Big project deliverable tomorrow at 9am

Meeting with PM to confirm all is good following phone call assurances about tidying up the last details

Last details being the core part of the system and once the 'last details' have been clarified the work to implement them can be started!

All okay except for the last details = The project development has not yet started and there isn't yet a specification

You would have thought this would have been mentioned in the weekly and daily calls rather than smooth assurances that all was going well and on plan!

That was the minor rant. Let's see how long it takes to resolve and there may be a major rant in a few hours time.

More of an abstract rant.

This kind of thing put one of my businesses under in January – dealing with people who say yes when they mean 'not no'

Because people only look at the short term and not long term.
Because they think the customer wants to hear yes.
Because they're scared.

The hardest word for a salesman to say is "no", but used correctly it'sagreat sales tool.

You've got a meeting with the Prime Minister tomorrow?
Tell him he's a coq

I would like to point out im not the "Project", mentioned above 😀

"We're still on time" means "we haven't passed a milestone yet".
"We're still on budget" means "we haven't spent all the money yet".

Is this your first experience of running a project, WCA?

You really should start thinking outside the box and come up with some blue sky suggestions, or this will never roll out. Moving forward, you need to enable organic growth in your business paradigm.

Sorry boss 😳

Let's see how long it takes to resolve and there may be a major rant in a few hours time.

neh dont bother mate

How can nothing have been done without you knowing about it?

If you don't have a clue what your people are doing why not find a job that doesn't involve managing other people. management is about more than ensuring shit rolls downhill, good managers take responsibility.

Sounds like some assumptions were made that everything was ok.

Always drill down to the detail. Keep going until you literally hit the hour by hour activity for that part of a program.

The devil is in the detail.

Rubbish – trust your staff and don't micro manage ! Grrr.

And if people lie to you don't work with them again…

Always drill down to the detail. Keep going until you literally hit the hour by hour activity for that part of a program

I hope the trendy buzzpseak is ironic. Otherwise, You Sir, are an idiot.

The use of the word 'literally' gives it away.

A cup of tea will make it right.

When you look back at their supplied project plans, does the 'work done' change, over time?

The last big project I got involved in, the PM kept presenting his Gantt chart/plan showing progress and my boss was happy. I looked at it, and it wasn't a project plan in my sense, it was more a presentation. And he didn't automatically link the work done at sub-project level to the 'plan', but had a separate document for the senior management plan/presentation… nuff said.

I have a rule for project related communications:

Unless you are specifically asked for further information, the answer to ALL questions are YES, NO or a number. Any other responses are met with punishment and beer fines.

For example:

Q is X complete yet
A No
Q haow many days until complete
A 4

Simple – punishment beatings also help

Your job is dull, writing about it even duller.

I thought this thread might be about a suicidal ex or something.

On a project last year we worked with some guys based out in India. At our weekly update meetings when asked how far through their current pieces of work they'd give nice %age increases each week and discuss some issues. I started to think I was looking bad as my %age didn't increase as nicely as there's. When it came to delivering work mine was done and there's was so far off the UK guys had to work all weekend to sort the Indian guys' stuff out. But they are cheaper than us so that's OK then.

The delivery is now 9am tomorrow morning and the indians are working the weekend.

I hope the trendy buzzpseak is ironic. Otherwise, You Sir, are an idiot.

The use of the word ‘literally’ gives it away.

No trendy buzzspeak intended. If you have a project which needs to be delivered on time to quality, then assuming everything is going to be ok will be your biggest downfall.

When you are the one explaining to your customer why things haven’t been delivered on time, then scottChegg YOU sir will be the one branded as an idiot! A poor project manager ALWAYS blames their supply chain.

He didn’t assume all was going well, he was told it.

offshore IT company? having worked with (and been let down badly by) both TCS and HCL in the past I do all possible to avoid working with them. Some genuinely good guys, vast majority are shit. Only send work their way if is spec’d to the nth degree with no unclear bits, and if the work is non-critical path, so you have time to check it over and time for the invetiable rework. I’ve been told (via ‘cultural awareness training’) that they have issues with saying ‘no’ or anything negative….I was told to look for ‘side to side head wobbling’….

As far as I’m concerned a pm is only as good as his team. I’m currently being stiched up by a big name supplier, agreed deal in Nov2009, Apr2010 confirmed and paid for…deadline july2010, I’m still waiting in Sept2010… joke, and nothing I ca do about it either…

The delivery is now 9am tomorrow morning and the indians are working the weekend.

Unless it’s a completely trivial piece of software, it might be wise to upgrade the hardware your bug tracking software is running on….

Sounds like the Indians are Cowboys.

there comes a point in every working relationship where the only realistic course of action is to start throwing punches..

Shoot one, “pour encourager les autres”?