People and Projects Podcast: Project Management Podcast · Andy Kaufman, PMP, PMI-ACP

PPP 485 | What Project Teams Can Learn From Sketch Comedy, with author John Krewson

·52 min·2 clips

Sit in your mom's kitchen, see the unopened cookbooks, and you have your answer without her knowing you were testing an app idea.

1. People and Projects Podcast episode 485 applies sketch comedy practices to project teams, drawing on the book Pitch, Sketch, Launch. 2. Host Andy interviews John Krewson, a former software developer, project manager and actor who co-wrote the book with Rob Kutner and now runs a product development company in St. Louis. 3. Krewson's thesis is that creative, non-deterministic work like software should be managed like a sketch show rather than like building an airplane, because the result has to be discovered along the way. 4. He recounts mailing 100 envelopes to the Saturday Night Live casting director, writing a custom letter each week for a year, then auditioning after meeting him at a seminar, only to learn his sketch had already been cut. 5. He compares a theater production to a project: the director keeps a working version every day through rehearsal, a cross-functional cast and crew share one goal, and feedback is sought 'ruthlessly' without being taken personally. 6. He argues that managers rely on proxies like 'are you typing on a keyboard' because they lack tools to see value delivery, and that projects over-focus on the iron triangle of budget, schedule and scope while skipping whether the customer needed the thing. 7. He describes sketch troupes such as Kids in the Hall and Monty Python as units where decisions come from the group, cites politics as the main failure point in large organizations, and uses Lorne Michaels's biography and Chevy Chase's sudden fame as an example. 8. He recommends sticky notes limited to three to five words and Lean Coffee, which builds its agenda in the meeting, and suggests replacing the word 'meeting' with 'doing' while still defending the weekly check-in. 9. For measuring the equivalent of a laugh, he points to page visits and form fills at his own firm, then cites Rob Fitzpatrick's The Mom Test and Tim Urban's four thinking layers of zealot, lawyer, sports fan and scientist. 10. Suited to project managers, product leaders and team leads rethinking meetings and feedback.

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