@Alanbrooke Perhaps our regulators should help them out? Or on the other hand, banks could stop turning a blind eye to the crooks in their business? (our regulators believe in "light touch", which usually means fondling an interns buttocks)
Good news for everyone using Windows on their computer, Steve Ballmer the CEO of Microsoft has just resigned, hopefully he will take his Windows 8 with him.
Good news for everyone using Windows on their computer, Steve Ballmer the CEO of Microsoft has just resigned, hopefully he will take his Windows 8 with him.
Quick replies as in the middle of translating 30K words on German building standards (sigh):
JJ: an example of a project that can't easily be broken into deliverable stages would be an aircraft carrier. Once you start building it, you pretty much have to finish it or write it off. (Exception: the Japanese carriers in 1944 that they converted into surface ships IIRC) Obviously you can define checkpoints to see how you're getting on and identify serious snags.
Rexel: largely agree re publishing risk overview. It would, I'm afraid, encourage media hysteria ("Government admits that HS2 risks 2000% overrun" or "Nuclear power plant might destroy Darlington" even if risk is 0.000001%) but that's probably part of the necessary price of a free press.
Curiously enough, the biggest project I ever did was only my second job - after I'd been with Ciba-Geigy for a couple of years in my 20s, they asked me to be user project manager for a global clinical trials system that had to be implemented in 20 countries over a 3-year period. We did it, though there was an overrun of a few months, which we felt wasn't too bad. The technical project manager (http://fr.linkedin.com/pub/ludovic-penin/b/b9a/338 ) was a fanatical perfectionist Frenchman from an elite French college - he always refused point blank to cut corners (which is why we were late) but he was very good indeed (which is why it worked). My job was basically to make sure the users were happy and avoid management messing up the specs. In some ways, the most fun I ever had. Afterwards i switched out of projects into line management.
Quick replies as in the middle of translating 30K words on German building standards (sigh):
JJ: an example of a project that can't easily be broken into deliverable stages would be an aircraft carrier. Once you start building it, you pretty much have to finish it or write it off. (Exception: the Japanese carriers in 1944 that they converted into surface ships IIRC) Obviously you can define checkpoints to see how you're getting on and identify serious snags.
Longest project plan I've seen had a timeline of 125 years... the decommissioning of one of the UK nuclear power stations at Oldbury... the plan was illustrated with pictures of the site at different stages of the project with the final image being of a green field...
Quick replies as in the middle of translating 30K words on German building standards (sigh):
JJ: an example of a project that can't easily be broken into deliverable stages would be an aircraft carrier. Once you start building it, you pretty much have to finish it or write it off. (Exception: the Japanese carriers in 1944 that they converted into surface ships IIRC) Obviously you can define checkpoints to see how you're getting on and identify serious snags.
Rexel: largely agree re publishing risk overview. It would, I'm afraid, encourage media hysteria ("Government admits that HS2 risks 2000% overrun" or "Nuclear power plant might destroy Darlington" even if risk is 0.000001%) but that's probably part of the necessary price of a free press.
Curiously enough, the biggest project I ever did was only my second job - after I'd been with Ciba-Geigy for a couple of years in my 20s, they asked me to be user project manager for a global clinical trials system that had to be implemented in 20 countries over a 3-year period. We did it, though there was an overrun of a few months, which we felt wasn't too bad. The technical project manager (http://fr.linkedin.com/pub/ludovic-penin/b/b9a/338 ) was a fanatical perfectionist Frenchman from an elite French college - he always refused point blank to cut corners (which is why we were late) but he was very good indeed (which is why it worked). My job was basically to make sure the users were happy and avoid management messing up the specs. In some ways, the most fun I ever had. Afterwards i switched out of projects into line management.
I've always wanted to know #NickPalmer what line management really is. Does include promotion by rote? BTW did you get your entree to UKIP's conference?
" an example of a project that can't easily be broken into deliverable stages would be an aircraft carrier. Once you start building it, you pretty much have to finish it or write it off. "
I should have thought that the carriers project was a supreme example of a project that was broken into deliverable stages. The QE was built, and the PoW is being built, by glueing together chunks of the ship that are made in numerous shipyards around the country and then towed to Rosyth to be put together. Is not each section a deliverable? From the point of view of the yards I would think it was and each stage has to be manufactured to within very tight tolerances and has to be delivered on time.
Any modern software project runs on the same principle does it not. The final application is made up of individual bits of code that are then integrated to give the customer what he is paying for. Having say the user interface without the database is no more use than having only the front end of the aircraft carrier.
Quick replies as in the middle of translating 30K words on German building standards (sigh):
JJ: an example of a project that can't easily be broken into deliverable stages would be an aircraft carrier. Once you start building it, you pretty much have to finish it or write it off. (Exception: the Japanese carriers in 1944 that they converted into surface ships IIRC) Obviously you can define checkpoints to see how you're getting on and identify serious snags.
I think it was the other way round: the Japanese converted commercial or other naval vessels into carriers, but the same principle applies: you might tweak it as you go through but you're still going to end up with a ship, but it won't be a very good one if you try and tweak it too much.
Quick replies as in the middle of translating 30K words on German building standards (sigh):
JJ: an example of a project that can't easily be broken into deliverable stages would be an aircraft carrier. Once you start building it, you pretty much have to finish it or write it off. (Exception: the Japanese carriers in 1944 that they converted into surface ships IIRC) Obviously you can define checkpoints to see how you're getting on and identify serious snags.
Hmm, I wonder if we're talking about different things. Most civil engineering projects are like that: the Crossrail tunnels will not be much use if the rails are not laid. You have to have the whole thing or nothing. The same is also probably true of IT projects.
But what I was referring to was breaking the project up into chunks/modules/blocks, each of which is a separate deliverable to the main project, with well-defined interfaces to the other blocks. This was done with the aircraft carriers fairly successfully: literal blocks were made at different sites (including Portsmouth RIP) as separate deliverables and taken to Scotland for integration. Likewise, it is sensible on such projects to make the engine/powertrain systems into separate subprojects with their own deliverables.
Certainly in the civ eng world, a new road/rail project has many such deliverables (e.g. bridges), often farmed out to subcontractors.
I can't think of a big project that cannot be broken down in this manner. And if there is one, it's probably an exceptionally poorly defined and specified project.
Quick replies as in the middle of translating 30K words on German building standards (sigh):
JJ: an example of a project that can't easily be broken into deliverable stages would be an aircraft carrier. Once you start building it, you pretty much have to finish it or write it off. (Exception: the Japanese carriers in 1944 that they converted into surface ships IIRC) Obviously you can define checkpoints to see how you're getting on and identify serious snags.
I think it was the other way round: the Japanese converted commercial or other naval vessels into carriers, but the same principle applies: you might tweak it as you go through but you're still going to end up with a ship, but it won't be a very good one if you try and tweak it too much.
For example Battleships Ise and Hyuga lost their aft twin 14inch guns in favour of a partial flight deck, but they were never operated as carriers.
I've always wanted to know #NickPalmer what line management really is. Does include promotion by rote? (snip)
Line management can mean several different things. I can answer from my perspective as someone who was a line manager in the consumer electronics world: at the coal face there were two main groupings of engineers: project management and line management.
A line manager would look after personnel issues: do reviews, look at salaries, training, interviewing, set objectives, propose promotion and other similar items for a number of people. It was important to be a people person, sometimes a rare skill in the tech industry.
A project manager would manage a number of people to complete a project, often taking people from different line groups.
Since many of the companies I worked in were relatively small, you would end up performing both roles: acting as line manager for engineers, and as a project manager for one or more projects simultaneously. It made life interesting when I started dating Mrs J, who was in my project team but not my line group. It was agreed that I could give no feedback from the project to her line management, as my judgement may not seem objective to others.
As for promotion by rote: in these small companies, it is generally promotion by talent. This is made more 'interesting' by the existence of highly-skilled engineers who lacked certain social skills that meant they could never become management. Instead, ever-increasing engineering levels were created for them: graduate engineer, junior engineer, senior engineer, principle engineer, managing engineer, scientist, chief scientist etc. In one company it all go rather silly.
The betting is by betfair so will be bets taken online. If you were to take into account the bets of ONLY people who live in Scotland and so are the ones only eligible to vote and then ask how much has been bet on YES in the betting shops, I fancy the gap would not be as wide. After all who is betting at odds of around 1/9? Rich people who are trying to buy money. I suspect they will get their fingers burnt.
Comments
Perhaps our regulators should help them out?
Or on the other hand, banks could stop turning a blind eye to the crooks in their business?
(our regulators believe in "light touch", which usually means fondling an interns buttocks)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Schiphol-overview.png
There doesn't seem to be a way to save money any more....
Arsenal are playing shit - form says they'll win.
Cheaper to fly to Dublin.
The team in black (BES from Turkey apparently, (Byzantines FTW/L?!)) look quite menacing.
From Mr and Ms-
Sol Campbell and Lee Dixon doing the analysis.
STV have just taken away the score-line from the top-left off my screen...
JJ: an example of a project that can't easily be broken into deliverable stages would be an aircraft carrier. Once you start building it, you pretty much have to finish it or write it off. (Exception: the Japanese carriers in 1944 that they converted into surface ships IIRC) Obviously you can define checkpoints to see how you're getting on and identify serious snags.
Rexel: largely agree re publishing risk overview. It would, I'm afraid, encourage media hysteria ("Government admits that HS2 risks 2000% overrun" or "Nuclear power plant might destroy Darlington" even if risk is 0.000001%) but that's probably part of the necessary price of a free press.
Curiously enough, the biggest project I ever did was only my second job - after I'd been with Ciba-Geigy for a couple of years in my 20s, they asked me to be user project manager for a global clinical trials system that had to be implemented in 20 countries over a 3-year period. We did it, though there was an overrun of a few months, which we felt wasn't too bad. The technical project manager (http://fr.linkedin.com/pub/ludovic-penin/b/b9a/338 ) was a fanatical perfectionist Frenchman from an elite French college - he always refused point blank to cut corners (which is why we were late) but he was very good indeed (which is why it worked). My job was basically to make sure the users were happy and avoid management messing up the specs. In some ways, the most fun I ever had. Afterwards i switched out of projects into line management.
Lol/sigh indeed - I only speak the lingua franca.
And here is my Half analysis analysis-
I'm not betting and STV are messing.
BTW did you get your entree to UKIP's conference?
" an example of a project that can't easily be broken into deliverable stages would be an aircraft carrier. Once you start building it, you pretty much have to finish it or write it off. "
I should have thought that the carriers project was a supreme example of a project that was broken into deliverable stages. The QE was built, and the PoW is being built, by glueing together chunks of the ship that are made in numerous shipyards around the country and then towed to Rosyth to be put together. Is not each section a deliverable? From the point of view of the yards I would think it was and each stage has to be manufactured to within very tight tolerances and has to be delivered on time.
Any modern software project runs on the same principle does it not. The final application is made up of individual bits of code that are then integrated to give the customer what he is paying for. Having say the user interface without the database is no more use than having only the front end of the aircraft carrier.
But what I was referring to was breaking the project up into chunks/modules/blocks, each of which is a separate deliverable to the main project, with well-defined interfaces to the other blocks. This was done with the aircraft carriers fairly successfully: literal blocks were made at different sites (including Portsmouth RIP) as separate deliverables and taken to Scotland for integration. Likewise, it is sensible on such projects to make the engine/powertrain systems into separate subprojects with their own deliverables.
Certainly in the civ eng world, a new road/rail project has many such deliverables (e.g. bridges), often farmed out to subcontractors.
I can't think of a big project that cannot be broken down in this manner. And if there is one, it's probably an exceptionally poorly defined and specified project.
A line manager would look after personnel issues: do reviews, look at salaries, training, interviewing, set objectives, propose promotion and other similar items for a number of people. It was important to be a people person, sometimes a rare skill in the tech industry.
A project manager would manage a number of people to complete a project, often taking people from different line groups.
Since many of the companies I worked in were relatively small, you would end up performing both roles: acting as line manager for engineers, and as a project manager for one or more projects simultaneously. It made life interesting when I started dating Mrs J, who was in my project team but not my line group. It was agreed that I could give no feedback from the project to her line management, as my judgement may not seem objective to others.
As for promotion by rote: in these small companies, it is generally promotion by talent. This is made more 'interesting' by the existence of highly-skilled engineers who lacked certain social skills that meant they could never become management. Instead, ever-increasing engineering levels were created for them: graduate engineer, junior engineer, senior engineer, principle engineer, managing engineer, scientist, chief scientist etc. In one company it all go rather silly.
For big companies, it's probably very different.