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Death March (project Management)
In project management, a death march is a project which participants believe to be destined for failure, or that requires a stretch of unsustainable overwork. The project marches to its death as its members are forced by their superiors to continue the project, against their better judgment. The term originated in the field of software development, and has since spread to other fields. Death marches are usually a result of unrealistic or overly optimistic expectations in scheduling or feature scope, and often result from a lack of appropriate documentation, relevant training, or outside expertise needed to complete the project. Management may desperately attempt to right the course of the project by asking team members to work especially grueling hours (14-hour days or 7-day weeks) or by attempting to "throw (enough) bodies at the problem", often causing burnout. The discomfort is heightened by project participants' knowledge that the failure is avoidable. It may have succeeded ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Project Management
Project management is the process of leading the work of a team to achieve all project goals within the given constraints. This information is usually described in project documentation, created at the beginning of the development process. The primary constraints are scope, time, and budget. The secondary challenge is to optimize the allocation of necessary inputs and apply them to meet pre-defined objectives. The objective of project management is to produce a complete project which complies with the client's objectives. In many cases, the objective of project management is also to shape or reform the client's brief to feasibly address the client's objectives. Once the client's objectives are clearly established, they should influence all decisions made by other people involved in the project – for example, project managers, designers, contractors, and subcontractors. Ill-defined or too tightly prescribed project management objectives are detrimental to decision-m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Edward Yourdon
Edward Nash Yourdon (April 30, 1944 – January 20, 2016) was an American software engineer, computer consultant, author and lecturer, and software engineering methodology pioneer. He was one of the lead developers of the structured analysis techniques of the 1970s and a co-developer of both the Yourdon/Whitehead method for object-oriented analysis/design in the late 1980s and the Coad/Yourdon methodology for object-oriented analysis/design in the 1990s. Biography Yourdon obtained his B.S. in applied mathematics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1965, and did graduate work in electrical engineering and computer science at MIT and the Polytechnic Institute of New York. In 1964 Yourdon started working at Digital Equipment Corporation developing FORTRAN programs for the PDP-5 minicomputer and later assembler for the PDP-8. In the late 1960s and early 1970s he worked at a small consulting firm and as an independent consultant. In 1974 Yourdon founded his own co ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Software Project Management
Software project management is an art and science of planning and leading software projects. It is a sub-discipline of project management in which software projects are planned, implemented, monitored and controlled. History In the 1970s and 1980s, the software industry grew very quickly, as computer companies quickly recognized the relatively low cost of software production compared to hardware production and circuitry. To manage new development efforts, companies applied the established project management methods, but project schedules slipped during test runs, especially when confusion occurred in the gray zone between the user specifications and the delivered software. To be able to avoid these problems, ''software'' project management methods focused on matching user requirements to delivered products, in a method known now as the waterfall model. As the industry has matured, analysis of software project management failures has shown that the following are the most commo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wishful Thinking
Wishful thinking is the formation of beliefs based on what might be pleasing to imagine, rather than on evidence, rationality, or reality. It is a product of resolving conflicts between belief and desire. Methodologies to examine wishful thinking are diverse. Various disciplines and schools of thought examine related mechanisms such as neural circuitry, human cognition and emotion, types of bias, procrastination, motivation, optimism, attention and environment. This concept has been examined as a fallacy. It is related to the concept of wishful seeing. Some psychologists believe that positive thinking is able to positively influence behavior and so bring about better results. This is called the " Pygmalion effect". Christopher Booker described wishful thinking in terms of :"the fantasy cycle" ... a pattern that recurs in personal lives, in politics, in history—and in storytelling. When we embark on a course of action which is unconsciously driven by wishful thinking, all ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Shturmovshchina
Shturmovshchina ( rus, штурмовщина, p=ʂtʊrmɐfˈɕːinə, ''last-minute rush'', ''storming'') was a common Soviet work practice of frantic and overtime work at the end of a planning period in order to fulfill the planned production target. The practice usually gave rise to products of poor quality at the end of a planning cycle. The cycle of ''shturmovshchina'', associated with the tradition of monthly targets (on which bonuses and managers' positions depend), is described as follows. Due to the planned economy, required materials and tools were not always available on time, and the work slowed as a result, or workers might have been reassigned to do something else, with the expectation that the job would be done when the materials arrive. However, when the end of a month neared, management was placed under pressure, substitute materials and improvised tools were used, and the workers were expected to produce the expected product in time. All this abruptly ended at t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Software Peter Principle
The Software Peter principle is used in software engineering to describe a dying project which has become too complex to be understood even by its own developers. It is well known in the industry as a silent killer of projects, but by the time the symptoms arise it is often too late to do anything about it. Good managers can avoid this disaster by establishing clear coding practices where unnecessarily complicated code and design is avoided. The name is used in the book ''C++ FAQs'' (see below), and is derived from the Peter principle – a theory about incompetence in hierarchical organizations. Causes Loss of conceptual integrity The conceptual integrity of software is a measure of how well it conforms to a single, simple set of design principles, according to ''The Mythical Man Month'' by Fred Brooks. When done properly, it provides the most functionality using the simplest idioms. It makes software easier to use by making it simple to create and learn. Conceptu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Planning Fallacy
The planning fallacy is a phenomenon in which predictions about how much time will be needed to complete a future task display an optimism bias and underestimate the time needed. This phenomenon sometimes occurs regardless of the individual's knowledge that past tasks of a similar nature have taken longer to complete than generally planned. The bias affects predictions only about one's own tasks; when outside observers predict task completion times, they tend to exhibit a pessimistic bias, overestimating the time needed. The planning fallacy involves estimates of task completion times more optimistic than those encountered in similar projects in the past. The planning fallacy was first proposed by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky in 1979. In 2003, Lovallo and Kahneman proposed an expanded definition as the tendency to underestimate the time, costs, and risks of future actions and at the same time overestimate the benefits of the same actions. According to this definition, the plann ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Optimism Bias
Optimism bias (or the optimistic bias) is a cognitive bias that causes someone to believe that they themselves are less likely to experience a negative event. It is also known as unrealistic optimism or comparative optimism. Optimism bias is common and transcends gender, ethnicity, nationality, and age.O’Sullivan, Owen P. (2015)The neural basis of always looking on the bright side.''Dialogues in Philosophy, Mental and Neuro Sciences'', 8(1):11–15. Optimistic biases are even reported in non-human animals such as rats and birds. However, autistic people are less susceptible to optimistic biases. Four factors can cause a person to be optimistically biased: their desired end state, their cognitive mechanisms, the information they have about themselves versus others, and overall mood. The optimistic bias is seen in a number of situations. For example: people believing that they are less at risk of being a crime victim, smokers believing that they are less likely to contract lung can ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gold Plating (software Engineering)
In time management, gold plating is the phenomenon of working on a project or task past the point of diminishing returns. Phenomenon For example: after having met the requirements, the project manager or the developer works on further enhancing the product, thinking the customer will be delighted to see additional or more polished features, rather than what was asked for or expected. The customer might be disappointed in the results, and the extra effort by the developer might be futile. Gold plating is also considered a bad project management practice for different project management best practices and methodologies such as Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) and PRINCE2. In this case, 'gold plating' means the addition of any feature not considered in the original scope plan (PMBOK) or product description (PRINCE2) at any point of the project. This is because it introduces a new source of risks to the original planning such as additional testing, documentation, costs, or ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Escalation Of Commitment
Escalation of commitment is a human behavior pattern in which an individual or group facing increasingly negative outcomes from a decision, action, or investment nevertheless continue the behavior instead of altering course. The actor maintains behaviors that are irrational, but align with previous decisions and actions. Economists and behavioral scientists use a related term, ''sunk-cost fallacy'', to describe the justification of increased investment of money or effort in a decision, based on the cumulative prior investment ("sunk cost") despite new evidence suggesting that the future cost of continuing the behavior outweighs the expected benefit. In sociology, ''irrational escalation of commitment'' or ''commitment bias'' describe similar behaviors. The phenomenon and the sentiment underlying them are reflected in such proverbial images as "Throwing good money after bad", or "In for a penny, in for a pound", or "It's never the wrong time to make the right decision", or "If ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Boondoggle
A boondoggle is a project that is considered a waste of both time and money, yet is often continued due to extraneous policy or political motivations. Etymology "Boondoggle" was the name of the newspaper of the Roosevelt Troop of the Boy Scouts, based in Rochester, New York, and it first appeared in print in 1927. From there it passed into general use in scouting in the 1930s. It was attributed to a boy scout from Rochester who coined the term to describe "a new type of uniform decoration". After the presentation of honorific boondoggles at a World Jamboree, the use of the word spread to other troops and branches. An Oakland scout troop presented a "boondoggle" as an award for attendees who spent seven days and nights at Camp Dimond. That boondoggle was described as a "red leather strip which terminates in a red wooden diamond on which is painted the number 1930." The "boondoggle" was described in the Ogden '' Standard-Examiner'' in 1930 as a hand-made item crafted from bri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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