{"id":3778,"date":"2010-02-04T10:17:02","date_gmt":"2010-02-04T17:17:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/?p=3778"},"modified":"2010-02-04T10:19:49","modified_gmt":"2010-02-04T17:19:49","slug":"dare-to-inspire-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/?p=3778","title":{"rendered":"Dare to Inspire (4)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Break<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sometimes, you have to break the rules to get things done!<\/strong><\/p>\n

As we go through our lives we are subjected to numerous rules \u2013 as kids, as students, as workers and as adults living our everyday lives.\u00a0 As program managers and leaders, part of our responsibilities is to lay down some rules by which to guide projects, by which teams work together and by which products are built, tested and released.\u00a0 However, let\u2019s not forget that the reason we have rules is to get us to a destination.\u00a0\u00a0 There is a favorite quote of mine which I invoke to remind myself of this principle:<\/p>\n

Hell, there are no rules here \u2013 we\u2019re trying to accomplish something.<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0 Thomas Edison.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The program manager needs to know when to go by the books and follow the TL9000 (or your favorite development) process and when to let loose and have the team go off and run as fast they can.\u00a0 I once worked with a program manager (let\u2019s call him Joe) who could not tell the difference.\u00a0 He was a \u2018by the rules book\u2019 type of leader \u2013 and that actually got in the way of us getting our jobs done. \u00a0\u00a0We ended up getting to our destination despite Joe.\u00a0 Here is the story.<\/p>\n

Joe was responsible for leading a project on which I was one of the engineering managers.\u00a0 We started out with a reasonable plan, and had regular program meetings, with status, minutes and action items that Joe would track.\u00a0 Along the way, two things happened.\u00a0 Our management wanted us to adopt a new development process.\u00a0 And, at about the same time, we also had the inevitable \u2018technical bump\u2019 in the road that required our attention.\u00a0 The new process rule required a detailed unit testing plan be documented, and signed off at completion prior to handing off to the QA team.\u00a0 Joe was focused on tracking this new process requirement and getting the test plan documented.\u00a0 The engineering team was very concerned about the bump.\u00a0 Without addressing the bump, there would be no substantial development or unit testing to speak of.\u00a0 However, Joe had it in our project schedule that the unit test plans would be done by a specific date and tracked that religiously at each meeting.\u00a0 Joe also had very little domain knowledge and despite the team\u2019s efforts to educate him on the criticality of addressing the problem asap, he continued to focus on the dates and the schedule.\u00a0 Joe was following his rules book \u2013 the established project plan.\u00a0 The engineering team decided to take matters into its own hands, and we held shadow program meetings without Joe to address the bump and quickly fix the key technical issues that were hampering our progress.\u00a0 Joe\u2019s rules were getting in the way of work being done.\u00a0 When the crisis was over, I gave Joe some feedback that he needed to be able to adjust his plans when bumps came along, and bend the rules to meet our most critical goals.\u00a0 To do that, he needed to learn more about the domain and understand the business of what he was program managing.\u00a0 However, I hear he still manages the same way. Sigh!<\/p>\n

Focusing on the rules and mechanics of program management helps keep things going.\u00a0 But a good program manager needs to have at least a basic understanding of the domain and be prepared to apply rules or break the rules in order to get things done.\u00a0 At the end of the day, the customer will not pay if we don\u2019t have a good product, but followed all the rules!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 Sometimes, you have to break the rules to get things done! As we go through our lives we are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1494,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3778","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-leadership","category-miscellaneous"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1494"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3778"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3778\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}