I used to manage waterfall projects. When I was junior project manager then nobody heard about agile project management or similar methodologies. At that time, I worked with government owned companies and it had effect on the way of project management. Before starting the project, I created a project plan and many related documents. Most of these documents did not carry any meaning. They had to be created in order to satisfy so called "ISO". During the project, the project team had to follow the project plan and the so called System Plan document. Actually, the System Plan had nothing in common with implementation rules; it was just an Analyses Document. Why was it called System Plan? Well, maybe I reveal this secret for you. But not now.
Most of our customers did not know what they really want. Some of them knew but they did not know much about the possibilities offered by the IT technology. Does it mean if they were silly? Of course, not. Most of them were genius on their industry. They just did not know much of IT. I bet you can drive and I am sure you count yourself as one of the best drivers. However, if you have problem with your car, you do not start to repair it. You go to a car service, do not you? It is the same situation.
I quickly changed waterfall model to RUP, a simplified one. My projects improved a lot and I became an outstanding PM. Customers trusted in me and I used this trust to implement splendid IT systems for them. I did enjoy observing them during work with our system. It was my best reward.
Once, our company won a great project. We won it because of me, as Customers knew me and trusted in me. However, at that time, it was not me who leaded the project. At the beginning, there were two project managers. Honestly, I protested every time, when anybody called me a PM of this project. I counted myself as an expert, who helped the PM. I believe that a project could not have two PMs. Do you agree with me?
The PM and I worked together very well. So, soon, another person joined us. Our boss told he joined in order to help in project administration tasks. But, soon he was treated like a PM of this project. The problem was that most of the customers and even project members did not accept him as a PM. He just did not have enough knowledge and charisma. According to my opinion, his biggest problem was that he was unable to say no. He tried to avoid conflicts so badly, that he accepted every tasks even impossible ones.
At that time, the old PM and I did not received all information of this project and we were very busy with correcting the new PM's errors. One week, the new PM, told us that we had to check the project status every day. He called these meetings stand up meeting. Nobody knew why. So, we did it. We gathered every day in a small windowless room and we were discussing technical problems with the senior developers for hours. Developers hated these meeting. So did the old PM and I.
One of the main reasons of winning this project was my success in other projects and the accepted simplified RUP methodology. One of the key moments of this methodology was to agree the half ready application with the customers. Such way, the customer could better imagine the possibilities and the program features. I usually showed working application containing only user interface, then working application without valid actions and so on. Such way the IT system could be tailored and the project cost could be kept on the accepted level.
So, the customers were waiting for their working screen shots. However, the new PM wanted to show a really working application. It was impossible. The developers had tasks execution of which could last for months. The old PM and I learned that our boss, the new PM and the head of IT department wanted working applications. The real customer, the future user of the system was not asked. They said that this demonstration of the application was called Demo.
Of course, the whole working application could not be demonstrated. It was the reason that we had to choose some features and demonstrated only these. In many cases, the server side code was not finished. Developers with extra effort prepared the application to the show. I think show is better word than demo. After the show, the extra code was deleted.
After the successful go live, we learned that we had worked on a Scrum based project. We decided that Scrum is useless and we swore not to Scrum any more.
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