Project Management

[Guest.Visitor]

I am a RPG programmer for a small company. I am curiuos how other companies hand out project assignments, espcially the maintenance and debugging projects. Currently, users contact me when they have a bug in a program. If it is a new project (like a new report), then they write up a change sheet and this gets assigned to a programmer through our supervisor. Is this how other company's handle this? Thanks in advance.

[Guest.Visitor]

Kimberly, This is a really unfair question. You are gonna expose all of us who think a project sheet is a Post It (tm) note :) I feel that a user and especially a manager who calls a programmer directly should be reprimanded. This causes discomfort between one programmer and his/her manager, his/her peers and other managers who think they are not getting the best efforts of the department. I am in favor of program requests that are approved by the I.S. Manager or Programming Supervisor. This provides an atmosphere of trust between departments, that they are all getting fair representation between projects. If you lose integrity in the department, you can really hose up the concerted efforts of all departments and cause distrust, "I'm better than you" attitudes and eventually lose credibility and/or your job. I implemented a strict process and control of assigning projects and resources. This was done with only myself, four RPG Programmers and a System Operator. Every three months, the Programmers were rotated so that a new person was Lead Programmer and assisted with assignments. The previous Lead Programmer became the Programming Supervisor. This supervisor, reviewed, prioritized and assigned projects. The System operator also served as Programming Supervisor so she could learn to interact with software jockeys as well. -bret

[Guest.Visitor]

There are as many answers for this question, as there are companies. I seriously doubt that any two shops deal with this situation in precisely the same fashion. You should get many responses. IMO, the fact that there is a wide disparity here is a good thing. Each set of circumstances is germaine to local environment. What is absolutely the best method for company "A", may cause a great deal of disruption if implemented in company "B", and so on.... . . . I work in three informal environments. I deal with the principles in each instance, and implement the solutions. I have also implemented change management as a part of an ISO 9000 project. In this case everything had to go through a prescribed number of levels, before work could proceed, and there was documentation up the kazoo. And it was a very big kazoo. Dave

[nycsusan@hotmail.com]

Kimberly, As others have said, every shop is different. In the case of a bug, it makes sense for a user to bypass a manager who probably has no earthly idea how to fix the problem. Why waste time waiting for him/her to forward the problem on to someone with a clue? If it's a bug, they need it fixed ASAP, and it makes sense to go straight to the person who can help. Projects or other non-emergency work can go through the bureaucracy of the project manager. I will suggest that you make sure your manager knows how you are spending your time. CC him/her on all the e-mails and make sure they know about the fixes. If it gets overwhelming, I would recommend delegating upward and let your manager reassign the work to someone who has time to work on it. Don't let yourself get dumped on while others stroll out the door on time everyday. Been there, done that, won't do it again! Good luck.

[Guest.Visitor]

It seems to me that the smaller the IS department, the less formality needed. But, when I managed programmers, I wrote a "work request" system that eventually tracked thousands of end user requests. The user often filled in the initial request. It was routed to IS management for assignment. After the request was given a priority and assigned to somebody, then it was considered kosure for the end user to work directly with the assignee.