project management

[dr_tectonic]

BTW--

For those who might be interested in that project management stuff I posted about, you can find it here. It's the one called "Embracing the Dragon's Tail". Dunno how dry it'll be just reading about it.

There are some other good articles there, too. I especially liked "You Can't Negotiate Cost" and "The Rule of Fifty".

Although, I'll just summarize that last one for you: no matter how much time you spend at work, you'll never get more than 50 hours worth of stuff done per week, and actually, the more overtime you work, the less you'll get done in the long run. Seriously! Backed up by research! (I read some good arguments a while back that the upper limit is likely to be even lower for knowledge work than manual work, but I can't find the article.)

Comments

[dcseain.livejournal.com]

From my POV, The Rule of Fifty is kind of a big DUH, but whatever. (Hm. I'm apparently a bit contrary/cranky as well as tired, well off to bed with me then.)

[walrusjester.livejournal.com]

Same here. Back when I was in the wilderland of computer game design, my mind was routinely boggled when managers would imply, insinuate, and insist that a 40 hour workweek was tantamount to stealing from the company. You don't sprint the length of a marathon.

[dr-tectonic.livejournal.com]

I'm with ya, but there's a serious culture of overwork at my office. I'm the renegade slacker...

[walrusjester.livejournal.com]

Keep slacking, man! The more often you put in an extra 10 hours "just this once," the more a part of your job description it becomes. It's not your fault that The Man can't staff adequately.

[jofish22.livejournal.com]

I like their basic point about providing time estimates as a real low end, a real high end, and a most likely middle value. That seems like a nice take-away.

I don't know that the rule of 50 is particularly useful (and I'm not sure that the graph says what they say it does.) "On Average" is a useless concept in my world, which is all about relatively relaxed weeks interspersed with deadline-driven crunches where who knows how many hours you hit.

I do think it's important to remember that if, like me, you believe that a balanced lifestyle really is a fundamentally important and good thing, and that a good healthy balance of work and play and exercise and good eating and good thinking is the key to maximizing total productivity in a real way, then those people working twelve hour days every day are *sick*. Not in the perjorative sense, in the true, clinical sense. They are the anorexics of the workplace, and it's unpleasant and unhealthy. It's easy to be a thirty-something guy pointing at teenage girls starving themselves because of societal pressures... but then to go and work sixty, eighty hour weeks on a frequent basis is to my mind as socially flawed, destructive, and unhealthy.

[ng-nighthawk.livejournal.com]

I also read something which I am way too lazy to look up that said that sleeping 5 hours a night all week and then 12 hours on weekends is not as effective as sleeping 8 hours per night all week. Go figure. :)