Liesl Barrell

I saw this post and I must confess I’m a little jealous of Montreal developers. And not just because we’ve all seen “The Social Network” by now so the secret is out: development is clearly pure sex, drugs and rock n’ roll. Task lists include: line of code, line of coke, bang groupie in bathroom stall (if this is not actually the case, I’ll have to write an angry letter to Mr. Sorkin).

No, that’s not why I’m jealous today. It makes me somewhat annoyed that my softer skill discipline doesn’t lend itself to cool, Google or Facebook sanctioned competitions like hackathons. So as I told Dimitry Zolotaryov over at WebIT, I think a PM-athon is in order.

But let’s face it boys and girls, such a thing would probably consist of a track and field type obstacle course involving thrilling activities like the following:

1. Speed ballpark estimating

Making up numbers faster than you can count.

2. Phone tag tug of war

Congratulations, you now owe me a call!

3. Synchronized emailing

Blitzkrieg replying is an artform.

4. Hunting for resources

Is your SysAdmin on a smoke break, gone for lunch, working from home or hiding under someone else’s desk?

5. 15K PowerPoint presenting

Only one can survive this marathon boardroom long distance endurance event.
 
6. Competitive motivational nagging

Panel judging awards points based on strictly regimented criteria.

7. Downhill cost control

Wrangle that budget into shape!

8. Critical path jumping

Timeline too aggressive? Do you REALLY need specs? Make a few experimental changes to process and hope for the best.

9. Freestyle synonyms

For such turns of phrase as “How Long?”, “When?”, “Deadline” and “Change order”.

So what are you waiting for, PMI: let’s get on this!

Tags: PM, Project Management, Web Development

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 6th, 2011 at 3:28 pm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.