PSI CONTRIBUTION

PSI CONTRIBUTION

To get most or all of your ten points here is very simple. The ten points is a measure of how much you are going to embrace all the jobs on a project and take them forward. Pause for a moment before you award yourself an automatic ten here.

A ten means that you are going to move heaven and earth, do whatever has to be done to make a project happen. Irrespective of formal structures, political considerations, resource or personnel constraints, famine , fire, flood, pestilence, war, nothing is going to stand in your way.

Now it seems to me that as human beings we may be able to bring such energy to bear on some projects. By and large, I don't think we can do it on all projects we become involved in. This, of course, merely reflects the rather obvious fact that some projects are more important than others. Thus, there may be some projects under our control that we are going to do everything possible to make happen. Then, fair play, we draw our ten points. Similarly, though, there may well be others where we decide that we just aren't prepared to give them that level of energy. There is no inherent problem with this provided we recognize that the lower score we award ourselves here reflects the fact that things may get forgotten or fall between the cracks, and we need to perhaps keep a weather eye out for these.

Chapter 4. STEP 4: ASSIGN PEOPLE TO JOBS

INTRODUCTION

EACH JOB HAS A NAME

PEOPLE'S OTHER COMMITMENTS

MONOLITHIC TEAM OR FLAT STRUCTURE

HIERARCHY OR TEAM STRUCTURE

MAXIMIZE STRENGTHS

ASSIGNING PEOPLE TO JOBS

ASSIGNING PEOPLE TO JOBS WITH FORM 2

APPLICATION TO SOFTWARE ENGINEERING

PSI CONTRIBUTION

INTRODUCTION

Many of the projects we encounter are too big for one person, and are carried out through using other people. When I first drafted this section of the book, the Gulf War was raging. This was a project which had nearly three quarters of a million people on the Allied side alone.

The overall goal of the project can be thought of as a picture broken down into pieces like a jigsaw puzzle. There are as many pieces as there are people. If each person completes his piece, the picture will complete, and the goal will be achieved. (Note that by our definition, each person becomes engaged in his own individual project and can apply structured project management to that project.)

There are three things you need to do as part of this step:

1. Make sure each job has a name against it

2. Take people's other commitments into account

3. Try to maximize the strengths of the team you've got.

We discuss each of these in turn .