Project Managers

Fri 22nd Jan 10, 5.15pm

Project Managers.  Now at #3 in my "Things That Make Me Grind My Teeth With Hatred", behind Cristiano Ronaldo and Tax Self Assessment Forms.

Did Management decide that ITIL wasn't frustrating IT engineers enough?  Perhaps we were beginning to get the hang of writing epic change requests and rollback plans, and still threatening to do some useful work. 

"I have a plan", suggested one suit to another down the squash club. "Let's hire some freelancers with no technical skills, whose sole purpose is to keep changing priorities, setting unreasonable deadlines and causing stress". 

"Good idea!", agreed the other suit.  "Even better, let's pay these people more than the engineers and give them incentives for being on time and under budget!"

And so it began. 

Now you have to explain exactly how you plan to implement something new (doubling the time required to do it), and you must tell them how long it's going to take and when it will be finished (tripling the time required to do it). 

Then you'll be asked to justify -- ironically in regular, time-wasting meetings -- why it can't be finished quicker, and why it's taking you so many hours to complete.  And don't be late logging every hour of work you do into the timesheet system against just the right project code and task type, otherwise there'll be trouble!
 
Welcome to the Age of the Project Manager, folks.  It's like work, only with a small man riding on your back whipping you to go faster whilst ordering you to change direction.

Comments

[Chrisbitz]

Why don't you send that anonymously to your Managing Director? If nothing else it might make him wonder if there's any truth to it?