5 meetings, 2 test loads and a partridge in a pear tree

A bank holiday weekend is looming and I've managed to survive the many project meetings that have occurred today. Here is what I learnt.

1. If your managing an enterprise project with a lot of different players then it's crucial that they collaborate. Seems crushingly obvious but once them and us culture kicks in then it's a really difficult climb out of that ditch.

2. I'm not going to get time to get my haircut.

3.Everyone needs a clear understanding of scope and goal. If not then it encourages fracturing of the team which leads to a them and us culture.

4. There should be a clear language and comprehension of terms for everyone involved. I'm not in favour of needless documents but if I have to sit in any other meetings where the people talking about testing all have different ideas on the meanings of unit, system, integration, user acceptance, operational acceptance and business readiness testing then I will cry. Especially when half the people think they're all the same thing and the other half are desperately trying not to as why we're doing any of them.

5. I shouldn't eat lunch at my desk but the prospect of rain is enough to dissuade me from leaving the office.

6. Multiple heads may work if your name is Zaphod or you are a Hydra but if you are running a programme of projects and have at least three different decision making committees all looking at subtly different yet overlapping aspects of the project then you are doomed to have the same sort of repetition that Top Gear experiences on Dave.

7. When pressed for time it's attractive to focus on the happy scenario's and ignore the parts that could go wrong. Drill down until you are happy you've covered the lot. Don't cut corners.

8. People, like water, nearly always follow the path of least resistance. Obnoxious processes will either block things like a dam or will cause people to find alternate routes. Obnoxious processes usually hide a deficiency, hunt down the person who created it and understand what the cause is. Resolve the problem rather than legislate around it.

9. It a bank holiday weekend. Get the work done and get out.

10. Lists always seem to need 10 things in  them. Especially if they're on Flipboard.