P2P (2): How is the Workload Handled?
In my previous post in this stream-of-conciousness “product2program” group, I talked about how I started out with creating a program management toolkit.
Just a disclaimer: I in no way to profess I’m a program manager. More like a guy who’s read some books on project management and been writing code for a while. These posts are just what I’ve found helpful in attempting to evenly cross product management tasks / functions with some program / project management.
OK, so in this post I wanted to talk about workload. More specfically, how does it get controlled / tracked — just handled overall. There are a couple of ways I’ve done this in the past and seen it done, all with their own unique pros and cons.
For a company that has a dev team of 3-5 people, doing something more than, “ehh — here is what Mike, Joe, Tom, and Jerry are working on this week” and then keeping that updated, might be overkill. If necessary, you can always go back and look at time estimates on the short-term schedule and break certain tasks out in FTE’s if necessary and take cost estimates from there. But again, with a team that small I think anything more than that just adds management overhead.
Now, for a team that has 6-10+ developers, you’re probably at a stage where doing simple resource loading is a good thing to ensure everything is spread evenly and noone is being killed. Of course, it never really works this way, and some developers (the top of your group) will end up being given larger things to work on simply because they are good developers and they will push themselves to accomplish the goal.
In this situation, using a simple development schedule (same one as when the team was 3-5), but keeping it updated more regularly, along with an easy FTE tracking / work package estimation component.
I guess in the end, all I’m saying is to mind how complex the system you are putting in place is. The more complex, the more stuff there is to do regularly, which equals more overhead in managing it. I prefer to use simple spreadsheets to keep all the necessary data consolidated, but some folks prefer Microsoft Project or another tool. Whatever works best for the situation and helps accomplish the goals set out at the top.
Next set — crossing between the product and the program.
