Horstman's Law of Project Management - Part 3

Works and Plays Well with Others

Mark, you are so right. The last DR I had to get rid of, my number one problem was that she would not work well with the team. She was a excellent in her field, she got most all of her work done on time and for the most part her work was top notch. But she was a prima dona and she thought that she was too good and too cool to have to work well with the others on the team, in the organization and most importantly, our clients.

Who determines What

Mike, you rightfully stressed the precedence of the "Who" over the "What". One important reason for this you didn't mention to my surprise: If you pick the right people, it's them who'll contribute significantly to figuring out how to tackle the project goal, i.e. shaping the tasks, in the first place.

There are enough project managers who think of themselves as "The Brain" who's able to plan every detail ahead (interestingly enough, they are often also the ones fiddling around with their pm software way too much).

Good projects I've been on had a PM that involved their team in defining the work breakdown structure - and in order to do so, the team has to be in place before the list of tasks.