Saturday, June 30, 2007

What should project managers do when it comes to planning?

What should project managers do when it comes to planning? There are tones they can do to avoid wasting people’s time and bore them to death by putting fungible names on a list while playing with fake numbers.

I think there's a better way (this tool has steps), one that gets everybody just about everything they need, project managers, bosses, programmers etc. Here goes:

Step one: download Jeff Patton’s (from Thoughtworks) wonderful article on “It is all in how you slice”. You should print the article on a colored paper (forget the lousy cost savings policy – it costs more not to have it in color). Read it carefully.

Next step: Print more copies for people who might be interested or benefit from this tool.

Next step: follow the steps in the article for one of your projects. See if your team or customers will benefit from this process/tool.

Next step: visualize your exploration. Something 1 foot by 2 foot or so. Printed on cardboard. You can transfer the findings onto a spreadsheet or just take a picture and communicate.

Last step: Make this a habit and invite your best customers to help in your planning. Look into yours and other people energy level and compare it to the way planning was done before.

Send me a testimonial comment if this helps.

Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Four walls to trigger positive behavior toward having a balanced life



Remember there are four walls in your room. They are for Education, health, Art and friendship. I have drawn a simple picture of walls for my kids and every night they put dots on walls each time there is a success for a specific activity.

Today I looked at my own walls and it looks like this picture. I am not doing well when it comes to Art. To score on that, my daughter decided to teach me how to draw picture of Nemo the fish. I am very excited about getting points on the Art and friendship both. It is amazing how a simple tool can have a long lasting effect on your behavior.

Wednesday, June 20, 2007

It Is Up Side Down

Why people who don’t know anything about projects and work impose policies, deadlines and reward on those who perform the work? The mind set is that people are prisoners (of promotion, reward, title, etc) and they should follow orders. The wrongest thing is when they judge an employee and reward an individual or stop their work. I always give a score of 0 to managers who reward an individual publicly instead of acknowledging teams. I often wonder how they treat their own kids. There is a big difference when you say “you are a great kid” vs. “I liked the way you helped your sister today”. The first one is Jugging on the personal level while the second feedback is very useful and sticky.

Here is a great Video illustrates how these kind of small-minded people act as if they somehow deserve to judge far more talented people than themselves.

Thursday, June 14, 2007

Boring

Sometimes while driving I see a person holding an advertisement sign. The person behind the sign does nothing all day but waving a sign. If you pay attention around you at work, you see some people having the similar sings up all the time.
Why not make these people helpful? Perhaps we should ask them questions. How is the traffic? Where can I find a nice restaurant? Where is the closest bank? Can we skip boring people with administrivia at staff meetings? Perhaps an engaging experience can help to reduce stress and make this world a better place.

Friday, June 08, 2007

Simple way of gathering metrics

Despite of huge investment in tracking tool still process oriented mangers struggle with gathering meaningful metrics. According to Tom Demarco a useful metric should have the following qualities:
1. It must be a consistent indicator of the cost factors to be projected
2. It must be available early enough to satisfy reasonable political constraints imposed on the estimating process

A very simple and low cost way of gathering useful metrics is suggested by Esther Derby which you draw a picture of all the modules and each time there is a production problem put a color coded dot on the module – red for a crash, yellow for an issue with a workaround and blue for a data problem. You will see quickly the most error-prone modules, and gradually you can tackle those problems one by one.

Wednesday, June 06, 2007

Turtle

Adding requirements for security, data shield and audit purposes come with a cost of slowness. Look at the nature – animals with shells (security) are far slower than others.