this post was submitted on 30 Sep 2023
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[–] CosmicTurtle@lemmy.world 53 points 1 year ago (4 children)

My favorite is when project managers try to tell you it will be easier with more people.

For some things that's true.

But for some, it really just takes a while.

I tried to explain to a PM that maybe we should ask his wife next time if she can split up her pregnancy between two women. Baby could be born in half the time.

He didn't appreciate my feedback and wrote me up for it. Probably my proudest moment.

[–] loutr@sh.itjust.works 27 points 1 year ago

He'd never heard it? That's like the oldest joke in project management...

[–] speaker_hat@lemmy.one 14 points 1 year ago

The Ringelmann effect is the tendency for individual members of a group to become increasingly less productive as the size of their group increases

Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ringelmann_effect

[–] NewAgeOldPerson@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm not saying this for all instances. Maybe I've been fortunate. 100% of project managers I've worked alongside looked for parallel paths, and that's their job. But once the feedback from tech SME is that these are linear dependencies, they said okay. Let's move to discuss how to communicate this to leadership and customer.

My personal experience. Your mileage obviously may vary greatly. But a PM that doesn't understand the mythical man month, isn't much of a PM. Or even a competent team member.

[–] CosmicTurtle@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

The story I shared was from a terrible PM.

I've had great PMs and they understood their role well. Their job was to help communicate to the stakeholders what's needed and why it's taking so long.

They are far few in between. But when you have a good one, you can't imagine your life without one.

[–] KevonLooney@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago

wrote me up for it

Uh, that's not a thing that matters. Unless you were going to be fired anyway. But also, don't talk about people's significant others at all.