and reconfirmations
● Meetings and more meetings
● Independent audits (!)
● Adversarial and aggressive behaviour
Self inflicted
● Lack of project-direction & comms
● Gold plating
● Generous requirement interpretation
● Un-budgeted innovation
● Lack of solidarity
● Trees and forests
● ‘It’ll take 2 hours’
The issue backlog...

13. Client: “We’d like this changed...”
Dev:
“Yeh sure, shouldn’t take more than 2 hours”
PM (thinks to herself)
“What the.. what about PM time, documentation etc...”
Client:
Rushes off to minute the commitment.
“It’ll take 2 hours”

14. 1 Week Later.
“It’ll take 2 hours”

15. Client: “You said it’d take 2 hours”
Dev:
“Yeh but we didn’t realise you’d insist
on implementing it in a literal way”
PM:
Sweats
(Meeting ends)
Blames it all on the Devs at the PMO call.
“It’ll take 2 hours”

16. Let’s swap solutions at QnA
Thank you. (ahmed@technocrat.com.au)