Hmmmm I can think of lots of meetings that would have been improved by the judicious use, er make that indiscriminate use of a cricket bat.
BOFH: Shove your project managementry up your mailbox!
"So it's agreed then. You'll codify the project and I'll reach out to the developers for the SDK that you need?" the latest IT project manager asks. "By 'codify' you mean I'll write the program and by 'reach out' you mean email?" I respond. "Yes." "Why not just say email?" "I... because I might phone them." "So why not …
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Friday 27th July 2012 13:09 GMT Field Marshal Von Krakenfart
Re: Cricket bats versus baseball bats
While baseball bats may be more comfortable to use, they lack the depth of sound that a cricket bat provides
Oh I don't know about that now, the 'oul aluminium (ah-lumi-mun to 'merkins) baseball makes a pleasant sound when it strikes something.
My own personal favourite is a 6lb copper faced dead blow hammer, the copper face is particularly useful as it doesn't create sparks which could accidentally set fire to the PM's petrol soaked clothes.
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Thursday 2nd August 2012 05:32 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Cricket bats versus baseball bats
"The rules of cricket say "the ball" has to cross the boundary, not part of it. Thus the whole PM needs to cross. If the ball splits in half then the umpire must signal a dead ball. If the PM splits in half then the PM is declared DOA at the hospital."
Well if "the ball" has to cross the boundary, the only part of the PM which has to cross is his testicle. The rest is irrelevant, attached or otherwise.
What if the PM has two testicles? He doesn't, because all PMs are Hitlers, and Hitler has only got one ball (the other is in the Albert Hall). Oh look, Godwin's Law!
What if the PM is female? Same rules apply: all PMs are Hitlers and therefore have one ball.
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Friday 27th July 2012 21:13 GMT Mike Flugennock
Re: Cricket bats versus baseball bats
An aluminium baseball bat will produce a thoroughly satisfying *PING* when impacted upon a miscreant's head...
Maybe it's a generational thing, but I always thought the sound of an aluminum bat rather wimpy. For my money, there's nothing like the sound of a good old ash Louisville Slugger catching the ball (or a PM's head) right on the sweet spot, about halfway between the label and the tip of the bat -- that "home run sound" as many ballplayers like to call it.
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Friday 27th July 2012 20:18 GMT Marshalltown
Best not assume
I had a fellow take a swing - two actually - at me with a stick with a nail through it. He connected neither time. After I took the stick away from him and removed the nail from it - converted it to toothpicks more or less, he concluded I might be a bit irritated and ran like a hare. I didn't even put him in the hospital.
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Monday 30th July 2012 11:59 GMT Tom7
These all have their place, no doubt, but I find them a bit unwieldy in the confined space of a typical meeting room.
Consider the advantages a good half brick has to offer. Easily concealed in a laptop bag, where it could be mistaken for a power supply. Still heavy enough that it can do serious damage at the end of a round-arm hay-maker. Easily wielded, no matter how constricted the space or how close the consultant has managed to get. And so easily blameable on the builders doing modifications down the corridor.
"There's been a terrible accident! He's tripped and hit his head on this half brick the builders left lying around..."
Bring two of them and you have a "competitive tendering process" ready-made.
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Friday 27th July 2012 12:56 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Hahahaaaa
I appreciate its a tech have a bash at PMs site. But this is somewhat bollocks and doesnt align anything like to PRINCE2. The PM doesnt write the business mandate or magic their own budget. It would be the business dictating these and agreeing to the project deliverables, cost and timescales.
Part of the PMs job is to break down all the bullshit that techs and marketing people love, into what people can understand and deliver.
So yeah a good laugh but not reality at all and you would just look like a tool in front of a professional PM.
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Friday 27th July 2012 15:39 GMT Circadian
Re: Hahahaaaa (@ac 12:56)
Really? Really??? Do you really, seriously, honestly-cross-that-shrivelled-thing-that-might-be-a-heart believe that Project Managers actually add anything (except time and misery) to a project. Wow. That's... touching. Really touching.
"...align anything like to PRINCE2" - and you claim to try to make things understandable?
"The PM doesnt write the business mandate or magic their own budget" - or, um, do anything useful?
Maybe I'm unlucky and have never worked under a decent project manager. Or the majority of PMs are genuinely crap at anything other than marketing doublespeak.
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Friday 27th July 2012 09:00 GMT Anonymous Coward
Business-ese
Arrghh every time I hear the new phrase for 'email' - "reach out and touch base", I keep thinking of the start of Depeche Mode's Personal Jesus.
"Low hanging fruit" I keep thinking of them in the garden of eden. Arrgghh mine eyes!
"I'm all over this project" conjures up images of the speaking party as a spider splicer.
Since when did excel spreadsheets become artefacts? Sounds like something from an Indiana Jones film.
I dread to think if these people ever tried to build a house - A homo sapien container implementation with interfaced functional area componentry, implemented in brick.
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Friday 27th July 2012 21:21 GMT Mike Flugennock
Re: Business-ese
"Think outside the box" was a rather cool expression for about a week; then, suddenly, everybody and their cat was using it.
Nowadays, it's one of my favorite expressions because I can use it to determine whether or not someone's had a single original thought in their lives. As soon as they say "think outside the box", I can be fairly sure that nothing else they say is worth listening to.
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Friday 27th July 2012 09:38 GMT The Baron
"I think they're paid by the proportion of their words to yours."
I think you've cracked it, sir. This goes a long way to explaining many of the things we've been seeing here lately.
However, this does suggest a couple of interesting potential countermeasures:
One is to engage in verbosity escalation warfare through the contingent deployment of an over-sufficiency of apposite syntactic units, resulting in the elimination of the offending adversary through their subsequent inability to achieve a high ratio of utterances compared to one's own due to the ultimately finite set of linguistic terms available.
(That doesn't work, of course, if repeating the same word counts towards the total, but if it's a count of unique words then it could be a winner.)
The other is to note that division by zero results in an error and therefore say absolutely nothing at all.
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Friday 27th July 2012 10:52 GMT Mako
Buzzword-laden management ad-speak is basically the same thing as slang or gang colours. It identifies you as part of the group, and tells everyone that you belong.
But it differs from gang colours in that it changes over time. It has to, because there's a risk that less senior people will pick up on it and start to use it, making them look like they belong too. At that point, it's no longer useful for that purpose.
As an example, if you're a senior manager and some suit comes up to you and starts talking about "due diligence" at the start of a project, you know they're a faker because you and your cronies started calling that process "discovery" a few weeks ago. From that point on, you can safely ignore the random suit because he's not part of your echelon. He's just someone who picked up on your old slang.
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Friday 27th July 2012 11:12 GMT Mike Arthur
/sigh
This is all depressingly familiar. I'm currently on a large project officially listed as 'Subject matter expert' which apparently translates as the poor bastard that does anything the PMs can't work out where to put.
I find in most cases you can safely drift off during the project meetings and then use the resulting meeting update email as the basis for whatever you need to do.
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Friday 27th July 2012 14:08 GMT perlcat
Re: /sigh
yes and no. Like listening to the wife, and nodding at random times and saying "uh huh", "yep", "That's right", "You're right", you can safely coast through until you discover later that you've agreed to paint the house or some other odious chore. (Happened to me.)
Best idea now is to carry two cell phones, call one from the other, and then look like I'm deep in listening to someone troubleshooting an issue.
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Friday 27th July 2012 11:56 GMT Anonymous Coward
The Emperor's new verbs (or nouns)
You mean like the "Core Values" to which many of us are increasingly being subjected. You know the kind of thing: perfectly ordinary words with "definitions" braingrindingly convoluted so they coincide with whatever twisted reality is being promoted at the time.
God (Or personally selected deity of choice) that's pathetic.
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Friday 27th July 2012 14:08 GMT Anonymous Coward
Simple solution
1) Hire Samuel L. Jackson look-a-like.
2) Dress in suit.
3) Issue 9mm.
4) During any meeting, if anybody speaks like that, empower him to draw and say one of the following phases:
* "Say Paradigm again - I dare you!"
* "What part of speech is 'incentive'? Does it look like a verb to you? Then why you tryin' to use it like a verb?"
* "ENGLISH MUTHFUKA, DO YOU SPEAK IT?"
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Friday 27th July 2012 15:16 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Simple solution
"Nah, the use of 'empowered' proves that he's one of "Them"."
No, it's just that it is only fair to explain to them what will happen in terms they can wrap their little minds around.
Besides - what other term would you use in respect to SLJ? "Allow"? You don't "allow" SLJ, he does whatever he damn well pleases.
(And of course, we can add"
"Bring me my cattleprod - the one with "BMF" engraved on the handle"
)
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Saturday 28th July 2012 13:34 GMT optimus PM
I worked at PMI
I worked at the project managment instituion as a senior applications developer. It was by far the worst I.T experience i've had in my entire life. Whats even more frightening is i had an argument with my boss on how actually knowing I.T is critical to managing an I.T project. He disagreed, he thinks you don't need to know anything about I.T in order to manage an I.T project. All the PM needs to do is be a "decision maker". He said. No kidding!!! So when PMI tries to copy facebook it costs them over 7 million dollars to FAIL. Ever wonder why our economy is in the k-rapper? Thats your answer. Don't believe me and want a good laugh? Go to a friend that works in a blue collar/ skilled labor type job, tell them what i just said about project managers not knowing anything and watch the look on their face. Its awesome!!!!
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