A Rant: The Anxiety of The Project Manager

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s Tumblr, and Pillowfort.  Find out more at my newsletter, and all my social media at my linktr.ee)

One of the things people don’t talk about Project Managers like myself is how the job makes life stressful.

Oh I’m not talking at work. That’s normal. Nothing like looking at a 100 page design document no one can read or a flowchart that outlines why everyone is being stupid. We’re used to that. We’ve developed immunity.

I’m talking about the world. There’s really nothing like being a person used to analyzing goals and tasks, calculating numbers and budgets, and then watching very little of that apply to our planet. Being a Project Manager is having a whole new way to be frustrated about the state of the planet as it doesn’t have to be this way.

What’s the plan, we wonder as politicians act like influencers. Where are the deliverables, we ask as people promise one thing and deliver, well nothing and then some. What’s the return, we sign, knowing that what really happened is someone met a quarterly number and kept his job as CEO another quarter and has money in his cocaine budget.

Everything is being run like it’s something but too many things aren’t being run as what they say they are.

It’s not even arrogance. A mediocre project manager can see these things. A new one can. Once you do have some experience, it’s very hard to look away from things being very wrong. And you see a wrong different than the regular wrongs!

Nothing is what people say they are, the numbers are wrong, someone is clearly funneling money to their idiot cousin’s inherited family business, and everyone is lying. There’s a very big disconnect in the world and we can feel it. It’s what we do on the job.

If you have ever listened to a Project Manager go off – not just this rant but really go off – you know we see it when things aren’t working. It’s been getting worse the last 10-15 years.

So give us some grace. Also now you know why I’ve been a little more ranty, a little bit more political – it’s time. Also, it’s therapeutic.

Steven Savage

Saving So Much Time We’re Slower

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s Tumblr, and Pillowfort.  Find out more at my newsletter, and all my social media at my linktr.ee)

So let me lay out a theory here that the effort to go faster with modern software can often make things slower. If you’re ready for “Steve Rants About Software,” here you go. If not, anyway, read on, trust me.

OK, let’s restate the thesis. I’m starting to think the way software makes things faster means, in time, everything runs slower.

Anyway, you’re probably used to using software for speed. This thing moves faster. This thing does a task for you. I unabashedly love spreadsheet programs, they are amazing. I’m not a patient person, so I get it.

The thing is that software (and other solutions, but I’m focusing on software) sometimes require other things to be done. You have to do a setup. Maybe you have to come up with a way to name some project demands. Perhaps there’s some extra data you have to enter to take advantage of all that super-fast software.

Sometimes, to take advantage of the speed you have to do more work. You probably see where this is going, but I’m going there anyway.

If you’re not careful, the extra work you do starts to add up. You have to check it and correct it. Choices start to interact, say you discover that your new form requires someone to sign off on it due to legal reasons. The time you save starts to get eaten up in other tasks to support being faster. You’re going faster but also going slower at the same time.

Ever check all the checkboxes, done all the stuff to make things work faster and somehow all that speed feels slower? You’re not going crazy. Well, you may be, but it’s understandable.

And all that’s extra normal work. What happens when a software update bricks your system? When a data import goes wrong? Your fast new system(s) cost time to fix as well, and know what, I’m not counting on that going well unless you’ve really run through the scenarios. Since disaster planning in software has become “figuring the SAAS system we have will always work,” I’m not exactly confident.

Thus my conclusion – past a certain point with software (and indeed, processes) your attempts to get speed end up slowing you down. Hell, in some cases, so much other work comes in that you might not need software. You would have less work without the thing that goes faster.

Again, you’re not losing your mind. Your mind just would like to get lost to get away from this.

I guarantee right now that on your job all your cool automated stuff you still go to talk to a person to work around things. You might be the person. You know why you do it – it’s faster than using the fast software.

Measuring return on investment is one thing, but measuring speed as a whole is important when you adopt new software. The value of software for speed is that everything is faster overall, you have to be careful to make sure the trade-offs are actually doing something. Otherwise the thing you sped up is faster and everything else is slowed down.

Judging by my usual online gathering of friends – a huge crowd of IT nerds – it’s starting to feel a lot slower out there.

Steven Savage

The Recovery Is The Hidden Problem

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s Tumblr, and Pillowfort.  Find out more at my newsletter, and all my social media at my linktr.ee)

So right now people seem pretty worried about the US economy (yes, we still have one, in theory). AI is starting to hit predictable skids, data centers are both annoying people and not completing as fast as claimed, Iran hasn’t met a Strait they didn’t want to shut down, and so on. A lot of people are predicting some kind of crash of the stock market and the US economy.

Now I have my concerns on that, which perhaps I’ll share another time. But having been through many an economic crisis since being born in the late 60s, I have another concern – the recovery from a likely crash or severe downturn.

Namely, my concern is that there won’t be one like we’re used to. There may not really be one to speak of.

Recoveries take awhile. The 2008 crisis took five years for the stock market to recover – and the stock market isn’t the economy. The history of the 2008 crisis and its many year followup is wild, and I’m sure we all know people who didn’t recover or didn’t live long enough to recover.

This is where I get concerned about the next US downturn, which is almost certainly coming. I don’t think we’ll have the kind of recovery we’re used to, and it may be a dismal slog after a “new normal.”

Here’s why:

First, our position in the world is shot. We’re losing allies who are bypassing us for defense, technology, trade, etc. We won’t come back as fast as long as other people don’t trust us.

Second, the Iran situation has long-term impacts from the rearrangement of trade to affecting growing cycles due to fertilizer shipments. Will iran keep blockading the Strait of Hormuz (and possibly the Red Sea)? If Iran does regulate traffic under some agreement, the throughput won’t be the same. If Iran just opens up there’s still months of securing the area and clearing mines. The impacts will have repercussions for years.

Third, it’s pretty clear our stock market is propped up on a few big players. Any of those take a hit and who replaces them? For that matter, who might try to replace them and inflate values – only to make mini-crashes.

Fourth, a lot of Americans have been on the edge for awhile. They won’t have a recovery if there’s not enough to recover with. Young people already facing enormous headwinds won’t be able to get going.

Fifth, in no way do I trust our current government to do any kind of effective bailout – corrupt or otherwise! I mean I trust corrupt, but not effective. I have big problems with the money games played in response to 2008, not enough people went to jail, and we needed companies to fail while PEOPLE got supported. But there was at least some effort made – though I expect a few ham-handed efforts to keep things going.

Sixth, and finally, the US is going backwards. Science has taken a hit. We’re stuck in oil (and the people profiting from it) while the rest of the world heads for solar and wind. China and Europe are doing their thing. We’re the past.

So whatever economic crash we may see, I think the real issue will be the recovery won’t be so great. There may be no recovery to speak of, just a new normal of slower growth and less opportunities. I keep hearing Stagflation invoked, which is a flashback to my childhood and worrisome.

Sometimes it’s not the crash, it’s the recovery. And that’s where I’m even more concerned.

Steven Savage