Questions tagged [project-management]
Project management is a professional field involving managing the scope, changes, schedule, and completion of a temporary endeavor that has a clear end. This is a professional field with it's own certifications and professional educational programs. If your question relates to the workplace, ask it here; otherwise, if the question is solely about project management, consider asking it on our sister site Project Management Stack Exchange instead.
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How do I explain to a team that the project they will work on for six months will certainly be cancelled?
I am a project manager at my company. I usually work on projects where the customers are government offices, public administrations and company related to them. In September we will begin a project ...
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14
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Should I force a slower developer to change tool to try to increase their velocity?
I have a developer on my team who, while delivers good quality code, is significantly slower than the other developers on my team. This is causing a pretty serious bottleneck that I'm trying to find a ...
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126
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16
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Constantly pulled onto different tasks/projects, becoming exhausted
I'm a data-analyst for my company and I also perform full-stack development work.
I have a web-development project I've been working on for the last 8 months, and the primary focus from my boss and ...
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121
votes
12
answers
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Just found I was supposed to be working on a completely different project since 8 months ago. How can I handle this?
Kinda shocked at the moment. I’m a dev who works on a team of about 20 developers.
Apparently I (along with another developer) was assigned to complete a specification about 8 months ago. I learned ...
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118
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16
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How to deal with a boss who has lost touch with modern software development?
I work (as a junior developer) for a medium-sized company which is the sole market leader in our industry. Our software mainly consists of old code which has been hastily ported/copied to a 90s ...
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117
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13
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What would you say to bosses that think programming jobs are interchangeable?
I'm in this software company, and I've only experienced two managers so far, but both view programming jobs as not much different from laying bricks. They always emphasized we should take on each ...
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110
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11
answers
32k
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Developers demotivated due to working on same project for more than 2 years
I am currently managing a team of 10 people for a project which was started 3 years ago, which will run for another year. I am not the manager, I am just the most senior developer (6yrs exp.) on the ...
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98
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16
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Under performing employee will be fired if I ask for him off my team
I've got a teammate that fails to follow through with his responsibilities on a regular basis. He is extremely knowledgeable from a tech standpoint and understands the code very well. When he is ...
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95
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13
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My manager has decided to continue work on a project cancelled by the CEO
My team's project was cancelled directly by the CEO, but my manager has decided that we should keep working on it. In the headcount request spreadsheet for the next quarters, my manager is inflating ...
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89
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7
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How to say No to idea given by team member, when I know from my experience that it is going to fail?
I have a very hardworking team, and I like when they try to think about a project with broader perspective. I want to respect their contribution and don't like to refuse their ideas, but sometimes I ...
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88
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13
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Team being on standby on weekends?
We are currently delivering an in house product with an in house technical team. I am acting as the product manager for it.
This weekend, the product went down for a customer. Monday arrived and my ...
- 12k
88
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8
answers
23k
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Project I was hired for is off the rails due to constantly changing requirements, now it's me on the spot
I was hired as a frontend developer to develop an administration backend for a thriving European startup. The initial estimate that they had in mind was 6 months, which was appropriate. It's a 3-...
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6
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Should I tell my boss the work he did was worthless?
I have been handed a project that has been kicked around for 4 or 5 months with ~zero progress made. The project is to implement a new tool that was chosen before I got here. It seems like a good ...
- 3,560
85
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13
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How to respond to, "How long will this take?" when in a new job position
I started a new job two weeks ago using technologies that are new to me. I was upfront from the start about what I did and did not know so there's no surprises.
I do a little of everything and so I ...
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11
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I'm the Tech Lead, my boss is the PM. In case of disagreement, how much should I push my point of view?
I'm the tech lead of a project and my boss is the Project Manager. He is formally in charge to decide what to put inside the project and I'm in charge of deciding how things will be implemented.
In ...
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73
votes
11
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My manager asked me to hide project costs. Is it unethical for me to comply?
I'm a software architect at my company. My company is presently invested in a project that's being architected and developed by an offshore team. A few of my in-house colleagues and I have recurring ...
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72
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13
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How to manage an army of not-really-devs trying to write code for the sake of project management?
We recently adopted a new management methodology that says there are no roles on the team (a "cross-functional" team where "all team members are developers") and everyone should we ...
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65
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13
answers
13k
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How can I argue against the idea of working overtime to fix bugs (constantly)?
My boss likes our engineers to work overtime to fix bugs. One of his favorite arguments is that being a responsible engineer, when you know it is exactly your codes that cause the bugs how can you ...
- 3,610
63
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6
answers
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How can I avoid being blamed for project management failure when I am merely a senior programmer?
I am a tech lead on a project with a Project Manager (PM) and a developer team. The leadership frequently stresses that I'm responsible for the project success.
I am discovering that I have to ...
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62
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5
answers
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How to work with a "fanboy"?
As an IT Professional, part of what I do when assigned larger projects from management is to meet either formally or informally with the stakeholders, work to establish a scope and a set of ...
user204
61
votes
7
answers
12k
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Being blamed for something you don't consider your mistake
Several months ago I accepted a job which was project-based.
I soon discovered that my projects required me to work very long hours. I'm talking about around 65-75 hours a week every week (these ...
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59
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13
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I agreed to cancel a long-planned vacation (with travel costs) due to project deadlines, but now the timeline has all changed again
TL;DR
cancelled a long-planned trip due to a delay in project deadlines and my backup person quitting, and received most of the cost back from the company.
Turns out in retrospect it wasn't necessary ...
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59
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5
answers
14k
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Boss wants my team to work weekends
I am currently managing an in house team of developers, late in a sprint my boss requested that the team gets some work done by Monday. He mentioned that if the work cannot be done on the Friday, that ...
- 12k
57
votes
15
answers
23k
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How to deal with an underperforming subordinate?
I'm a Software Developer with experience of more than 1.5 years. After being happy with my performance, the CTO of my company made me a team lead of 3 new employees (2 of them graduated recently).
...
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57
votes
13
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12k
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Manager questioning my time estimates for a project [duplicate]
I work in a software development company. For a new project, my manager asked me time-estimates. I read the project requirements document and worked out worst-case estimates.
During a meeting, he ...
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54
votes
11
answers
17k
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Am I overreacting to a new rule where I have to check-in my status every morning?
Three months ago I started a role at a new company as a software engineer. Within two months, I helped onboard the team to a lot of contemporary best practices. They didn't do proper source control, ...
- 1,609
52
votes
9
answers
10k
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How do big development teams learn from their mistakes?
I am part of a software development team and I am looking for a way/process that we can collect information on any technical problems that recently happened and document them in a way that would make ...
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49
votes
14
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8k
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What to do when different project managers insisting that I must work on their requests immediately?
There are 5 project managers who keep coming to me and insisting that their requests are urgent and I find myself switching between 4 different projects, while I am supposed to work on only 1 project ...
- 1,881
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6
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What to do about Software Project Managers aggressively overloading the Tech Leads?
We get this statement from the PMs quite frequently during sprint planning:
I know our capacity for points is X story points per sprint - but we're taking on extra as a stretch target.
The PM ...
- 1,413
48
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5
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11k
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Answering questions of project failure during interviews
TLDR: Projects have failed due to lack of dedicated resources (money, employees) and not, as far as I believe, to mismanagement on my part. How can I address this to future employers without bad-...
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47
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9
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How to politely state that a software requirement is infeasible? [duplicate]
I work as a software engineer for a small software company. One of the things I've observed is that a lot of the system requirements that come my way are based on the whims of the boss and never ...
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44
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5
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13k
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How to tell your boss that unforeseen work will delay a project?
I'm a new team lead on a project integrating my companies' software with an outside vendor's. This project was planned out and estimated before I came on, so I'm pretty much just following the roadmap....
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40
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10
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Deleted 2 days of work and no backup
I deleted work I was doing and I didn't add it to SVN, I have a performance review tomorrow and I already mentioned that I am stressed, thus slow progress.
Now with this problem, should I tell my ...
user15704
38
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7
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12k
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How can I deal with a difficult developer that is holding back the project?
Our entire project is being held up because of one piece which is being handled by a single developer. When we did finally got the latest version of his code and started reviewing it, we found the ...
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37
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13
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How can I highlight how much better I've made our code and deal with a coworker that disagrees?
I joined a company to help add some functionality to their code. The code is legacy and has been terribly maintained. The technology is ~15 years old.
It takes days to track down bugs and problems ...
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37
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6
answers
18k
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Should I tell my boss that I am doing a crazy amount of overtime?
I work at a big tech company as an individual contributor. We are approaching an important launch where I'm playing a key role. There is no strict deadline, but I'd like to make sure it's finished ...
- 389
37
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8
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Brought on to failing project and might lose job
Original Question
I work as a backend software developer for a tech company. This company has a multi-million dollar project that is at least three years underway. The project is supposed to go live ...
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36
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8
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I made a possible mistake on a live project at work, how to handle this mess?
I am a software developer that just started out in this company. It's been almost three weeks.
On Friday when I was about to leave work, a co-worker stopped me and told me to make changes to already ...
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35
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5
answers
11k
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My manager always seems too busy to meet with me. How can I improve that?
He's a great guy, but it feels like he's always in meetings or going to conferences or on the phone on long calls. He has told me that he really enjoys those interactions. He and I work somewhat ...
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34
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7
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Long meetings (6-7 hours a day): Being "babysat" by supervisor
I hold a PhD in mechanical engineering with a 7 year background in self-guided, self-paced research including 2 years as a graduate level course instructor and a subject matter expert for various ...
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How do I get a management position without management experience?
My career goal always has been to get into a position with responsibility, either in the field of project or team management. I finished a business engineering masters degree recently and already have ...
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12
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How do I answer an interview question about how to handle a hard deadline I won't be able to meet?
I have gone to a few interviews at project-based companies for software developer positions. One common question they tend to ask, which is also the hardest to answer, is:
Given a scenario where ...
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8
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How do I politely ask about the "urgency" of a work request - i.e. what date should it be completed by?
I work in an IT Help Desk role, and I often get requests that have vague "due-dates". So maybe a Project Manager wants a large database pull, which will take at least a week of my time.
But they don'...
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9
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How to ask software team for basic yet important tasks without lowering morale?
So here's the deal - I have a software engineering team I'm the lead of that is remote (different country and timezone - take strong note of this. Too many responses I think are from people ...
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29
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10
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7k
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Restricting outside activities of 'key' people in a project in order to reduce risk
Is it reasonable to restrict the activities of key people in a project outside of work (e.g. non-essential personal travel) as we head towards crunch time. The intent behind this being the minimizing ...
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9
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37k
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How can I professionally and politely disagree with Management about my performance review?
It is my performance evaluation. In the evaluation the management is trying to put my rating and rate low by making me solely responsible for some of the the results which don't meet management ...
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Is it reasonable for my project manager to expect no bugs in production? [closed]
I'm a front end dev for a company that makes websites for clients.
I have a pretty thorough testing process that is already quite time consuming, but I always test fully before anything goes live.
...
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27
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6
answers
4k
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How to backseat project manage when meetings are poorly/not facilitated?
Meetings without agendas which are poorly facilitated do NOT fall into the category of beneficial meetings.
Unfortunately, a lot of PMs or managers do not have the expertise or skill leading ...
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27
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7
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5k
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Scrum is causing me stress
We very recently switch to scrum, from something more like a waterfall process. For what it's worth I don't have very strong feelings about any particular development process, but if it becomes clear ...
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13
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How to handle a client telling you about future plans and asking you to (temporarily) keep them secret from your hierarchy?
(This is in a B2B context, so "client" here means a company's representative.)
I have a very good working relationship with my client, even if we've been working together only for about a ...
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