The Regenerate Web

Johanna Rothman in her excellent Managing Product Development blog writes:

Need Help With Phrase

I'm writing the project management book. I'm noting that sometimes PMs (and teams) perform activities that have no lasting useful effect on the project. One example is doing estimation with feedback. If you estimate but never check reality against those estimates, that's an example of "mental masturbation: it feels good but there's no lasting effect." That's fine for a rough draft book, but it feels not quite right in a final manuscript. I'm afraid it sounds a bit blaming. (No, I'm nowhere near final manuscript.)

She is talking about stuff project teams do that do not contribute to delivery velocity. Not stuff that doesn't directly contribute, but stuff that doesn't contribute at all.

Within every project team there are necessary administrative activities. Some of these activities are valuable, and help the project leader/manager steer or control velocity. These activities contribute to re-planning, measurement, and communication.

There are activities that appear to contribute this way, but because the practice is incomplete, immature, or ineffective there is no benefit realized. Within any project management or delivery management protocol, the practices need to be tuned so that all of the activity adds value.

Developing or refining your project or delivery management protocol requires a serious look at all of the activities that are part of the "routine". Any activities that don't add value should be modified (completed), replaced or eliminated.

Johanna - if you want a phrase to describe these activities, I would submit:

Incomplete Practices

Because they usually are done because they are called for by the project lifecycle, but they are not completed, or tied back to the remainder of the protocol. They may be carryovers that are not discarded as the protocol evolves, or they may be things we tried that we simply didn't abandon when they didn't produce results.