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February 22, 2003
Too many projects
Mike writes about Development Thrashing. I have been struggling with a similar problem, Project Thrashing, for at least the last year. There are so many things going on, and so few people to work with them, that I started to feel like I spent most of my time just switching between projects, and had little or no time left to actually work on projects.
For at least the last eight years, I have worked this way. It worked fine when I worked 80-90-hour weeks as a business owner and when I was at a start-up. I could do all of the meetings during "normal" business hours, then I did my project work during the "other" hours. This got pretty old for myself and my family. At UEN, I have tried to achieve better balance, and see if it's even possible to fit all of my work into the regular work-week (we are encouraged to work 40-45 hours per week, and managers are supposed to help manage work-loads to that level--though I know a lot of people work a lot more than 45 hours).
Things improved six months ago when Allen and Mike Downie joined the Network Engineering group. Finally I had some other help with the projects on my plate. But there are still a lot of projects that require my involvement, many of them to a very deep level. There are so many projects, and they are all so important and urgent. I find that I average 20-30 hours per week in meetings, planning, coordinating and discussing projects. The remaining hours are so spread out and so sporadic, they are almost useless to achieve any level of focus or momentum (and I spend most of them dealing with other non-project issues). The projects that I need to work on often move forward pretty slowly. Many people at UEN are frustrated about the same thing.
We are experimenting with a different approach, called a "Hot Team". Our first Hot project is a DNS redesign and clean-up, which will begin officially the week of March 3. During 3 weeks, over a 6-week period, a team of 4-8 people will focus half-days and full-days a week at a time on this single project, to create the focus and momentum and excitement to get through one of our oldest languishing projects. We will take breaks after each week, so we can address other individual responsibilities, but during those weeks, all other projects, meetings and responsibilities (within reason) will be set aside to focus on the DNS project.
I am looking forward to this experiment, I hope it will be a better way to get things done as a team. I will blog about it as it happens.
Posted by pete at February 22, 2003 12:53 PM
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