Hi {{project manager}}

I wanted to recap my understanding of our meeting today
concerning time lines and responsibilities. Please let me
know if I've misunderstood anything.

During our meeting today, I asked if you considered the tasks
and time lines reasonable and doable.

You said yes.

I explained that I believed that the schedule was totally
unrealistic. There were multiple tasks that were have supposed
to have started already, had almost an immediate due date, yet
had no work associated with them. This would indicate a
time line ripple unless these tasks are unnecessary and are
about to be canceled.

In several cases, there are areas of research and design which
would mean it would be impossible to have a true firm time line.
This in itself is reasonable, you have to start somewhere. But
that somewhere then seems to be the best case optimistic guess,
rather than a conservative realistic one.

You stated that I was the only person who felt this way, saying
that anyone else who saw this schedule merely said it seemed
aggressive but they'll do their best to deal with it. Since
I am probably one of the few people who reviewed this schedule
who has done almost an identical project in the near past, and
I have a vested interest in seeing it succeed, I consider
that an insult, hinting that I am a naysayer and not a team player.

I take my responsibilities very seriously, and would hope you take
my comments based on that.

In many cases, my name was associated with tasks that I was only
aware of in the periphery. You explained that you included people
as resources merely to notify them that they needed to be
available for discussion. If that is the case, then you need
a separate column for that. When my name is listed as part of
a task on a project plan, I expect to be responsible for
producing a deliverable of some kind.

In some cases, you listed "ALL" as resources for a task, which
effectively hides who is responsible for it. I know, as the
project manager, you are ultimately responsible, but that does
help us determine who needs to do what in these tasks.

You acknowledged that you did not use MS Project's ability to
associate specific people and time lines of tasks, instead
you chose to handle the time line and resources manually. You
said the reason you did this was because if you let Project do
it your time line would have gone too far out. This would indicate
a flaw in your reasoning. Either you lack resources or time.

You stated that you expect one of my deliverables was to research
{{X,Y, and Z}} and recommend alternatives. I pointed that I
lack this specific skill set, and had discussed this with {{your boss}}
already. She agreed with me, and explained it was your responsibility
to provide technical specifications for me to code against.
You then agreed to handle this portion and provide me with the
specifications.

The project plan (as presented) does not include any of the actual
conversion programming time. We discussed that your estimate for
this is currently about 5,000 man hours. With 10 programmers working
on it at half time, this means you have 200 hours of productivity
per week. 5,000 / 200 = 25 weeks, ie: about 6 months. The time line
for those 6 months can only start after your programmers are done
training and the system are in place to support them.

You stated that you have an open req for an experienced {{industry application}}
programmer and you were hoping to dedicate him/her to the conversion
effort. I would suggest you do not bet the schedule on the unknown
until hired. I would also suggest that you have {{local guru}} tech
proof any candidate.

This project is a crucial piece of moving {{specific business}} forward, and
is certainly doable. But not based on the time line you have provided.
This sets us up for failure no matter how much we work or what we
accomplish.

On the plus side, at least the other parts of the meeting were productive.