Project Management and Spiders

A colleague recently went off for a two weeks holiday and came back the other day. Although I envy the trip and time off, I don’t feel the same towards the amount of works and commitments that came swamping back on him. The first few days back from the holiday was spent catching up on things.

I remember the feeling too when I came back from a long trip or holiday, especially if it was not a public holiday and the office or project was still running. It feels like everything is out of place and you don’t know which is what. It is not that the project has completely changed, only that some part of the project has inched from their previous position and the whole thing just feels, off?

I remember too reading spiders can sense their prey by the tingling on their webs, when the movement of their prey sends vibration that is picked up by their feet. I assume the spiders can see, since they have the eight horrible eyes, but the fact that they sense with their feet shows that the eyes is not always fast enough, or relied on.

Sometimes I think project managers and executives are like that too, in the sense that they don’t really rely on what they see, but they have a general understanding and ‘feeling’ of how things are progressing on things, and when they go on holidays, their ‘web of understanding’ is destroyed. The more well managed a manager is, the faster he comes to grasp, which I have seen some having almost (almost) no relapse. I guess they have a stronger ‘web’, maybe.

Does this analogy saying contractors are prey? Hopefully not! I’d rather term the project goals to be the ‘prey’ and maintain the concept that everyone is working towards the same goal.

I’ll write again on this and recollect my thoughts on how to prevent relapse or your ‘web’ getting destroyed.