Project Management in the Dept of Doing

Social Networking, It’s All about Me

2008-09-12T13:03:00.000-07:00

I started a new assignment implementing an internal community site. That got me to thinking about how are communities different from the other information sharing techniques, such as web, SharePoint, etc. A glance at a social networking site reveals a set of features and functions that are not unique or, in some cases, not very impressive. Social networks are a form of knowledge management systems. They are also content management systems. They are also information sharing and collaboration systems. We see email functions, blogs, web pages, tagging (adding Meta data), RSS (Real Simple Syndication), WYSIWYG editors, etc.

These have been around, in some form, for some time. It is not the specific features or combination of features that are unique and different. It is the context and point of view that have made social networking sites popular. With the previous tools (web pages, content management systems, knowledge management systems, file folders, etc) someone set up the hierarchy and structure based on a corporate point of view. This could be an information architect (if you were lucky). More likely, there is no defined structure and naming conventions. Even if this was easy to learn, intuitive, and everyone in the organization could quickly understand and use it, as more information and documents are added becomes a big problem.

Adding a search engine, tagging documents, and storing virtual links (or worst copies) in multiple places are only bandages. The real problem is that people think differently. Memory is experience based. People sort and categorize information by comparing to new experiences to what they already know. Social networking has tapped into that by shifting the context from a document definition or business process view to providing users with tools to add, label, and link content based on their frame of reference, themselves.

People do not think of themselves as lines on an organization chart. Almost all work is cross functional, team based, or project focused. Social networking supports this, starting with the user profile. A number of knowledge management projects in companies tried to capture the information about skills and experience. They had limited success because they started with the corporate view and labels. Then people were told to fit into the predefined slots. The user profile in a social networking system is how you think about you.

The other key to success is providing the tools to allow information to find you instead of you having to track it down. A document and data centric view makes you figure out how things are labeled, where they are stored, and if you have access to the right systems. Using tagging, RSS, and email notification, a social network provides a simple set of tools to enable information to find you. Unlike a web page or a database, where the Meta tags are not readily visible, with social networks, all the tags are visible, along with a ranking of each. That allows a user to see quickly how others categorize the content they are entering and to map those terms to terms they use.

The Need to Create Trust and Understanding in a Virtual Team

2008-05-20T13:00:00.000-07:00

Every experienced Project Manager spends a significant amount of their time on communications. The communications plan (formal or not) includes who needs what types of information and which method to use. Too often, the Project Manager is forced to have too many face to face meetings. Part of that is driven by the fact that most humans obtain clues and information visually. We get clues from their facial expressions, hand gestures, and other behaviors. This information is used to assess how each person fits into the group, how similar are they to me, how competent are they, and can I trust them. The trust building and understanding happen over time. Typically, these meetings and events and not budgeted, added to a schedule, or part of a work breakdown of tasks.

Now we add the complexity of virtual globally dispersed teams. This ratchets up the communications overhead and requires a different set of skills. One significant and not fully understood effect is that people tend to under estimate these tasks. This failure to adjust and to look at it differently, too often, leads to ineffective teams and project failure. Some of the conflicts that negatively impact the virtual team can be grouped under relationships, processes, and tasks.

Relationship is the most obvious one. This covers differences in personality, language, ethnic backgrounds, cultural (including country, region, company, work group, professional, sex, etc). This lack of understanding creates misunderstandings and unmet expectations which show up as schedule and tasks issues. For teams working together over a long period of time, over six months, there are a lot of recommendations covering these. Most require embedding people into the other site for some period of time. This includes team members and the project manager, as well as management.

Processes cover how we will do the tasks or the resources required to do a task. The obvious part of this is the equipment, tools, and programs used. What is not always understood is that the management style, performance metrics, and team assignments will also create conflicts due to a lack of understanding. Even in the same company, there is no assurance that the remote teams have all of the same support, equipment, resources, etc. The culture and organizational differences at the remote sites can create radically different management styles.

Some of this also slips into the tasks category of conflicts. That difference impacts the team members ability to tolerate a different level of risks, be flexible with processes and schedules, and goal measurements and definitions. A failure to understand and explicitly agree on what the goals are, how we measure success, and all of the critical parts associated with the integration of all the tasks will lead to failure.

There is hope. A large number of research projects are focused in this area. We also have collaboration tools and methods that are improving. With Web 2.0, we have social networking tools and sites where we can share more than just documents. We can even have meetings in a virtual world. As we move from data transfer (email) to information sharing (web and phone conferences) and onto more contextually rich methods such as video, avatars, and virtual collaboration spaces, we gain more understanding and can clear away some of the potential project disasters.

Until the tools, technologies, processes, and equipment become easy and available to everyone, the Project Manager will need to step up and add even more time to the tasks of communicating effectively. The Project Manager, the team, and all of the stakeholders need to think about increasing understanding and not just moving data around. Each team member should post a five or ten minute YouTube video showing their work area and something important in their personal life. You can even expand that to include short videos about your current tasks or problem on the project. Drop those into a Wiki on the project, link them to your blog, and comment about it in your FaceBook group. We have to move beyond phones and email.

Technorati tags: project management; Web 2.0;

Project Success, Measuring Outcomes VS Outputs

2008-04-21T15:09:00.000-07:00

Web polls and surveys are still showing a high number of projects defined as a failure. People responding in the recent Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA) poll listed communication as the number one cause of failure. The 2007 study by Dynamic Markets Limited shows that 62% of organizations experience IT projects that failed to meet their schedule, 41% failed to deliver the expected business value and ROI, and 47% had higher-than-expected maintenance costs. The Standish Group reports that 51% of IT projects are defined as “challenged”, where they had cost overruns, time overruns, and not supportable as delivered. They also reported that 31% were cancelled outright. Gartner studies suggest that 75% of all US IT projects are considered to be failures by those responsible for initiating them.

I believe a large chunk of these failures are traceable back to the project initiation and selection process. A number of projects start on the road to failure by not having a direct link to one or more specific business strategies and goals. Even when there is linkage, how you measure success is not always clear or practical. Too often the measurements are defined around outputs, such as schedule, resources, budgets, and artifacts like documentation and lines of code. The strategic goal and the people charged with accomplishing it are interested in the outcome. Simply stated, did the project result enable the company to meet or exceed the strategic goal?

Even those that do try to connect the project with the strategy and do define and track related information, they fall into the trap of focusing solely on the historic financial measurements, such as ROI (Return on Investment) and revenue. These are limited and faulty. First, these are backwards looking and the calculations occur long after the project finishes. Any lessons learned, corrections, or improvements are hard to collect, come too late to help the project succeed, and are too easy to ignore or dismiss in the rush to finish the next project.

While every company wants to make money, directly connecting the initial guest with any revenue is difficult for projects that are not strictly working on a customer deliverable. The projects that focus on improving how the company currently does business or transforming some aspect and creating something new are too removed for a direct and immediate connection with any revenue stream. A large number of companies can not even accurately track the number of hours each person worked on any specific project. To expect a “real time” accounting which enables management and the project manager to accurately track resource and costs, let alone connect those with any future revenue, is beyond almost all companies.

The answer to increasing project success is to select measurements that are forward looking and linked to the strategic goal. One example of a company that has done this well is Southwest Airlines. The airline does not make money if a plane is sitting on the ground. The strategic goal for this is to reduce the turn around time (interval between a plane landing and taking off on the next trip). Another strategic goal is customer satisfaction, since a happy customer is more likely to use them for their next trip. One type of project that supports both of these is improving and speeding up baggage handling. The forward focused metrics for this is turn around time and lost bags. Steps that shorten the time it takes to get the aircraft back into the air and does not increase the number of bags that are missing at the destination is successful. By measuring these during the project life cycle, you have the ability to adjust and correct. You will still have projects that fail, but measuring forward provides a method to detect and correct the failure before it becomes a catastrophe.

Technorati tags: project management; business strategy;

If a Company wants a great Project Manager, why not ask for one?

2008-03-10T13:15:00.000-07:00

I recently read an article on the Project Connections website by Cinda Voegtli, “The Medal-Worthy PMs Executives Are Desperate To Hire”. She used the metaphor of winning a gold medal at the Olympic to talk about the difference between the Good Project Manager and the Great Project Manager. After looking at recent job postings for Project Managers, she talked with company Presidents, Directors and VPs to find out what skills and abilities they valued the most in the Project Managers working for them. The results were not a surprise to me or most Project Managers. She found that most of the ads listed things such as:

Budgeting and data analysis skills

Understanding and experience with related business and development processes

Goal-Oriented, self-directed, needs little direction.

Strong communication and customer service skills.

Excellent documentation skills.

Team player and able to manage others through teamwork.

Excellent written, verbal, and interpersonal communication skills.

Excellent organizational skills and attention to detail.

Excellent time management skills.

Ability to work with tight deadlines in an ever changing environment.

Fast learner with ability to operate effectively in new environments.

While these are important, they are not the skills and abilities that the manager values the most. As she tells us, they want leaders that understand the business drivers.

That got me wondering why the mangers are not asking, screening or interviewing for these. While the basic Project Manager skills provide a baseline, those alone are not enough. In most cases, I think that the hiring manger and the rest of the team have not gotten together and determined what they want the Project Manager to do, or not to do. I have been on and participated in one of these interviews which started with one of these vague ads. Sometime the focus on bookkeeping, meetings, and data collection was due to a lack of understanding about what the Project Manager does (or should do). Sometimes a requirement from nowhere pops up due to a misalignment between the expectations of the interviewer and the manager and the rest of the team. Rarely do these interviews work out.

Where do we go from here? As a hiring manager, make sure you add and ask about the behaviors that you need in your Project Manager. If you are only asking about tools and meetings, then do not be surprised if you get great looking PowerPoint slides that only show what has happened and no recommendations or action plans to fix things. As a person on the interview team, take the time to ask about skills and behaviors that are important to the other interviewers and the hiring manager. As the person interviewing, when I get to ask my question, I always want to know about their expectations for the person in the role. Hiring managers, please take the time to give the candidate an explanation as to why they did not make it. This will help the person applying to improve their search and it will also help the hiring manager to understand if everyone’s expectations are in alignment.

Technorati tags: project management; management;

Attended WebGuild Web 2.0 Conference

2008-02-03T16:03:00.000-08:00

I attended the WebGuild Web 2.0 conference, 29 Feb. They expected around 300 people and were surprised to find 1200 attending. They had two keynote speakers and sessions divided into four track. I found it a mixed experience. The sessions I attended ranged from very informative to useless. A key item missing was any definition or explanation for what is Web 2.0 and what was just an improvement over the typical website and experience.

The opening Keynote was by Gil Penchina, CEO of Wikia. While the WebGuild blog posting called the talk fantastic, I would describe it as interesting. He talked about the background and philosophy of Wikia and Wikipedia. It seemed a bit “canned”. The one interesting piece was their newly launched Wikia Search. It will be worth following this effort to see if crowdsourcing and providing open access to the code and algorithms will create a search engine that can match the money and clever young folks at Google.

The second Keynote was an interview with Craig Newmark, Founder of Craigslist. As usual, Craig was very easy going and low key while still engaging. He was very open about the design and philosophy that drive the folks at Craigslist. It was good to hear someone resist the urge to jump onto the Web 2.0 bandwagon. His brief description of his current role as a customer service representative was amusing and served to emphasis the focus on the customer.

I found Steve Souders, former Chief Performance Yahoo!, and now working on web performance at Google, informative and inspiring. Most of the tips and techniques he talked about are of use to the current web site designers. It was good to hear about studies validating what the user centered design people say about page downloads. Bloated and poorly designed pages download slower and people notice. The Google study showed a loss of 20% of the traffic when the page download time increased by just one half of a second. For them, traffic equals revenue, so download speed does matter.

I attended a panel discussion on “Designing Search Friendly Sites”. The members of the panel were all very informative. There was Paul O'Brien, Marketing Director, Zvents, Lance Loveday, CEO, Closed Loop Marketing, and Charles DiFazio, Software Engineer, Google. Andreas Mueller, CTO, Bloofusion was the moderator. The comments and recommendations covered the common items, such as link backs, content, keywords, and the importance of building a site that the search engine can crawl. A big warning was issued to the designers rushing to create Web 2.0 sites using Ajax, Flash, content that requires a login, images, and multimedia applications. Charles reminded us that if the site was set up so that a blind person can access the information, then a search engine crawler will be about to find it.

The panel discussion on “Designing the Mobile Web” was not as useful for me. The members of the panel were knowledgeable and were working in the area. Julie Ask,
Vice President & Research Director, Jupiter Research moderated and the panel members were: Barbara Ballard, Founder & President, Little Springs Design, Ain Indermitte, Senior Developer Relations Manager, Nokia, and Brad Lassey, Mozilla. The take away was that mobile phones in the US are becoming more functional and that people are using them to access the web. Once again, we are reminded that people need a Smart phone or one of the high end models. As these become more affordable, companies need to plan and develop ways for the phone user to access information. Some of the current web design items, such as cookies, Ajax, and even metrics do not work well when people use the phone to access the web. The work done by Apple with the iPhone, Nokia, and Google’s Android operating system for phones were pointed to as indicators.

It was good to attend. From the topics, especially the sessions I did not attend, it appears most of what could be thought of as Web 2.0 revolved around Social Media oriented work. I believe that Web 2.0 is more than just FaceBook and YouTube. What it turns out to be, only time will tell.

Technorati tags: web design; Web 2.0; web apps; business strategy;

The Future of Web Apps, Panel Discussion at the monthly WebGuild Meeting

2008-01-17T12:14:00.000-08:00

There was an interesting panel discussion last night at the WebGuild monthly meeting. John Rowell (Chief Technology Officer, OpSource), Brad Neuberg (Developer Advocate, Google Gears), Raju Vegesna (Evangelist, Zoho), and Bill Scott (Director of UI Engineering, Netflix) gave their impressions on were we currently are on the web and the trend toward Web Apps. The trend over the last two years has been MashUps, where you build a Web App that uses information and the infrastructure of a larger application. Two common examples are small Web Apps that running inside Facebook and Web Apps that use data from Google Maps.

This trend has been gaining ground under the term Software as a Service (SaaS). OpSource and AdventNet's ZoHo are good examples. OpSource is targeting the developers at both small and large companies. They provide the infrastructure to support the Web App. The companies can now focus their resources on the product and let OpSource worry about servers, storage, security, backups, extensibility, and all the other large, complex issues that come with owning the infrastructure.

Adventnet's ZoHo product line implements both the infrastructure and the Web Apps sitting on it using this separation approach. Using a common infrastructure, web App teams only need to focus on the features and functions of their products. Each product is light weight and the development is customer driven. They only add features and functions when they are requested by the customer. The infrastructure team creates and maintains the support systems. This enables them to roll out new Web Apps and make changes to the existing Web Apps quickly.

Google is a big player in the move to open source tools and applications that make it easier to use the web. Google Gears is an application that enables you to use the data from an on-line service when you are not on-line. Basically it creates a database on the client system used to cache the data from the on-line service. When your system does connect back to the on-line service, the data is automatically synced. While a little different, it proves a developer with a toolkit to create an App that uses the infrastructure of an existing on-line service, such as Google Maps, without being part of that company.

At first, Netflix's interest in this area was puzzling. Their focus is matching movies to customers and enhancing your movie experience. They have a huge database about movies and their customers. Opening that up to outside Web App developers is not the driving factor. With well over seven million subscribers, the infrastructure extensibility and the ability to create and deploy new features are complex problems. Redesigning the system to follow the model of separating the infrastructure from the Web Apps will help them handle the current and future demands. It will also make it easier for them to move into direct distribution.

For the Web App developers and the companies that own both the infrastructure and the Web Apps, this is a great move. As on-line services and applications grow, the infrastructure complexity, cost, and extensibility have become serious issues. This model is not new. For years, the satellite designer had used a common data bus that allowed different components to plug-in and communicate. We are now seeing the concept of the web as a big data bus start to drive the thinking. The issues of costs and monetization are quietly being discussed inside the major on-line service providers. They are creating APIs to allow controlled access to their data and functions. The trend of Web App developers creating products without large and expensive infrastructure investments will continue to grow. At some point, the people spending huge sums of money on the infrastructure will a way to collect payment form those developers. If you have a closed system, like Facebook, that becomes easy. The current movement is toward more open systems and not developing more closed gardens. It will be interesting to see how the usage and payment are tracked and how the costs are allocated.

Technorati tags: web design; software management; web apps; business strategy;

Changing the Metaphor of Work from Machines to Humans

2007-11-16T11:03:00.000-08:00

I heard a great talk by Mark Morgan at the monthly meeting of the Northern California Chapter of the Association of Strategic Planning yesterday. He based his talk on the new book, Executing Your Strategy, by Mark, Dr. Raymond E. Levitt, and William A. Malek. Using the Strategic Execution Framework (SEF) diagram he pointed out the interconnections and dependencies between the different imperatives in a company.

He started by pointing out how we talk about the work that goes on in a company. The terms used in the books, classes, and consulting have their roots in the work by F. W. Taylor back in the 1900s. That was the Industrial Revolution. Company management process was put stuff into the machine, make the machine more effective and efficient, and sell the stuff coming out cheaper than the other company does. The major component of work today, especially in the United States, is people.

We can find a number of people that specialize in one or two of the different functional bubbles on the SEF diagram. They have studied, consulted, and written about their functional bubble. Where management at companies gets into trouble is that this is a dynamic continuous system, not a set of hierarchical points. The arrows connecting the bubbles on the SEF diagram, especially across what Mark refers to as the six imperatives, Ideation, Nature, Vision, Engagement, Synthesis, and Transition, often are overlooked. As any experienced software programmer will tell you, the interfaces are the critical problem areas.

The driving force behind activities in companies today, even manufacturing companies, are interactions between people, more than between machines. To succeed, all of the bubble functions have to be in alignment. Communications and actions have to work together. This view of the company as a system is what resonated with me. It is critical for everyone to look at the entire system, the ecosphere, inside the company and the alignment of each of the parts. Looking back, I can see that this was what drew me to get an MS in Systems Management, and to being a Project/Program Manager.

It also explains some of the problems I have encountered on engagements to create systems to move strategy through portfolio, programs, and into projects. Optimizing only one area will not improve the implementation of the strategy. If we do not align all of the parts, we will not move forward.

Technorati tags: project management; program management; management; business strategy;

Brand You World -2007 Teleseminars

2007-11-09T13:32:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, in celebration of the 10th anniversary of Tom Peters’ thought provoking article on personal branding published in Fast Company, leading personal branding strategists held a unique event lasting 12 hours A Brand You World - Global TeleSummit . These talks were aimed at three different audiences: career professionals, HR professionals and business leaders, and for the business owners and solopreneurs.

For career professionals they provided advise on how to apply personal branding strategies to support their career success. For HR professionals and business leaders they talked about how to discover, attract, develop and retain talent. For the business owners and solopreneurs they provided tips on how to apply personal branding strategies to grow their business.

Jason Alba, founder of Jibber Jobber talked about using personal branding to improve your job search. His advice about blogging frequently, connecting with other bloggers around your areas of interest, and using your blog to prove information to back up your claims is valuable for everyone. I also found the talk by Phil Gerbyshak, The Relationship Geek on creating a personal branding strategy both entertaining and informative.

With two phone lines over the 12 hours, they provided twenty four different talks. They plan to have links to podcast versions of the talks. I am looking forward to using the information and going back to catch some of the calls I missed.

Technorati tags: management; branding;

Choosing Empowerment Instead of Control

2007-10-29T10:17:00.000-07:00

A recent bad experience prompted me to reread Peter Block’s “The Empowered Manager”. While the stated audience for the book is the middle manger and the manger at the top of an organization, the advice and insight is very valuable for Project Managers and the people that work on our projects.

The focus of the book is for us to move away from bureaucratic organizations that value control, dependency and use fear. We need to value autonomy, service and contribution to our customers and the company, and create energized employees. This movement is actually easier for Project Mangers than for some functional mangers.

Most Project Managers work in a matrix organization where they do not have the control and ability to create fear in the people on the project. By the nature of the job, ownership of tasks, responsibility for the work, and accomplishing the goals reside with each of the team members. Energizing the people on the team to step up and accept this is critical for success.

To do this, we have to communicate our expectations. As Stewart Levine advises in his book, “Getting to Resolution”, both sides need to document and discuss these expectations. For the Project Manager, this means working with all the key stakeholders, including people on the team, to make sure all of the expectations are explicit instead of hidden.

As a Project Management consultant, this is critical. Both you and the hiring manager need to document and agree on the deliverables. Overtime you update the agreement as things change. This is a simple word document and not a heavy legal contract. Pulling this out periodically helps to keep both of you coordinated and ensures that the goals stay aligned.

As I rediscovered, it is also a very critical first step when you are a direct employee. This becomes even more critical when your boss is thousands of miles and several time zones away. As a Project Manager that has lead several teams with globally disbursed members, I know the value of communication. Being on the other end of the relationship, I discovered that I was not able to drive, influence, or create a communications path. As the saying goes, the tail cannot wag the dog.

Technorati tags: project management; program management; management;

Remember, Quality is the Hidden Fourth Constraint

2007-09-12T13:07:00.000-07:00

Every project manager has the three constraints drummed into them: time, budget, and resources. Experienced project managers understand that there is a forth part to the equation, quality. Everyone on the project has to know and agree on the minimum level of quality. The customer is the one that decides if the project is done, if they are satisfied with the results, and if the results are of usage. They will have some definition in their heads and unstated expectation of the quality of the deliverables which will change as the project progresses.

It is vital that the project manager work with the customer to get this definition stated in a clear and measurable way. That definition will impact the other three metric. The project manager and customer have to reach an agreement and an understanding on how this measurement relates to the other three. With this in hand, the project manager can make intelligent trade-offs and provide status reporting to the customer.
Everyone on the team also needs to understand the minimum level of quality and how that impacts their actions and deliverables. Any time that this is threaten, begins to impact the other three, or is impacted by the other three, this needs to be made visible to everyone. We are use to asking how each decision impacts time, costs, and resources. Everyone needs to also ask how the decision impacts quality.

Too many times the drivers on the project are to do it fast and cheap. That has resulted in large numbers of projects that fail or fail to satisfy the user. Budgets escalate and delivery dates stretch out as we get caught in the cycle of test, reject, and rework. The unfortunate fact for the project manager is that the same people that forced them down the road of fast and cheap will be the first to throw stones at them for missing deadlines, overrunning the budget and delivering something that is unusable.

Technorati tags: project management; program management;quality;

All Project Managers should be part of the Department Of Doing

2007-05-18T09:52:00.000-07:00

I was reading a blog and found out about a New Zealand company called the Department of Doing. The founding partners created a Directives of Doing forming their code of conduct. Richard Hollingum set up the company because he saw that the world was full of ideas. Unfortunately, a large number of ideas do not happen, they became compromised or they do not turn out as planned. His company focuses on making them happen and generating ideas that will happen.

Many times people only define the Project Manager role around budgets, schedules and resources. While they are important, it is more important that the project deliver a usable solution aligned with the business need. When a project tends to stray from one of these measurements (admit it, they all will), instead of blindly stuffing it back onto the track, we need to use that as an opportunity to step back and take another look. This is the chance to pull the two hidden components, quality and usability, out into the light. Instead of blindly pushing to get back on schedule, on budget, or get more resources, let us ask if we are still on track to deliver a usable solution at the right level of quality.

In Jeff Pfeffer and Robert Sutton’s 1998 book, The Knowing-Doing Gap: How Smart Companies Turn Knowledge Into Action, they pointed out that organizations and people can know the right thing to do but do not take the right actions to make it happen. Too many times talking about the problem or solutions are a substitute for taking right action. As a Project Manager, we see these at Lesson Learned meeting, status meetings, and project reviews.

As the Project Manager, everyone looks to us to “get it done”. Leading cross functional teams in a matrix environment, we must be vigilant. We need to make sure we are translating the ideas into a usable solution at the right level of quality. We must weed out and eradicate the tendency to substitute talk for action. At the end of the day, being able to say you were on time, within budget and did not need more resources does not win points if the deliverables do not match a strategic business need and are not usable.

Technorati tags: project management; program management;

Aligning Strategic Business Goals with Project Goals

2007-01-12T19:47:00.000-08:00

I have been busy with a new gig creating a Project Management structure using Intuit's Quickbase web service. The project request form is set up as a set of gates that require more work and more information as the project moves through the process. This has helped the company to have a common process for projects, to track projects as they move through the approval process, and to track approved and active projects.

The tool allows you to easily create and modify the form, apply rules to the fields, and control access. We have the ability to store things on the Intuit server or to link to documents in our SharePoint within the firewall. I also set it up to limit edit permission for some fields based on the person's role. Over the five months that we have been using it, it has proven flexible enough to allow changing the entire form layout, adding the off shore development team and their managers, and shifting the information as we change the process flow.

There were a number of things driving the company to set this up and use it. The major reason was the failure to get projects done on time. As is the case in most growing companies, resource assignment and usage was not visible to management. With a number of business development people getting new customers the delivery dates overlapped and created too many urgent projects. These were starting to displace the important projects, and the negative impacts on the Engineering resources were not visible.

Creating the structure and process flow was the easy part. Changing behavior so that the tool is used, people enter the right information in a timely manner, and management shifts from wanting to do everything to limiting the work to what can get done at the right level of quality is the current challenge. Currently we are working through the issues around ranking and comparing marketing (Return on Investment (ROI) focused) projects, with Engineering (process improvement and quality focused) projects, and maintenance (adding and improving data, and implementing fixes focused) projects. All of these are important. The key is balancing all of these as we move forward.

Technorati tags: project management; program management; Intuit Quickbase;

Processes, Projects, and Programs - OH My!

2006-06-24T18:38:00.000-07:00

There can be confusion over the differences between an operational process, a project, and a program. In some cases this confusion is on purpose. As a Project Management consultant, I was brought in to help manage the work on one or more projects. As I dug into it, I found that some of the work was not really a project. Projects have a start, an end, deliverables, and are created to handle a specific business need. Projects can have multiple phases, projects can be used to improve and expand, and they can transition into a deployed using an operational process.

Handling multiple projects can lead to the work creeping upward into the area of Program Management. This is where the view shifts from getting the work on a project done to looking at the business strategy and how all the projects fit. The focus shifts into prioritization between projects, resource allocation on a larger scale, risk management that focuses on the impacts to the business, and the processes around starting, tracking, reporting, killing, and completing projects.

An operational process is an on-going set of tasks and most are focused on the day to day work supporting the organization. Work targeted at improving these fall into the continuous process improvement area. Because a project can be used to implement a significant change to one of these processes, there can be confusion. Some of that confusion contributes to the resistance to killing a project. It also is a factor in the reluctance to declare a project finished. This desire to call everything a project is especially strong if the business groups know that a process is not working well but do not know how to fix it. A transition from a project that is going well into a poorly run process is another reason that the business would want the project to continue.

The skill sets and expertise that makes you good at each of these is a little different. It is not difficult for the same person to be good at all three. The critical thing is to know when the work has shifted from one to another. On a recent consulting assignment, I set up the Program Management structure, creating forms, processes, and presentation formats. This provided a standardized method to request to start a project, track and report on-going projects, and prioritize the projects. On some of the projects, I was also the Project Manager, working to collect requirements, define and assign tasks, determine deliverables, etc.

I had set up and improved operational processes before, so I knew I had the expertise. But I was brought in as the Project Manager. I resisted attempts to get me to take over someone else’s area and fix the operational processes, too. I had continuous discussions explaining how a project and process are different. There were some attempts to disguise a broken process as a project. After some work and digging, I would unmask these impostors.

Setting up the program and project parts are important and a significant amount of work. The reality is that most, if not all, projects end up sitting on top of operational processes. The project initiation form collected the assumptions, constraints, and the fact that changing the processes were out of scope. The risk management documented these processes as risks items. None of that saved us. Projects became derailed, delayed, and negatively impacted because they were sitting on top of a bad process.

Next time, I will get into the mud and help shore up the process foundation. This will not be glamorous. It will also require skillfully navigating between two sharp and jagged rocks. One side is educating management that processes need repair. The other is avoiding having the people working on those processes see my work as a threat.

Technorati tags: project management; software;program management;

Bamboo and Project Management

2006-03-24T20:01:00.000-08:00

No, this is not about some Project Management software from China. This is about using a flexible, light weight structure to support the Project Management efforts. There is a large amount of confusing about Project Management. My approach has been to use it to apply structure and form. While traveling through Asia, I saw people using bamboo as scaffolding for construction work on buildings. Most people see Project Management structure modeled on traditional Western scaffolding, heavy, strong, durable, and complex. My approach has been more aligned with the properties of bamboo, light weight, flexible, and simple to use. That is not to say that it is flimsy or fragile. As with the bamboo scaffold, your Project Management structure gains strength by adding more where you need it.

Ok, it is a great metaphor, but how do we turn that into action? The obvious but often overlooked starting point is to keep it simple. People, especially senior mangers, need to see the message with minimal explanation. While a number have are familiar with Gantt charts and other views from project software, it is not the right answer for everyone. So, I start with a pretty picture on a MS PowerPoint slide. The picture should show everyone, at-a-glance, what projects are underway, top level time based depiction of each phase in each project, and a simple stoplight color scheme to illustrate the project status. Based on that one slide, we have a great deal of information to talk about resources, risks, project portfolio management, and candidates for extra resources or termination.

Of course, a large amount of detail and data needs to be collected and analyzed to create that simple picture. I do not think that this task should mandate using any specific tool. Instead, you should be free to use or not to use any tool or software that makes collecting and updating the information easy. I have worked at places where they had a full time person whose job was to update a MS Project schedule each day. Projects that have short durations or are in a high state of change need a more light weight and flexible approach.

I found that giving the tasks owners a simple template in MS Word or MS Excel provides enough structure and easily gets me the information I need. But there is one hole in this system that still needs to be plugged, tracking resources for each task. If you are careful, you can use MS Project to map it out. And this can serve as the building block when you need to show an “official” project Gantt chart.

Keeping the Project Management structure flexible and light weight, like bamboo, provides the tools to support the work without diverting a large amount of work into changing the scaffolding when the project changes. This approach is even more useful when you are introducing Project Management into an organization.

Technorati tags: project management; software;

Software Project Management – shifting from a directed to a collaborative model

2006-01-31T13:29:00.000-08:00

When software development started, they used the existing project management techniques. Those tools and techniques worked well for people constructing buildings, but they did not provide good tools for managing software projects. Using the standard water fall method, each step was completed, leading in a straight line to project completion. I know that this is a simple view. Some of the steps had overlaps so that the proceeding step could start before you finished the previous step. But, in general, the assumption was that all the requirements could be started at the beginning and that they changed slowly. People had thousands of years of experience interacting with and creating buildings. Not only is software a relatively new area, it is rapidly changing.

Dr. Barry Boehm published a new approach, the Spiral Software Development model, in 1988. This was a way to address the IKIWISI syndrome ("I can't tell you, but I'll know it when I see it”). In recent years, a number of new techniques have been created to address the problem of the customer not being able to give you all the requirements since they do not know all the requirements at the start of the project. Most of the techniques try to address this problem by developing what you know as fast as you can, so that you can present it to the customer. As the customer sees more of the software “functioning”, they can do a better job of clarifying the requirements. This happened in the earlier methods but was seen as “scope creep”. Due to this new information and requirements appearing late in the development, it was very costly to add the changes. That created an elaborate change management system which tried to reduce the number of changes.

The biggest change that has occurred from using the new methods is that the relationship between the project team and the customer has shifted. Instead of the project team being directed by the customer, we have shifted to a collaboration model where the project team and the customer work together. This is an important and critical change if we want to develop complex software projects that will be usable and support the business goals. The software project manager’s work shifted from coloring in triangles on a chart and driving work to fit to the plan, to that of a navigator.

As the project navigator, the job is to scan the horizon for changes, work with the customer to determine if the change impacts their goals, and then using that information to keep the project team on course. Continuous collaboration is now the key skill of the software project manager. The shift in the role of the customer means that they need to be more involved and need to work with the development team to surface decision points, eliminate undocumented programmer assumptions, and understand the trade-offs.

The current methodologies and techniques all work well in specific situations. Selecting the one best one will depend on the business culture and processes, the training and flexibility of the team members, and whether the requirements will change over the course of development. No matter which one you use, the software project manager has to keep the customer engaged and involved.

Technorati tags: project management; software;

Poor designers choose to user the Mailto function

2005-12-13T15:05:00.000-08:00

I was designing websites when the Mailto: option started appearing. For the people that were doing simple sites, it provided a way to let the user send mail. Unfortunately the spammers started using web crawlers to search for Email addresses. Today, web designers that continue to use this are either (1) forced to do it by their client (2) can only use simple drag and drop tools (3) are either clueless or lazy. Creating a form and processing the request on the server is both safer and allows you to send the information to many different addresses. It also has the advantage of hiding the Email address from the spammers. There is no excuse for continuing to use a Mailto:. You can easily get a copy of a number of form processing programs that can be easily modified to fit you needs. When I pointed out to one IT manage that using this option increased the amount of spam, he replied that they used an email filtering program. He was not bothered by the fact that he had to use an expensive solution, which requires continuous updates, to solve a simple and easy problem. I believe in using a good design, not wrapping a bad design with more software.

Technorati tags: Web Design; security; internet

“Email a Friend” especially a Spammer

2005-12-06T14:28:00.000-08:00

After reputable companies became concerned about privacy, they started to add a privacy policy to their websites and to switch to an “opt in” process for marketing email. That meant that the marketing folks could only send you an email if you gave them permission. Some clever marketing folks developed the “Email a Friend” function to get around this annoyance.

The function has several names but they all work in a similar manner. Selecting this feature, you are presented with three input boxes. You are asked to put your email address, the email address of your friend and some clever words to send to the friend. The function creates an email from you to your friend, adds some marketing message about how great the product/site/service/etc is on this page, and adds your comment. Since the email appears to be from you, then the marketing folks can weasel around the privacy issue.

Of course this is ripe for abuse and with a few lines of code can be turned into a great non-traceable spambot or even used to flood an email and perhaps create a denial of service. If the clever spammer puts an email address from an employee of the company, it adds even more fun. Since the company email server sent it out, it becomes hard to claim that someone else sent it. In addition to flooding an email box, a truly angry spammer can also add some very abusive and profane comments in the little text box.

Should this little tool cause an email server to clog and possible to shut down, then the target may call in the lawyers. While you may be able to claim that the person in the “from” line did not send out the email, you are still responsible for the misuse. If you want to appear as a leading edge technology company or want to sell technology services to other companies, the bad press alone will cause a large chunk of revenue.

In a company I worked at, we had one of these popup on a website. When confronted with the potential danger, the marketing person’s response was that very few people use it and no one has abused it yet. Some how leaving a loaded gun on the street and claiming that it was Ok since no one was shot yet seemed a bit weak. After a chat with our legal folks, a quick directive landed on the desk of that marketing person’s top management ordering that it get removed immediately.

Somehow adding a function to one company website that is reckless and dangerous, has no measurable benefits, and is rarely used by the customers does not strike me as a good idea.

Technorati tags: Web Design; security; internet