A Dangerous Bias: action over thinking – A caution that it is easy to run into action but there is value in the upfront initiation processes and that they can help guarantee project success. Averages Without Variances are Meaningless – Or Worse Misleading – _A good reminder in light of the revelations on Reinhart/Rogoff that statistics are important and we should be careful in choosing and testing our tools.
If you present people with the 5 immutable facets of project management, you get a positive response:
What does ‘done’ look like? How will we get to ‘done’ Do we have the resources to get to ‘done’ What obstacles will we encounter on the way? How do we know we’re making progress? People want the answers, yet when you start talking about Project Management the room goes cold. Why?
The US Government is a great source of Project Management resources and while I plan on giving an overview of what is available for free in the near future, I stumbled across an item from NASA’s “ask” that I just had to share. The US Inspector General released a report recently attempting to answer why NASA projects so often seem to cost more and take longer than originally planned.
While the full report weighs in at 72 pages, I’d recommend everyone interested in Project Management to read at least the overview.
While I’d have loved to start with something juicier, I find myself out of the habit of narrative writing. As a result, to get back into the habit I’m making things easier on myself by writing more straightforward posts to get things going.
There is a surprising amount of ambiguity when people say ‘project management’ given how long the discipline has existed. Part of the problem sits with the variety of ways companies use the title ‘Project Manager’ – from team lead type roles to designated nagging managers through full-blown classic project managers and scrum masters.
During the day, I work as a Project Manager and I love it.
I’ve always been a process person, making it a great fit for me. I spend a lot of time thinking about project management as a discipline and a process along with the challenges I regularly face and really want to share. As a result, pm blogging will commence shortly!
It may not be as exciting as discussions on sensing soil moisture levels, but hopefully everyone will learn something in the process.
A couple of months ago I decided I needed a project I could finish as the watering system seems like it will be forever on the horizon. I’ve wanted to make a vplotter for a while + seemed like it would be something fairly easily finished while giving me experience I could carry forward to the other projects on my plate.
VPlotters are a type of computer controlled drawing device, where the pen is hung vertically from two motors against a wall, resulting in a ‘v’ from the two control points to the pen.
[Editor’s Note] I started this post months ago, but a stressful bit of time at work led to me putting this on the back burner. It has already proven its worth as I remembered none of what I’ve written here + managed to quickly get back up to speed. Hope it proves worthwhile to you!
One of the challenging aspects of moving to programming microprocessors is managing the multiple clocks available.
I’ve got a long technical post coming on the clock system of the MSP430, a topic that I ended up having to become an expert in to get 1-wire working properly, but in the meantime there have been developments in the mspgcc world.
You may recall that I abandoned doing 430 development on Linux in part due to incompatibilities with TI’s compiler (IAR) and the sample code they provided. I’m happy to say that progress has been made, as reported by 43oh.
Between holidays and travel, I haven’t managed to put too much time into my watering project, so here’s a wander into the world of 3d printing to keep your attention.
I travel to Israel for work a few times a year and have thought for a while that I should own a menorah. It being the season for jelly doughnuts, I put in quite a search but everything I came across either seemed tacky and tourist bait or overpriced.
I put the punchline in the title, so let me provide some justification and explanation. One of the things that initially excited me about the prospect of using the Launchpad was the presence of support on Linux. While not officially supported by TI, there is a project to add the msp430 family as a target for cross-platform gcc compilation. As an unsupported endeavor though, there exist some hiccups, both in compilation and communication with the launchpad under Linux.