Having a good process, or trying to improve your process is always a good thing to do. But even if it’s good you have to take into consideration lots of things. This Chapter of the book The Deadline: A novel about project management talks about it in a special way.

Actually good technical workers will focus on improving your project. It doesn’t matter if you tell them to do it or not. One thing you should consider is to use formal process improvement programs. But they cost time and money, and they are not perfect at all.

In fact, during this chapter, Tompkins discovered that the awful Minister Belok stands in his way (again) and sends the MSEI to audit the programs. During the auditions of the first building, Tompkins discovered that some of his employees were using a different approach to tackle the problem, but this doesn’t please the MSEI. In fact, several employees are using similar techniques. For example, the PS-Shop-C Manager actually used Photoshop’s manual in order to establish functional requirements, but they also applied their knowledge to write the non-functional requirements. Once they ended this process they ended up with an unorthodox form, but with excellent content.

This shows that the danger of standard processes is that people will miss chances to take important shortcuts, particularly on overstaffed projects.

The Following Chapter has the most important thing I have ever read about. During this chapter, Tompkins took the decision to talk to Prospero Menotti, the Director of the MSEI. To his surprise, Dr. Menotti was very young, and during his talk, he made his petition. It has a very unfortunate event, but Dr. Menotti was unable to do what he wanted. That caused Tompkins to go to Dr. Menotti’s superior, the Morovia’s First Programmer, Aristotle Kenoros.

Aristotle was hoping to see Tompkins and agreed to do what he wanted, with a condition, he wanted a job. Tompkins gave him the job to teach the teams a thing or two that they needed. This is where the fun begins.

Kenoros proposed a technique called Last Minute Implementation. This technique consists in spend 40% or more of the project doing an elaborate, exaggeratedly detailed low-level design, and the rest of it coding. This allows you to spend less time debugging and to end faster in consequence.

The things we can rescue from this chapter is that you can get projects to perform substantially beyond the norm by making reductions in the total amount of debugging time (this can be achieved by spending more time on design). And finally, there is one last thing I really liked about this chapter, and that is that you can’t get people to do anything different without caring for them and about them. To get them to change, you have to appreciate where they’re coming from and why.

Sometimes you have to admit that not all the people during is useful. The problem with this is that maybe the problem can be your employer. Such is the case of the Minister Belok.

He is an ambitious man that does not listen to reasons. He is not able to see the big picture, and of course a knucklehead.

This kind of person is very dangerous when they are above you in a project development. They like to establish Pathological Politics and once they do that you will have to be willing to put your job on the line any day, but even if do so, you will have problems. Often this politics are characterized for being goals of personal power and for try to override the natural goals of an organization.

The problem with this kind of politics is that it becomes unsafe to have a small development team.

An of course, as well as Mr. Thompkins you may have only one option: To do exactly like they told you. This is often a bad approach, but sometimes it’s the only way.

During this chapter, Mr. Thompkins had the opportunity to meet an interesting character, Dr. Abdul Jamid, for his surprise, Abdul is recommended by his old boss Jay, and finally, he had the opportunity to talk with Dr. Abdul.

Abdul reached Mr. Thompkins with the purpose of teaching him an important tool for Project Management. This tool is called Modeling and Simulation.

In the book this works by using a software called ithink but of course, this software is not necessary for the concept. 

The concept of Modeling and Simulation follows a pipeline, the first thing you have to do is to Model your hunches about the process that gets work done, then you use the models to communicate and refine your thinking about how the process works. Once you have the model you simulate the results and finally you tune the model against the actual results.

This concept is important since it can be applied to lots of things, not just Project Management, in fact Machine Learning often uses this approach.

There is not an opportunity like the one that was before Mr. Thompkins, having a team with thousands of members. Of course, Project Management is something important, as well as having a good team, that is why Mr. Thompkins took the opportunity to speak with Dr. Rizzoli.

Dr. Rizzoli is an interesting character that gives you important hints about conducting big teams, as well as project. The most important things this character talks about is Productivity Improvement and Risk Management.

The first thing to have in mind is that there is no such thing as a short term productivity fix, in other words, that there is no magic trick to fix the productivity of a team in a short term. The productivity improvements always come from a long term investment, anything that promises short term fixes are likely to be ‘snake oil’.

The second thing to have in mind is that if you wanna have a project, you’ll have to manage it by taking the risks under constant census. You’ll have to assess each risk for probability and likely cost, but don’t take into consideration the undesirable outcomes, instead, take into consideration the casual risks.

Mr. Thompkins was astonished by his talk with Dr. Rizzoli because there were lots of things he didn’t know about, but the time was running and he was in need to find managers for the projects, and while he was searching for them, he met the Ex-general Markov.

He found a lot of good managers, and in the meantime, he discovered lots of useful things. For example.

You can improve the performance by containing your failures more than by optimizing your successes. You have to be aggressive about canceling failed efforts. The best thing you can do is to find pre-formed teams, as well as keeping them together. And try not to lose any day in a project, because you will need it.

Thompkins is ready to hire his new employees, but he’s mind is blank. Waldo suggests him to search for a consultant, someone who can help him during the interview process, and that is how he discovers Binda, the world’s greatest project manager in her day. The only problem with it is that she is a bag lady. This shows you that no matter the appearance of the person, it may be better than you for something, in this case for management. Belinda Binda tells Thompkins the most important thing I’ve read about in the book, “Management is not a cerebral science, Management is in the gut, in the heart, and in the soul”.

Once he meets Binda, he hires her as a consultant and starts the interview process, in which they talked with 30 managers in order to discover the best ones for the project. And of course, he learns to listen more than you speak, since that is the way to find the best candidates.

Sincerely this is an interesting approach since it tells you that you can’t judge anyone, because they may surprise you.

The Deadline: A novel about project management, is an interesting book. Not just because of how it’s written, but for what it teaches you. In this case for the third, fourth and fifth chapters of the book you learn lots of concepts about project management.

During the Silikon Valejit Chapter, you can take Mr. Thompkins’s place, he is not just kidnapped, but forced to work in Morovia, the Soviet Country. But at a certain point, he is convinced by Lahksa, the spy. She tells him that he can do a controlled experiment, in which he can use the software engineers to his disposal, to create the world’s first Project Management Laboratory.

Time passes and Thompkins receives a Journal from Lahksa in which he is going to take notes from now on. The first note in the Journal says the Four Essentials of Good Management, which are Get the right people, match them to the right jobs, keep them motivated and help their teams to jell and to stay jelled.

He also discovers that there is a lot of negative reinforcement taking place in Morovia and he decides to send a letter to the NNL. Of course he also learns that people can’t embrace change unless they feel safe, and change is essential to all success in a project. Avoiding risks is fatal since it causes you to miss out on the associated benefit as well.

Finally, Thompkins meets the NNL, and to his surprise, the NNL is called Bill and he “bought” Morovia, of course, he becomes a tyrant but that is something he is not really prepared for.

Bill has an interesting idea, and that is to copy software, and then give it away!.

Of course, Thompkins is not ready to understand that and Bill tells him that the future revenue comes from the Newer versions, not from the sale of the software itself.

The most interesting thing from these chapters is, of course, the introduction to something like the “free trials”, something that is really useful nowadays.