this post was submitted on 30 Sep 2023
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Is there a joke in the comic anywhere? This is just an average morning in consulting.
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.
He'd never heard it? That's like the oldest joke in project management...
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
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.
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.
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.
That's pretty much all this cartoon ever is .. just states some obvious fact about office life involving stupid demanding bosses.
For most people, it's a mildly funny observation on office life.
For project managers, it's a statement on the nature of business and a testament to the banality of life itself.
I'm guessing you're a project manager?
For you the joke isn't in the comic, it's in the mirror.