I was recently fortunate enough to catch Max de Vries on a trip to the UK. Max has overseen complex IT projects in Europe, Asia and the US, in finance, public sector and now games for over 20 years, most recently being in charge of Popcap's Plants vs Zombies franchise, overseeing the launch of PvZ 2 and PvZ-Garden Warfare. I managed to fire off two quick questions before he had to go:
- Q: What are the top 3 things every project manager should know?
- Who to trust; how to communicate; and what would success look like.
- Q: What are the common mistake that inexperienced project managers make?
-
- Not realizing they are inexperienced
- Making estimation a political process
- Miscalculating the cost of saying no vs the cost of failure
- Not thinking about the critical path hard enough
- Thinking that people know what they want
- Underestimating the value of a high functioning team
- With agile processes: Modifying a process without understanding the reasons why the process works and doesn't work
So now you know.