Project Leadership

TEST

2009-04-22T07:09:00.000-07:00

wiki style projct managment

2008-05-26T08:45:00.001-07:00

Streber is a free wiki driven project management tool written in php5. Freelancers and small teams can easily setup projects and keep track of tasks, issues, bugs, efforts etc. Project-User-Rights can be adjusted e.g. to provide clients a limited view of the current project state.

this is an interesting app that i must review in more details. not sure how the app handles security for resources and workflow. however , as an open source app, Streber requires a PHP5 enabled web server + MySQL as the databbase.

PMXPO 2008:

2008-04-14T13:41:00.000-07:00

All project managers face challenges that seem insurmountable, but Russell Brice and his team face the world's highest peak. Success for this project team is literally a question of life or death. Hear how Russell has applied his project management experience to conquer Mt. Everest time and time again, and find out how to manage your biggest, scariest, most challenging projects with the same principles.

Russell Brice, CEO of Himalayan Experiences, has been leading expeditions to the Himalayas since 1974. He now has a regular team of sherpas who are, without doubt, the most respected in Nepal. He has led clients to the summit of Everest and Cho Oyo, and also Himal Chuli (7,540m), Shishapangma (8,046m) and Ama Dablam (6,856m).

In 1991 his ability to manage a team and overcome extreme technical difficulty at high altitude triumphed as Project Coordinator for the successful Star Balloon Over Everest Expedition.

Individually, he has the world record for the fastest single solo ascent without oxygen of both Cho Oyo and of Ama Dablam. In 1988 he was the first climber to cross the infamous Pinnacles of the NE ridge of Everest. He is now widely reputed as one of the most professional leaders of all guided expeditions to the Himalayas and has earned worldwide recognition through Discovery Channel's Everest: Beyond the Limit, now in its second season.

This is sounds an interesting seminar to attend

Being a Green PM !!

2008-04-10T17:29:00.001-07:00

I just got a very interesting read. To me this is a new dimension of awareness that a project Manager and EPM folio also needs to consider while going thru thier day to day work That is, Being a GreenPM.

"Similarly, if you're practicing GreenPM, you should first look to see if your organization has an environmental management policy or something similar. If so, then you should make sure your project aligns to these environmental policies and standards as well.

The second aspect of quality is the specific quality criteria that make sense for your specific project. The project's quality management plan focuses on the stakeholders' expectations (i.e., requirements) of quality, and the resulting activities needed to meet these expectations.

If a project manager is practicing GreenPM, he or she should seek to expand this discussion of quality to discuss the environmental considerations of the project. This doesn't mean that every project will have environmental considerations.

However, if you start to ask the questions and start to raise awareness, you might be surprised to learn that there are green areas of interest to your stakeholders."

To the best of my knowledge the PMI is not promoting this to within their methodolgies practices. This Consideration certainly falls under the Quality management. However, what are the question that need to be asked by a PM when engaging and becoming active as a GreenPM ? I'll cross post this question on Linkedin

[update] Posed question on Linkedin and got a couple of response

alternatives to Basecamp

2008-04-01T16:39:00.001-07:00

Nice list 9 (Via Anu)

Goplan
Unfuddle
OnStage
Harvest (time tracking and invoicing)
TeamWorkLive
ActionThis
5pm
DeskAway
Collabtrak
ActiveCollab (self hosted)
ProjectPier (fork of older version of ActiveCollab, selfhosted, opensource)
ClockingIt (timetracking, opensource)
Lighthouse
Copper
Wrike
Intervals

IT cost Cutting as per the Bible of Gartner

2008-02-26T16:20:00.001-08:00

"Gartner believes that as concerns increase for the near-term health of some of the world's largest economies, those responsible for IT budgets can expect to receive mandates from senior executives to cut IT costs as part of an enterprisewide cost-cutting program. It recommends that organizations begin establishing ground rules for complying with such a cost-cutting mandate by following a six-step plan" [ source ]

What are these 6 steps ?

Don't Wait for the Cost-Cutting Mandate from Management
Choose the Best and Brightest IT People for the Team
Don't Allow Finger-Pointing or Second Guessing
Report Results on a Weekly Basis
Identify a Liaison from the Legal Department
Enlist an Internal Auditor as Scorekeeper

My question is if Gartner is sending out such messages, this will certainly impact the innovations space. Less thinkers and developer's make the Enterprise move behind the eight ball and leaves the market open to geolocations like Singapore, India and Russia. After all, IT has to perform and produce, they just do it by outsourcing now- at a lower cost. However, the consequences is the innovations is now driven externally !!

Project Management Job listings translator

2008-02-25T15:55:00.001-08:00

This is a classic fro PM who are looking for gigs' ! Thanks to Nick Matteucci for making my Day /evening :)-

Project Management Job listings translator

Job posting says:	What they really mean is:
Competitive Salary	We remain competitive by paying project managers less than our more successful competitors.
Join our fast-paced company	We have no time to train you or send you to PM conferences. Please introduce yourself to your project team members and co-workers as well.
Immediate opening	The project manager who used to have this project gave notice and left the company a month ago with no information on what they did or how they did it. We're just now running the ad.
Self-motivated	Project sponsors won't answer questions or provide requirements.
We offer great benefits	We'll allow you to fund your own 401(k) if you survive the 3 year project that got the last PM fired.
Seeking enthusiastic, fun, hard working, people	Looking for young project managers with no training, certification, or experience who won't mind our internship-level salaries.
Casual work atmosphere	We don't pay enough to expect that you'll dress up.
Dynamic environment	Your project team will be yanked from your project every 3 months or 3 weeks before a major deliverable (whichever happens first)
Fun work environment	Your project team members will be insulted if you don't go out and buy them drinks 3 nights a week.
A drug-free work environment.	We booze it up at company holiday parties and base bonuses on ability to hold one's liquor.
Must be deadline oriented	Your project will be four months behind schedule on your first day.
Some overtime required	Some overtime each night and some overtime each weekend will be required.
Requires team leadership skills	You'll have the responsibilities of your boss without the pay or respect.
Good communication skills.	Management communicates what they want from your projects in vague terms that are impossible to decipher, you listen, figure out what they want and do it under budget and ahead of schedule.

PMBOK + Agile

2008-02-25T15:46:00.001-08:00

THe 4th edition of the PMBOK is coming out and a draft edition was made available. Some interesting tidbits were picked up from Section 2.1.3-2:

"An iterative relationship, where only one subset is planned at any given time and the planning for the next period is carried out as work progresses on the current deliverable. This approach is useful in largely undefined, uncertain, or rapidly changing environments such as research, but it can lead to rework and reduce the ability to provide long term planning or scope control for the project. It also entails having all of the project team members (e.g. designers, developers, etc.) available throughout the project."

There are changes on the horizon and PMI is in the process of forming an Agile Project Management SIG .

PMI/PMBOK is all about defining, organizing, planning and executing predictive project. Agility is intended to address inventive projects by defining a high-level big picture and taking a few steps at a time to ensure the project brings real business value.

The convergence of PMI and Agile is a welcome thing !

Stakholder trust models

2008-02-19T08:38:00.001-08:00

This is critical for a PM to understand- the Stakeholder trust model are different in each organization, let alone the person themselves. This is a must read from a Harvard White paper

"Employees that don't trust their organizations are less loyal, less motivated, and less productive. Customers who perceive a breach of trust are more likely to switch to a competitor.
When trust is lacking in supplier relationships, more resources need to be devoted to contract enforcement and monitoring, the result of which is increased transaction costs. Organizations that lose the trust of their investors may be the quickest of all to perish."

SO go read and don't Perish :)-

Promote Teamwork over Politics

2008-02-19T05:59:00.001-08:00

Excerpted from Cutter's Enterprise Architecture advisory service. Five strategies for improving teamwork:

Build cross-functional teams. IT teams, in particular development and maintenance teams, should be cross-functional. Each team should have a variety of people from different professional backgrounds, including business stakeholders. Technical team members should ideally be people who are already generalizing specialists or at least willing to become so. A generalizing specialist with one or more specialties, plus a general software process knowledge, plus a good knowledge of the domain that they're working in, plus a willingness to collaborate with and learn from others is far more effective. This is supported by Larry English's work in information quality transformation -- one of his 14 points is to break down barriers between staff areas
Promote non-solo development. Doing IT work is a lot like swimming; it's very dangerous to do it alone. Agilists have discovered that both quality and productivity increase when people work together collaboratively, often in pairs. Agile methods include practices such as pair programming and modeling with others to enforce this approach. When people pair together, and particularly when they swap pairs regularly, they learn new skills, get the job at hand done more effectively, and build better bonds with their coworkers.
Promote training, education, and mentoring. One way to improve teamwork is to ensure that people have a wide range of skills and thereby can relate to the issues that their coworkers are focused on. When developers understand the fundamentals of data architecture, management, and governance, then they would likely recognize the value that data professionals have to offer and would more likely be able to find ways to work with them effectively. Similarly, if data professionals understood modern development techniques and methods, then they would be in a better position to work in a more responsive manner.
Promote explicit team-building workshops. They're a bit goofy, but my experience is that workshops that are specifically focused on team building can work wonders (although I'm still not that sure about those exercises where you fall backwards into other people's hands).
Break bread with "those other people." It's amazing how quickly you'll build bonds with someone over good food, good drink, and good conversation.

Hat Tip to Dennis Crowley for these points !! I have always found that breaking bread and drinking wine is THE most powerfull Team builder effort. Dont take em out for dinner and drinks just to celebrate, rather just hang out together and watch a foot ball game or play pool or something like that once every two weeks. Better still is to have a Pot luck once a month- its amazing how they all work out something to feed themselves !! Once they learn to feed each other literally, they also learn to feed the project too :)-

PM tragedy in five limericks !!

2008-02-16T04:40:00.001-08:00

Thanks to Kailash Awati who manages IT development at a multinational in Australia. This (reproduced below) come as part of my alert systems and I nearly split my coffee on my laptop- LMAO .

Hey Mate, this certainly will call for a Fosters on met when I am down under :)-

Others in PM interests, take time to visit his blog :)-

With many changes we had to cope
Deadlines near; no money, no hope.
There was no way to wrangle,
with the iron triangle
of budget, time and scope.

The project was in a mess.
The reason I could only guess
was the carefully constructed
schedule was busted,
thanks to a dodgy WBS.

When called to explain the delay
I told the sponsor to pray.
When he asked, "But, why?"
I said with a sigh,
"On the critical path the tasks lay."

He said to me, "This can't be true.
There must be something you can do."
Shaking my head
in sorrow, I said,
"All that remains is review."

And now, I'm not in his pay,
You see, I was fired that day.
So, I exhort you all,
to stay on the ball,
and don't run your projects this way.

Talent Management & HR

2008-02-15T09:37:00.001-08:00

A good point of contention ; Talent Management Project : Is it a HR function?

This AM , I had a good conversation with Shawn T of MISCONSULTING, which gave me a different insight of Talent Capital - from acquisitions , development and retention strategies. The core question I have always asked myself during the Project Life cycle , is what am I teaching to my team members, what is their takeaway ? Have they engaged on the knowledge trajectory ? Does this seem to be a HR question or a Project Management Question ? and what is cross docking synergies between PMO and HR that can be leveraged ?

The McKinsey Quarterly article on "Making Talent a Strategic Priority" ; conducted a survey of 98 business/HR leaders that yielded obstacles to effective talent management. This is a very important read for me today ( thanks to Shawn for getting my juices going !!)

The key here is "Manager's who aren't interested in "development of people's capabilities and careers" aren't really managing at all"

The top three data points (out of 7!!)

1. Senior managers don't spend enough high-quality time on talent management

2. Organization is "siloed" and does not encourage constructive collaboration, sharing of resources

3. Line managers are not sufficiently committed to development of people's capabilities and careers.

Take time to digest all the Metric's (Exhibits) in the report. This a must read for people who mentor and interact with knowledge workers.

BA and PM synergies

2008-01-29T06:58:00.001-08:00

This seems to be a very interesting read that I must digest. It's written by Ben Snyder, CEO of Systemation on his blog PMhut

Part#1 - Time to Bring Back the Soft Skills
Part#2 - Hard Data on Soft Skills
Part#3 - Using soft skills to your advantage
Part#4 - Building relationships to increase project influence

I think by the the middle of the year, I should have enough information that can move me to re-invent the wheel on this map that was brought to me by Bryce Johnson

Personally, I think the fine line between a project manager and the BA is diminishing and a new breed of workers will need to be engineered.

[series#1] - You know something's wrong when...

2008-01-23T10:21:00.000-08:00

Heres a couple of fun and real stuff that has come my way. All based on personal experience.

You know something's wrong when.. series :)-

You know somethings wrong when.. 14 out of the 23 employees in a company have resigned /dismissed.....within a 5 month period ! [ Employee retention vs Employer Mngt]
You know somethings wring when.. the sale's guy has not converted a single $ in the last 6 months ... and plays hockey with a Sr.Executive Brother [ Productivity vs preferential treatment]
You know somethings wrong when... a 10day change order valued at 10D effort and 10K value suddenly becomes 40D effort valued at 13K. [ Business Cost vs Project Profitability]
You know somethings wrong when... at first glance an application value should be about 150-200K ..but the project billing is actually 400K [Profits vs Billing]
You know somethings wrong when... when the customer yells at you and take's you to court because the software delivered is not functional as per their expectations. [Expectations vs Deliverables]
You know something wrong when.. the Sr.Tech lead wants to please a customer by way of creating a company and completing a project by way of quoting less. [Ego vs Team Play]
You know somethings wrong when ..Sr Tech Lead is promoted to Solutions Manager and still yeilds CRAP (Configurations Rarely Applied by People) !! [ Feature vs Scope]
you know somethings wrong when.. there are no artifacts to a project and you tasked to implement change orders on the software [ Discipline vs project rigor]
You know somethings wrong when... nobody knows the customers staging /UAT zone, including the customer !! [ knowledge vs artifacts]
You know somethings wrong when .. there are 6 managers and 4 developers !! [Resources vs Talent]

yep more follows.. stay tuned !!

5PM application

2008-01-21T15:55:00.001-08:00

Oh I get another app via courtesy of Ian McKenzie from Messy Desk

5PM looks to be a good web enabled online app for the community. Small and medium size folio's should certainly look into this application. However, I don't see any baseline functionlity and I did not delve deep into the reporting function. I'll sign up and try the 14 dy trail. BTW, its completely SaaS'ified and the mothership appears to be GQ software

Eh !! 10user/20 projects/250MB/ $24Month , what does this mean ? 20 projects per month or year or what ? There needs to more upfront details for the community. But it's worth taking time to see what it delivers for ($2.40 / user) :)-

The Interface is sleek and neat, I kinda already like the app, just because the UX appears great !!

A Critical Look At Executive Decision Making

2008-01-21T08:10:00.002-08:00

"What failed and why ? " is a question most PM's ask ourselves, it's part of learning and growing.

Recently I went thru a bad experience , which made me think. So while laying back and in introspection ( yes, I literally had to lie flat on my back - I am suffering from Fibromylgia - a chronic illness where the muscles on the lower back are inflamed/swollen) . I did a lot of thinking and rethinking on the critical node between businesses and projects.

So therefore , I was asking myself- what are the signs of a failed process or a failure node. The reality, is that for many projects, failure is dialed in from the beginning. The greatest challenge that organizations face is not how the project is managed, or who manages it — but simply how the choice is made.

My operating belief in the organization was that by hiring better project managers and establishing better project processes, improved project results were attainable. Arguably, it was a desire for improvement in project performance that led the organization to adopt a new project management framework in the first place, so this objective should not on the face of it seem unreasonable. At the same time, senior management within the organization clearly believed that whatever choices they made regarding the projects that they chose to initiate were fair game — that the decision-making process was separate and distinct from what was required to successfully deliver them. I call this the ultimate dichotomy of business and project decision making.

Possibly the simplest explanation is 'because they can', but that doesn't really speak to the underlying motives that actually leads them to make the decisions they do. They continue to "dial in" project's with lack of awareness on the critical nature of the their decisions and moreover, continually keep doing the same and expecting different results. I call this the ostrich syndrome. (if you stick your head deeper into the ground, the further away the problem seems to be !!). Or maybe is just plain madness- continuing to do the same thing and expecting a different result at each iteration. And yes, just because "because they can" - its also called as "corporate version of frying the ants"

Decisions made at the outset or during a project life cycle can have the impact of effectively handicapping a project and /or short-circuiting the impact of any attempts to apply proper project management.

Through this introspection, I hope to be able to inject some much-need rationality into a process. Many may view as overly irrational (yeah, I am on med's :); and reactionary to bad experiences. Nevertheless, without leadership and proper executive decision making skills, the nodes between businesses and projects will fail to connect and that is irrefutable !!

Learn from project-management blunders

2007-11-07T06:23:00.000-08:00

I like this on the best.. I have seen this foo hit the ceiling :)-

" Don't underestimate people issues"

I had a project that nearly came apart because I underestimated the impact of people issues within the project team. We had quite a few new developers, a few more experienced folks, and several contractors. The existing folks were part of a strong union and had adopted the "work to job description" mantra, whereas the contractors generally did whatever it took to get their deliverables done. This created a lot of tension within the team as the staff members felt the contractors were overstepping their boundaries (and really they were, in order to get stuff done), and the contractors felt they were carrying the "slackers" (and really they were, in some areas). A complete mess. However, none of it was obvious until the tension started to come to the surface. By then, the schedule was compromised and had to be reworked a lot."
Keep a better handle on the personal issues within the team. Ask more questions, more frequently, to get at them."

Via : ZDnet

The Furture of Projects ?

2007-10-20T05:49:00.000-07:00

" SaaS-style application solutions remain niche-focused and otherwise experimental. Nevertheless, we believe that now is the time when enterprise IT departments should begin planning for the growing influence of SaaS in their business practices; establish in-house understanding of the opportunities, challenges and best practices of SaaS; and begin to track the involvement of their technology providers in SaaS-related industry initiatives."

Via :Gartner

Intersections, Innovations and Konvergance

2007-08-29T18:17:00.001-07:00

"For most of us, the best chance to innovate lies at the intersection. Not only do we have a greater chance of finding remarkable idea combinations there, we will find many moreoif them. To be specific, stepping into the intersection does not mean simply combinining two different concepts into a new idea. These type of combinations are part of a directional and interrsectional innovation. Instead, the Intersection represents a place that drastically increases the chances for unusual combinations to occur".

--
Peter Dawson
http://peterdawson.typepad.com
PeterDawson Home of ThoughtFlickr's
"This message is printed on Recycled Electrons."
R : 905 270 2025
C : 416 689 7383
E : slash.pd@gmail.com
Skype: Slash.pd

People vs Process

2007-08-17T09:16:00.001-07:00

"It's about the people...not the processes or tasks. You treat your people right, they'll make sure the project is right."

A nice list of stuff of PM think

Re: 300 interview questions

2007-08-07T17:02:00.001-07:00

oh heres a nice list of questions that a PM will need to answer

My fav's so far..

There was a situation where more than one-way to accomplish the same task. Your onsite tech lead and offshore tech lead has different opinions about doing this and the feelings were very strong. Both are very important to you. How do you react to this ?

MSFT EPM in the magic quardrants

2007-07-03T17:57:00.001-07:00

Microsoft Office Project Positioned in the Leaders Quadrant for the 2007 IT Project and Portfolio Management Applications Magic Quadrant

"Microsoft Corp. , a leading provider of project and portfolio management (PPM) software, today announced it has been positioned by Gartner Inc. in the "Leaders" quadrant in the 2007 IT Project and Portfolio Management Applications Magic Quadrant report. The report evaluates services and products that include the Microsoft(R) Office Enterprise Project Management (EPM) Solution."

Via : CNN

In the Beginning -The Risk meeting

2007-07-03T08:18:00.001-07:00

In the Beginning...

The opening moments of an effective meeting are a very big deal. You have the opportunity to win hearts, change minds, or at least ensure that others are listening in the opening 20 to 30 seconds. This is vital time. This is where participants decide whether or not they will be players in this event. Consider four simple approaches to get things started more effectively:

Open with a promise -- By the time this meeting is over, we will have solved the XXXX problem, one of the great concerns facing our organization today.
Open with something they'll get from the gathering -- When we're done, you're going to have four new tools to work with to overcome the range of risk challenges we face.
Open with a short story -- If you read this morning's paper, you know that wildfires are burning just 40 miles away. We're going to take something away from the lessons those firefighters are teaching.
Open with a challenge -- You have an opportunity over the next 45 minutes to create an indelible mark on the project, but that means I'm going to put you to work for the next 45 minutes....

To ensure that sense of accomplishment, meeting facilitators need to identify the following:

What will be done with the information
What the next steps are for the participants
What they've accomplished
When those actions will be evident

Facilitating meetings is challenging for some of us, as we believe there's just information to be shared and everyone should be willing to share it. That's not as common as it might sound. In many instances, introversion, fear of rejection, or simple impatience drives participants to remain as silent partners in the overall meeting experience. There are ways to drive that out of the risk discussion. The keys are a sense of safety and a sense of value-added.

Via: Cutter

No Task Longer Than 80 Hours and Not Shorter Than 40

2007-06-28T13:41:00.001-07:00

Raven points me to some interest truths of Projects. I actually I prefer tasks that are no longer the 40 hrs and no shorter then 20 hrs.

Kinda 1 work of 1/2 a work week seems ok with me.

"So treat your people right and remember to focus on your soft/interpersonal skills and you'll be more successful as a project manager" - totally agreed Raven !!

death by meetings

2007-06-15T13:56:00.001-07:00

Randy recaps the pain point of org meetings !!

"Most every meeting in every company that I've worked for is scheduled in the hours before or the day before the meeting actually takes place. Quite often, attendees don't show, because they are unaware of the meeting or had previous commitments. This leads to meetings which start one half hour to an hour late, as attendees are rounded up. This means that several people are sitting around for up to an hour with better things to do. Sometimes, key attendees don't show and the meeting turns into a complete waste of everybody's time. All meetings (except emergencies) can easily be scheduled with 2 business days of notice, thus giving all employees adequate time to reschedule and prepare for the meeting. If you improperly organize a meeting where 8 people waste one hour, then you've effectively wasted an entire man-day of work. In other words, had you just stayed home that entire day and not wasted those 8 people's time, then your company would be no worse off."