The Best Project Manager in the World?
Written by Gloria Metrick on . Published as written. It may not reflect how these systems work today.
To end the week dedicated to my current project, I wanted to mention a bizarre schedule detail. My current project has its go-live date coming up. Starting a month after that, four team members are scheduled to have babies within a month’s timeframe and, currently, no other project member babies are on the way that we know of. Although this is a large project, the team is small-enough that that’s quite an amazing coincidence.
The project manager couldn’t have planned this – or could she? Consider, though, that there’s a nice little gap after go-live to give a little cushion for the early babies. And consider that the late ones can take their time and won’t remotely impact the next go-live date on a project as large as this that has longer calendar gaps between the milestones. I should also mention that she’s providing a baby to this schedule.
However, births being as unpredictable as they are, anything could happen to upset our project schedule. Surely, the project manager can’t control that? On the other hand, consider the impressive and unlikely feat she’s accomplished, so far, to get the delivery dates grouped so closely together. And, if she can accomplish that, she must have some tricky project manager secret up her sleeve, to begin with. Prayer? Project manager pixie dust? God on speed-dial? We may never know. While it’s unlikely she can manage to keep the actual births grouped that tightly-together and in such a timeframe convenient to the project, consider what she’s accomplished by getting them scheduled this way to begin with and I wouldn’t want to bet against her.
So, as unlikely as we all think it is that she could have planned this, I say we all wait and see what the final scheduled outcome is. If she somehow manages to keep this unlikely schedule together, then she really does have some special project manager secret she’s not shared with others and we should award her something like “Project Manager of the World” because I think that bit of planning and scheduling would be impossible to beat.
Some of you are shaking your heads and still wondering if I could be serious. Well, I’ll leave you to wonder. ;-) But I’ll say this, even without the babies coming out on schedule, on paper, this initial schedule looks pretty amazing!
Gloria Metrick
GeoMetrick Enterprises
http://www.GeoMetrick.com/