Blog of a Boston-based IT Consultant

Being a PM can be like being a General Contractor. Obviously, there is a very direct relationship. I know this is not going to win a Pulitzer. General Contractors have PMs. Still, there is another shade of metaphor here and I am going for with this impromptu post. See below, and know that there are definitely compound meanings in these bulleted items.

• You come across projects at various stages of completion and need to either pick up where the other folks left off, recommend a new direction, or tear everything down and start over, salvaging whatever you can. Sometimes, things are just bad, dangerous or otherwise not suitable for moving forward with. These are checkpoints (MSF) or milestones (PMI) or plain old sniff tests (life).

• Inception may occur when an effort is born anew. This is a common slipping point for PMs, I think. Sometimes you move faster by slowing down. Your effort has to be feasable (AUP) for it to be a true effort and not a fib.

• You need to keep the final goal in mind (project charter, scope doc, whatever you use), but approach the effort in a systematic and intelligent manner, one step at a time, one phase at a time, overlapping where possible and acting as a conductor, allocating resources and deallocating as needed (your SDLC is NOT your PLC but your PLC should be aware of your SDLC).

• You need to watch what you are spending on subcontractors. You have a budget. If you have money left over, it’s a win. Unless you are grant-funded. In that case, spend all you can because if you don’t, you won’t get it next time. You must have a cousin who knows how to lay blacktop, no?

• You have to approach each job as an individual effort. You can’t show up at every job site with a hammer and jigsaw and expect to be able to handle whatever comes your way. Agility is key. Be ready to get ready, know what ready is, but be mindful of the clock. You need to expect the unexpected, but realize there is no drama in it.

• You have to be aware of risks, like things falling and hurting someone, the weather, and neighborhood kids stealing the freshly planted landscaping. No, I never did that as a kid. I was very well-behaved. Once, though, I did see a General Contractor who left his pet pit bull in houses he was building. He had a mitigation plan, of sorts. If you need a quick template, you can have mine.

• You can drive around with a giant toolbox (maybe it says PMP on the side?), but to do that, you need a giant truck. You need a place to park that giant truck. You need to buy lots of gas for the truck. Big trucks are overhead, like big toolboxes. If you have a giant truck and the facilities to maintain it, great. If not, you will have to visit the project and come back with carefully chosen tools. If you know it is an electrical job, you’ll likely leave the jigsaw at home and bring other, more task-specific stuff along. I don’t know what that would be for an electrical job. I worked with pipe when I was younger, but never electricity. I am colorblind. It would be dangerous.

• If you know you are going to have to put 3 coats of paint on the house because of the existing color, you plan for 3 coats of paint. You make sure you have purchased enough, you make sure that you know how long it will take to dry, etc. You plan for iterations of painting. You don’t plan to “paint”.

• If you are doing a custom job, your client will be visiting. At least, I hope they do. I would. You should encourage this. You should involve them in the process, from drawing the blueprint and walking them through their dream home to showing them samples of travertine for the kitchen.

I have been watching Designed to Sell.

I am a Geek.

But, I am a BIG geek, so I get away with it .

Thanks,

Josh

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