February 16, 2009 – Going Covert, Part 5

NOTE: On January 12, Computerworld published an article I wrote entitled Covert PMO. This series of entries is a fictional account based on the Project Manager in that article. Any resemblance to anyone from my past, present or future is purely coincidental. To start at the beginning, jump to January 1, 2009 – Going Covert, Part 1.

Day 21, Wednesday – Finally, a piece of good news: the designer said they knew about the requirement and had set the blasted thing up for Web Services from the beginning. Problem solved.

Day 22, Thursday – The Business Project Manager called me back on the Change Request… to my surprise. She was in the Business Sponsor’s office and they were asking what the next steps were. We discussed the implications of the change and they expressed their concerns about the timeframe slipping. I assured them that the resources had been pulled from other efforts to ensure that this project met their deadline.

One of the things IT tends to forget is that the Business has their own deadlines, too. Based on our commitments to them, they work through the legal and government aspects of the new offering. Couple that with marketing it and training sales to pitch it and you have a lot of moving parts to pull together at the last minute. A slip by IT can cause them to miss a window of opportunity.

By the time we finished their approval of the Change Request was sitting in my inbox. At the end of the conversation they said something I hadn’t heard from anyone since moving over to the PM role: “Thank you.” It actually sounded like they meant it, too.

Day 23, Friday – Got a chance to get back to the list of issues the PMs had brought up. Here’s what I sent them for review.

Project Charter: responsibility of the Project Manager. It is vital to nailing down what the project is going to do, but no one is going to push for one to be created any more. Eventually the SOX Audit team would nail us for it, but the PMO was pretty much defunct.

Project Schedule: Responsibility of the Project Manager and the team. Start with Work Breakdown Structure and have the team add tasks with estimated hours to complete.

Estimated End Date: Deadline was set before anyone really estimated the effort…

Oh, shoot. It’s already 5:30 and I have a date with my wife tonight. Have to pick this up next time.

Jump to Part 6.