Writing Trait Organization

The Skeptic's Guide to Project Management, Part I: What Project Managers ...

Project Management. It's one of those jobs that, like helpdesk or technical writing, seems to go without explanation.

It's about managing projects. Duh.

A common assumption is that project management is obvious. Gather the requirements, get the estimates, build a plan, work the plan, and you are done.

If you want that article, no worries, there are plenty of books to choose from.

This not that article.

Instead of talking about what project managers should do, I will talk about what the successful ones actually do, and the practical and ethical consequences of that difference.

In this series, I will start with outlining general expectations for project managers (what you have to do to succeed right now), moving slowly toward how to reframe the work to create a more happy, healthy, productive work environment. And I'll do it with a skeptic's eye for detail, asking for evidence and alternative explanations, and allowing for the possibility that different people can do things in a different way.

Let's talk about what project managers actually do.

Picture the organizational structure of your typical corporation. Below the business units you tend to see some sort of functional organization--IT over here, finance there, operations in a third place, marketing, sales, perhaps a legal department. Each of those big buckets likely has sub-buckets. IT might be split into operations and development, for example, and within IT Development you might have the web programmers, the testers, the analysts, the database programmers, and so on.

Whew.

The problem with functional organizations is that they can't get anything done.

Oh, sure, each individual specialty can do its part. Purchasing can approve expense reimbursements and programmers can write code, but try getting all the specialties to work together to actually build a product. Each team will want to receive work in a format that is easy for them to process, and produce work in an output that is convenient. This optimization of each part, not the whole, creates friction between the teams. Professor and consultant John Seddon calls this friction “failure demand”, meaning that the output of process is not fit for use, and the customer has to make the request a second or third time, creating new demand on the system.

Now think of the company that has dozens of projects, hundreds of tasks and assignments and pieces of work, all done by mere humans who make mistakes and use different words to mean the same thing.

Writing Workshop: Opening Lines (Trait of Organization) | Teaching ...

, set in WWII, is a well written collection of  true stories about young Jewish children wrenched from their childhood  into cramped ghettos of fear, starvation and brutality. Sensitively told, the award-winning book will provoke much discussion as to the nature of bravery. Teachers will find this collection suitable for Teaching strategies in both reading and writing workshop as well as virtues. Symbolism, mood, suspense, point of view, setting, character development and plot could all be taught with examples from this book. You will also find suitable material for teaching the comprehension strategies (e.g. inference), as well.

For our purposes this month, we will be looking at the writing trait of organization. You will find a wealth of intriguing openings contained in this slim volume. Naturally it will not be necessary to read all of the short stories, and we have done the work of pre-selecting a few highly suitable entries for you:

1)    Sabotage- (Could be used for a Virtues lesson: conscience )

2)    One Small Miracle – (Especially effective use of suspense)

3)    The Trolley Car – (Foreshadowing, point of view, opening line)

4)    The Whistler – ( Virtues lessons: Hope and faith )

I have highlighted these stories because the acts of bravery are quite clear cut and intriguing.

At the Edge,

Lesson Objective(s)