Managing is not neccesarily the same as steering. The skipper does not have to be at the helm at all times. But it is his responsibility that the project does not hit a rock. That way the manager becomes a facilitator.

Having a trained and skilled crew is a must. Otherwise the Project Manager must keep detailed track of every task. This quickly becomes imossible as project size reaches more than five poeple.

Good people are much better than average people. Trained and skilled professionels can often outperform average staff with a factor of ten or more. Some problems cannot be solved at all without skilled professionals.

Making the team feel comfortable is part of the game. Identifying milestones, building specs and negociating estimates are part of this.

Some of the laws of physics apply to software projects. Check this out:

• Doubling speed will quadouble the energy consumption.

• Momentum is defined as mass times speed.

• It is hard to switch direction of a high momentum project.

• Momentum is constant, so adding mass yields a decrease in speed unless energy is used to accelerate.

• Abrupt changes in speed are impossible as they require access to unlimited power.

More to come...