next up previous contents
Next: Staff Up: Participants' Views Previous: The Client   Contents

Project Manager

I had taken part in numerous software projects before DTREND, but jumping into the shoes of a project manager was a new experience. Although this particular project was quite small, the amount of work seemed huge at first. Documentation alone took nearly 200 hours of work, which is almost half of the time allocated in whole. The two-month timescale required additional stress and energy - the project was always on my mind.

First and foremost of all, the project was a learning experience. New situations came almost weekly and the project group had to deal with them, one way or another. Seamless teamwork budded with the aid of informal IRC, email and weekly personal meetings. Either of the two other members besides me, Tero or Timo, could have managed the project with equal or better success. This time I was picked for the job, and I do not think I could have pulled it off without excessive help from Tero and Timo.

The only negative thing that should be mentioned here, is that even though most of the functionalities were code-ready at agreed times, a lot of patching was seen just before the testing phase. This could have been prevented through scheduling more time for module integration and meetings among the project group. This did not go as planned, but luckily there was some gap-time in the staff's calendars to improve the code and everything went well.


next up previous contents
Next: Staff Up: Participants' Views Previous: The Client   Contents
2002-03-19