A FEW THOUGHTS

Archive for the ‘Read and Learn’ Category

This morning I read a post by Sacha Chua where she summarizes a  presentation she gave at a webinar for Women in Technology International. Sacha Chua is a great blogger, social networker and, in her own opinion, an introvert. She really made a good start for my day with her seven lessons in being an introvert and how to improve how you connect to others, changing your own perspective to the better and to grow with the challenge. These are good pointers for both self-appointed introverts but also for everyone else that might not fit 100% in the “extrovert” category; meaning you are not comfortable walking up to any stranger to start a conversation. So… recommended reading!

How do you raise performance in your team? How do you raise performance in a project ? How do you increase team spirit? How do you preach the true core values to your co-workers? All different aspects of the same thing, and covered in Guy Kawasakis post  How to Change a Job Title Into a Mission commenting Steve Gary Blanks book The Four Steps to the Epiphany.  The statement is that, for your company or department, to focus on its mission rather than the employees titles you may be able to raise  performance. And I think this is very true!

Having the department and its workers to identify the mission they are on, its intent and the value of the mission you will raise the awareness and the drive for your employees. Installing core values and a sense of crusade you will raise the willingness to contribute. This is something you as a leader and manager should not underestimate, and if you don’t abuse it you can achieve a lot. Here’s what he recommends:

1. Develop a mission for each department. This should summarize “why people come to work, what they need to do, and how they will know they succeeded.” The SuperMac marketing department’s mission became “Help Sales deliver $25 million in sales with a 45% gross margin.”
2. Teach the mission intent. A specific mission such as this is bound to change according to market conditions and product development schedules. Thus, employees must understand that the mission intent—achieve corporate revenue and profit goals—is the “big picture” and even more important.
3. Instill core values. The final step that Steve took was to instill core values of “accountability, execution, honestly, and integrity.” In other words, there would be no surprises and excuses. He only wanted facts and requests for help.

Going through some of the “lessons learned reports” from previous projects I’ve come up with a list of my 11 main lessons from running IT implementation projects. There will certainly be more along the way but these are very important I think;

1. Get involved from the Start
   To take over a project from someone else, or to get involved as PM when the project is already on it’s way is something you need to be aware of. When your company or customer alreay have signed agreements with third parties that will affect your project deliverables you need to go through it and as soon as possible raise a warning if needed. To have the IT department or provider with its PM involved at the earliest stage is important. Maybe just as a consultant just to oversee contracts, but nevertheless important. Both, if the project is run as a delivery within the organisation or as a delivery to an external customer someone from the IT-management or Project Management should before project initiation do an initial validation of the project scope together with a risk assessment and analysis. If possible the customer should be a part of this even if they have done their own assessment.

 

2. Make sure the customer can ask the right questions
   Either if you are confronting a customer in the project, a part of the organisation internally or a partner of some sort it is important that the stakeholders have the right competence to ask the right questions for your type of project. If they don’t it is your job as project manager to alert them or bring it up as an issue for the steering committee.

 

3. Make sure you have your backoffice support available
   If you are doing implementations that are scheduled for a certain period of time to avoid downtime for the users etc, make sure that you have the necessary support teams available during that time – and within the same time zone. It is nothing worse than being stuck with a problem somewhere in “NeverNeverLand” on a Saturday evening during migration-weekend with nobody to ask. So get support-teams, backoffice-teams and make sure you have ways of escalating if necessary.

 

4. Do not assume everything is as usual
   This part has sub-paragraphs actually:
   1. After, for example, a migration-weekend – do not go into the trap of thinking everything will work. It will not! Something has not been tested thoroughly enough and somebody will complain! It’s just the name of the game. Most of it will hopefully work if you and everyone else has done your job right, but there is always something.
   2. For an organisation going through change or a massive project changing routines etc, it is directly ignorant to assume a “business as usual” attitude through the project. Instead steps should be taken making sure you have a chain of command through the project phases and that resources are kept available. In project oriented organisations one should be aware that a change of organisation affects responsibilities and people taking responsibility.

 

5. Do not underestimate the benefits of a steering committee!
   Large projects should automatically have a steering committee. Smaller projects is often left out in the cold.
   Do not underestimate the benefit of a good steering committee where you have representatives from the different stakeholders, customer and project management. If you run into problems, the right committee can move mountains.

 

6. Theory and practice are two very different things!
   Having a good design is not enough. You have to make it work. That is also affected by lesson no 9, having the right people, but first of all you need quality assurance. Before starting anything – go over the design with as many as possible. Not every Tom, Dick, and Harry – but people that know this area. Get the providers to look at the design and make comments too. Better to find flaws before starting than after.

 

7. Every design has an expiration date
   Do not think something that was designed a year ago will work today without going over it for quality inspection again.

 

8. Every OSI layer counts
   Make sure you do not forget any of the OSI layers when designing,  implementing or troubleshooting. It is all connected, no matter what the tech-guys tell you!

 

9. Make sure you have people who know what they are doing
   You need to both make sure you have people onboard the project that know what they are doing, and that the organisation have employees that can operate this in an operation phase. Hired consultants do not count in this matter. The organisation need to have its competence inhouse if they are to operate it themselves.

 

10. Trust yourself, your instincts and be fair.

 

11.  Take learning from this:

Technical Project Meetings, like any meetings I suppose, have a tendency of sometimes getting out of hand both in sense of time and agenda. This can be reduced by some simple tips on how you prepare and how you carry out the meeting. There are also som pitfalls you should be aware of. Let’s start with a few rules on planning and carrying out the meeting:

1. Set Crispy Clear Objectives
   Ever experienced the meeting that took half the day and where you achieved nothing? Yes? Chances are that one of the issues were lack of clear objectives for the meeting. Before calling any meeting, make sure that you have clear objectives that follows the idea of S.M.A.R.T. (S = Specific, M = Measurable, A = Attainable, R = Realistic, T = Timely).
2. Set an Agenda
   Meetings without a clear agenda will take longer than they need to and don’t get the results you need to. Write and distribute the agenda in advance, at least 1 or 2 days before the meeting, not 30 minutes before the scheduled time. Give timings for each item and allow for small delays, otherwise you will get halfway down your agenda by the time you have to leave.
3.  Keep meeting papers short or avoid them
   Receiving a ton of papers is the biggest turn-off for someone attending a project meeting. Consider whether you really need to distribute papers for your meeting, and try to keep papers to a maximum of one page. For status reports, consider giving people a template that include a simple traffic light system to indicate where things are good(green), there are issues (yellow) there are major issues (red).
4. Get the right people in the meeting
   While there usually is a core team you need in the meeting, there might be decisions that require someone more senior occasionally. If you know this, make sure that you get the person who can make the decision along otherwise you will have a frustrated team on your hands. If difficult, try to schedule that persons part of the agenda to the end of the meeting and limit the time.
5. Make sure the environment is comfortable
   Effective meetings only take place if the people attending are comfortable, so get the room with A/C and provide cold water and hot coffee if needed.
6. Start and Finish on time
   I know you hate it when people turn up 15 minutes late when there is 15 minutes left. Make sure it is clear to everyone that you will be starting and finishing on time. Encourage them to leave 30 minutes either side of the meeting free to ensure they can get there on time and that if something major arises it can be dealt with. If that doesn’t work you will have to schedule it in for them.

Now, with those six rules you should be quite well prepared for your meeting and it should be ok. However, as you know, there are always some people who can sink a meeting totally just by being themselves. So there are a couple of stereotypes you should know how to deal with. I am quite sure you recognise them:

• The Dominator
  Some people tend to dominate discussion simply because they are excited. These can actually be useful to the team if we find appropriate approaches manage their positive energy. Unfortunately, most of us are also familiar with the other type – the aggressive bully that disrespect others comments and hijack the meeting completely. Sometimes these dominators are overly negative, and other times they just won’t let anyone else get a word in. In either case, you need to deal with it:
  • Thank them for their feedback and ask for other opinions (“Paul, that’s an interesting idea. Let’s see if others have ideas as well.”)
  • Repeat the dominator’s comment and write it visibly for all to see, then ask for other ideas to complete the list, before you discuss them all. You can say; ”that is a good idea, let us get three more ideas on the table before we discuss them all”. 
  • Suggest you use a round robin technique of going around the table and ask each person to share a comment and start off with the other participants, or ask everybody to use a minute to write down their ideas and then have everybody read it out loud while you write it all down. Then discuss.
  • Make sure you also ask the more quiet people to share their ideas
  • If necessary, take a break and have a word with the dominator where you explain that he/she brought up several key points and you appreciate that because it helps the others on the way, and now you are hoping to get some of the other team members involved in the discussion. Ask them to help you get the team involved.

•  The Multi Tasker
  We are seeing more and more multi taskers in our meetings. You know the ones whose attention constantly darts between the meeting and for example PDA, laptop, reading etc. And usually with the explanation that he can not be away from his work. Otherwise the world falls apart.
  • Using a “drop box” in the meeting room and agreeing to place all phones, etc there prior to meeting start.
  • Limiting meeting time to one hour to ensure participants aren’t away for too long.
  • If you arrange a full day workshop, agree on 5-10 minute technology breaks every hour
  • Use techniques to keep participants engaged (round robin, team work, voting)

• The Rambler
  The rambler derail the meetings with their extensive rambling commentary. Often the rambling goes into areas with little or nothing to do with the agenda, and not only extend the meeting,but also completely alters the agenda – and thereby minimising effectiveness. A couple of pointers:
  • Have a printed agenda on a whiteboard. When conversation goes into wilderness, point to the specific agenda topic to refocus the group.
  • Include timings for each part of the agenda, and ask someone on the team to give a 5-minute warning before the end time for each section.
  • Simply interrupt. Remember, it’s your meeting. Raise your hand and interrupt discussion to ask if the conversation is on topic and helping the group reach their goal for the meeting. You can also introduce a list of these unresolved issues that come up which you address at the end of the meeting and assign action items for each.

At the end of the day, running effective meetings is about planning and executing. And in regard to the team members; too often project managers simply ignore their “personality issues” and instead stick their head in the sand hoping the behaviour will improve on its own. It won’t! The good news is that there are a variety of facilitation techniques you can use, and they enable us to be assertive while preserving those critical relationships. Remember these key points when using the techniques:

• Don’t forget the power of questions. Questioning is a powerful way to deliver a difficult message.
• Try less assertive techniques before progressing to more assertive ones. Many will respond to very mild interventions.
• Act early! You want to send a very clear signal to the team that you will address counter-productive behaviour quickly.
• Act on behalf of the team. The more you remember it’s not a situation of “you” verses “them”, the easier the exchange will be.

I’ll finish this brief lesson off with a quote form the book of Tim Ferriss; “The 4-Hour Workweek”;

It is your job to train those around you to be effective and efficent. No one else will do it for you.

As one of the steps of altering the way I work to be more efficent and productive I have tested the service RescueTime. Basically it is an online service where you will find a dashboard presenting the data from your computer through an agent you download to your computer (Windows, Linux or Mac). The agent gathers data from your computer on what programs you are using, what websites you are visiting and by use of categories (that you can modify) identify how productive or how much work you get done. These data are shown in a great sample of graphs and charts making it real easy to see what pitfalls you easily go into during your day. It also provides a search-function where you can do a search on a single website or program to see how much time you have used on it for a period of time.

The service comes in versions for both individuals, business or schools. For business and schools there is a variety of options you can look deeper into, and it can of course be used for management information as well. For individuals you can choose between a free lite version and a pro version for $5 per month. I tested the free lite version but the pro version will give you deeper tracking, options to block webpages, alerts etc. When starting I recommend that you after a couple of days use go through the categories and tweak the different websites and programs to your use, so it will give you more precise output. The “downside” to this is of course that when using this it is really just all up to you to change your bad habits…

Here is some interesting info for all geeks, and also non-geeks really. Kevin Rose just published an interview with Dr. Andrew Weil, author as well as founder/director of Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine at University of Arizona. The interview includes a lot of good questions and interesting answers on everyday health topics such soda drinking, use of multi-vitamins, coffee, tea, anti-oxidants, Omega3, krill, detoxing vs. more natural ways, soy food, exercise and diets. The interview was really good and informative. Absolutely recommended watching! I also recommend having a look at his website which holds tons of info. Thanks Kevin for your good work!

Guy Kawasaki, co-founder of Alltop.com, has some great material which I follow closely. In one of his latest posts he presents a list from the latest book of Bruna Martinuzzi, an expert in leadership and presentation skills; The Leader as a Mensch: Become the Kind of Person Others Want to Follow . The list is the New Years resolution on How to Become the Kind of Person Others Want to Follow. This is really good stuff. Recommended reading !

1. Give people gifts other than those that you buy. This means giving someone a second chance, giving someone the benefit of the doubt, and giving others a reason to want to work for you besides earning a living. It entails giving others latitude, permission to make mistakes, and all the information they need to do the job. It means giving them the authority that goes with that responsibility and giving them due credit for their ideas.
2. Become a talent hunter. The biggest hunger in anyone’s eyes is the hunger for appreciation. Genuinely acknowledging others is high octane fuel for the soul.
3. Sharing ideas and information that can enrich. To that end, derive inspiration from Charles Leadbeater’s words: “In the past, you were what you owned. Now you are what you share.”
4. Spend more time in the “beginner’s mind.” This means replacing “Been there, done that” with “Tell me more.” It translates into moving away from pushing into allowing, from insecure to secure, and from seeking approval to seeking enlightenment. It’s forgetting about being perfect and enjoying being in the moment.
5. Don’t tell people what they can’t do. Instead, show them what they can do. If some of your habitual phrases are “Let me explain why that won’t work” or “Let me play Devil’s Advocate for a minute,” read Tom Kelley’s book The Ten Faces of Innovation: Ideo’s Strategies for Beating the Devil’s Advocate & Driving Creativity Throughout Your Organization.
6. Minimize the space you take up. When you enter a crowded coffee shop with a partner, don’t hog two tables to spread your papers around. It’s a form of theft.
7. Become a relationship anthropologist. Know the difference between a conversation and a discussion. A discussion involves issues or right vs. wrong. It is an exchange of facts, opinions and data. A conversation involves an exploration of another person for the sole purpose of learning about that person.
8. Be happy for others. The exact opposite of the word envy is farginen, which is what happens when you celebrate others’ accomplishments as you would celebrate your own. Take a moment to absorb the spiritual beauty of this concept by viewing this video clip that explains the Generosity of Spirit.
9. Get rid of grudges. Whether they are for real or imaginary slights, raise the bar on your own behavior by forgiving and moving on.
10. Help others caress the rainbow. This means show them how to have hope. There is tremendous positive psychological capital to be gained if we are resolute to tap into it to help others.
11. Make people feel better about themselves. We cannot control everyone liking us, but we can control how others feel when they interact with us. Do others feel better about themselves after they spend time with you?
12. View all promises you made in 2009 as an unpaid debt. Promises imply trust, but trust is fragile. It’s like a Christmas tree ornament—one slip can shatter it. And we all know that once it’s shattered, it’s very difficult to put it back together.

Kevin Rose gives a demo of the beta version of Square – a new device for iPhone that will allow you to accept card payments with your iPhone.
This looks really cool, and I look forward to seeing the product when it hits the market.

Nearly as soon as the Apple iPhone 3GS arrived in Norway I bought mine. I had previously only tested the last version briefly. The UI and the feel of the phone was there at the time bot not the speed. So when the 3GS was announced I put it in my agenda to get one as soon as I could.. and I did. Almost half year later I have trouble expressing the satisfaction over this great phone/computer/tool/toy. Before this I was a hardcore Nokia fan. Not the most advanced user though, I used mostly the standard functions like Calendar, SMS, MMS, Alarm clock, POP3 mail and occasionally internet browsing ( to the extent the small screen would let me). The iPhone surely opened my eyes for what kind of functions I could have in the phone and the usability for it. You might of course say that this kind of phone and the marketing behind it only promotes to give you “needs” you don’t really have. To a certain point I can agree with that, but with the free applications available there today there is so much useful apps and mind opening gadgets that really does thrill you when using them. I don’t think I am using more time on the phone-part of it at all but using the phone instead of small yellow notes, as a wine dictionary etc sure does come in handy.

At the moment I am using apps like; VG TVGuide (norwegian), Facebook, LinkedIn, Vinforum (wine dictionary in norwegian), MotherTED (Videos and audio lectures), Wikipedia, Gowalla, Shazam, CameraBag, Best Camera, WordPress, Chess Free and the Fuze Messenger. And let’s not forget that the iPhone actually holds a decent camera and videocamera as well.

No, I must say; I will not go back to a “regular phone” after this, and as long as Apple provides me with an innovative, decent and enduring product I will be faithful to them. Though I’ll keep my PC with Windows for now…

When we look around us and see that so may problems in the world are based on, or is projected from, differences in religious beliefs as well as religious “excuses” (the christian crusades, fatwas and jihads, one can really start to wonder whether we may have a bit too much religion in the world. I can certainly acknowledge the fact that religion is the key element in many peoples lives and that religion in most ways contribute to hope and peace of mind rather than war and chaos. Though I can not shake the voice in my head going “Come on, Enough already!” when I read about six “new religions” at the Matador Network, “new” being just a figure of speech meaning that these are religions more or less unknown in “the west”.  Though it seems that only two of these are beliefs dated A.D.; the persian/iranian Baha’i from the 1800′s and Mandaeism dated back to Late Antiquity.  The other four all seem to origin from before christianity/BC.

Baha’i was proclaimed by a young Iranian, who called himself The Báb. He said that a messenger would soon arrive from God, who would be the latest in a line of prophets including Moses, Muhammad and Jesus Christ. It was founded as late as in the 1800s, and all the prophets of the world’s major world religions are all accepted as valid, including Krishna, Abraham, Buddha, Jesus, and Muhammad.

Mandaeism,  originally practised primarily around the lower Euphrates and Tigris, was a Gnostic Christian religion believing both Jesus, Abraham, Moses, and Muhammad to be false messiahs.  There are thought to be between 60,000 and 70,000 Mandaeans worldwide, and until the 2003 Iraq war, almost all of them lived in Iraq. Most Iraqi Mandaeans have since fled the country, and by 2007 the population of Iraqi Mandaeans had fallen to approximately 5,000.Most Iraqi Mandaeans now live in Syria and Jordan, with smaller populations in Western countries.

Jainism is an ancient religion from India that teaches that the way to liberation and bliss is to live a life of harmlessness and renunciation by living rightly after an ethical code known as “the three jewels of Jain ethics“: right faith, right knowledge and right conduct. Parshvanatha, the twenty-third Tirthankar, is the earliest Jain leader who can be reliably dated. However, Jain mythology asserts that the line of Tirthankars began with Rushabhdeva. Jains themselves tend to believe that Jainism has no single founder, and believe that Jainism is the one of the world’s oldest religions, predating Hinduism.

 Zoroastrianism was founded by the Prophet Zoroaster in ancient Iran approximately 3500 years ago and was for many years one of the most powerful religions in the world. Zoroastrians believe in one God, called Ahura Mazda (meaning ‘Wise Lord’). In Zoroastrianism, Ahura Mazda has an adversary called Angra Mainyu (meaning ‘destructive spirit’), and it is in the Abrahamic religions accepted that the concepts of Heaven and Hell, as well as the Devil, were heavily influenced by Zoroastrian belief.

The Yorùbá religion originated from the Yoruba people, one of the largest ethnic groups in west-africa. Yoruba includes one creator and approximately 400 supernatural spirits. The god Orisa’nla (The great divinity) also known as Obatala, chosen by Olodumare, descended from heaven on a chain, carrying a small snail shell full of earth, palm kernels and a five-toed chicken. He was to empty the content of the snail shell on the water after placing some pieces of iron on it, and then to place the chicken on the earth to spread it over the primordial water. Yoruba religious beliefs are part of itan — the complex of songs, histories, stories and other cultural concepts which make up the Yorùbá religion and society.

Mami Wata is another African religion that describes a water spirit known as Mami Wata. She is pictured as being incredibly beautiful with long hair and is frequently accompanied by an incredibly large snake. The religion holds that Mami will sometimes assume human form in bars or busy markets and also will abduct people while they are swimming or boating on the water. These captives are then released in dry clothes and better health, but only after agreeing to an oath of sexual fidelity to the spirit. Mami Wata is related to the Vodoun, which later has been transformed into what is knowns as Voodoo, these days in Haiti.

As a project manager in the IT-industry I would welcome an architect and migration specialist for a huge migration project of world religions, but that’s only in my dreams of course…