Notes on running projects

Practical pieces on delivery — written from the position of someone who has to make the plan survive contact with an engineering team.

• 01Why the Gantt chart survived AgileAgile was supposed to kill the Gantt chart. Thirty years later it is still on every executive's screen — because it answers a question no burndown chart can.Planning7 min read14 August 2026
• 02The status report nobody readsIf your weekly update is a list of what happened, you have written a diary, not a status report. Here is what stakeholders actually need in it.Communication6 min read2 August 2026
• 03Agile or Waterfall: a decision, not a religionThe methodology argument is usually a proxy for an unexamined question about uncertainty. Answer that one and the framework picks itself.Methodology8 min read19 July 2026
• 04A risk register people actually useMost risk registers are written once, filed, and never opened again. A register earns its place only if it changes a decision.Risk6 min read5 July 2026
• 05What a technical background actually buys a project managerIt is not the ability to write code. It is the ability to tell a hard constraint from a preference — and to know when an estimate is a guess wearing a suit.Craft7 min read21 June 2026
• 06Scope creep doesn't start in executionBy the time you are arguing about a change request, the mistake is already months old. Scope creep is an initiation failure that shows up late.Scope6 min read7 June 2026