Sharing the secrets of your success!
Welcome to Dublin, stranger. Why don't you come and warm yourself round our campfire? There. That's better.
Help yourself to stew, it's all we have, but you're welcome to share it.
It's good stew, warms all the right parts in all the right ways. The only thing we ask in return is that you share with us your secrets. You know, the secrets of your success.
Don't be shy now, I can see from the way you walk that you're a superstar project manager. Seeing that sort of thing is just a gift of mine, I guess.
What's that? You're not a project manager. Prefer to call yourself a Project Delivery Manager or sometimes a Product Owner... Well it's all the same far as I can see. If you're going around trying to get things delivered on time and budget, answering those hard-to-figure questions like "How much will it cost?" or "When will it be done?" then it doesn't matter what you call yourself it's down to what you do and what people think you are.
Don't be intimidated, we're all in the same line of work here. Yup, Delivery Managers, Product Owners, Project Managers, Team leads, Programme Managers and all other flavours of folk, just getting things delivered... or trying to. We have the same problems you do, it's just that some of us might have ways to help with those problems.
You don't know what to share with us? Well, here's a few things we'd like to hear about:
- Estimating things: Everyone wants to know how long it's going to take. What do you tell them and how do you figure out what to say?
- Going from one method to another; Waterfall to Scrum, Scrum to Kanban... there are lots of methods, but what's worked for you, in the real world?
- Mixing methods: One size definitely does not fit all, do you take elements from multiple methods and make them work for you? Tell us how!
- Working for yourself: Do you manage projects for others? How did you start, how do you promote yourself, what are your biggest challenges?
- Open Source: Have you been involved with managing an open source project? How can open source learn to live with project managers and how can they learn to live with open source projects?
Of course, if you've got something else you think we might benefit from knowing, feel free to share. Heck, you could even ask me questions to find out more. The sooner you ask, the more information you can get.
What are you waiting for? Submit a session and share the secrets of your success!
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Mike King
Project Management Track Chair
DrupalCon Dublin