Thursday, May 31, 2007

Climb Aboard the Canonball Express

Welcome. Climb Aboard

Beginning with this blog entry, I'm going to take you on a real live project journey from the boarding station to final destination. For the purpose of this blog and to protect the innocent, let's call this project Cannonball.

Who knows how this journey will end? Will the team get along? Will stakeholders help or hinder progress? Will this project make money for the company? I'll just report the facts as I see them and together you and I can share lessons learned along the way. If you are looking out our project window and you see a potential obstacle ahead, I expect you to warn me.

Project Summary
  • Cross Brand Solution that integrates software, hardware and services
  • Final decision arbitar: Don't know yet. With three brands involved, every decision could be a dog fight
  • Scope:
    • Perform integration tests and performance validation
    • Create auotmation scripts to install and configure the solution
  • Time: target launch in November
  • Team:
    • Geographically dispersed virtual team
    • Morale: Very high. I hear a brass band playing on the kick-off station platform and free donuts are luring unsuspecting team members on to the project train.
Challenges:
  • Securing hardware for test. It aint cheap.
  • Cross function coordination. Can't we just get along?
  • Fulfillment process may require invention.
  • Pricing process may require invention.
  • A strong date constraint: launch a pilot in just a few month.

Take your seat and enjoy the ride.

Saturday, May 26, 2007

The best years of my life

My wife and I celebrated our 24th wedding anniversary this weekend. She's still gorgeous. Me ... not so much.

She bought me two presents which is cunning because no matter what I bought her, she had me one upped. Her presents to me: a blown up framed picture of the book I wrote and a canoe for our lake. It was the second gift that left me a bit puzzled. She's been begging me to get her a canoe for years and now she buys me one? It reminded me of the time I bought my mom a football when I was twelve. Every day during that summer, I'd yell, "Hey Mom, can we borrow your football?"

Friday, May 25, 2007

No resources ... No problem

I don't have formal sponsorship for the projects that I work on. I usually tin cup for resources. Strange enough, people always seem willing to help! And that's starting to bother me. I am sensitive to the fact that nobody in IBM is just sitting on their hands. So their commitment to support me usually means that they will be working more overtime than they are already. It's sad to see how helping me hurts them.

Common sense tells you not to start a project without a committed sponsor and a formal kick-off after funding and resources are secured. That's why I'm actively trolling for a sponsor who has the political clout, financial resources and interest to properly support my next project. I've tapped my network of friends for long enough. It's time to bring my skunk work projects above board!

Thursday, May 24, 2007

Tip to start meetings on time

Meetings in my company chronically start ten minutes late. Why? Because nobody ever says, “Please make an effort to be here on time.” Instead, people say “it’s Okay” or shrug it off until tardiness becomes an institutionalized behavior. What is going wrong here? Why doesn’t a published list of guidelines stop the bad behaviors? The answer is that guidelines are worthless unless someone enforces them. Lists don’t stop bad behaviors. Leaders do.

In practice, people look to the project manager to be the gatekeeper or meeting cop. Most people don’t feel comfortable counseling other human beings about bad behaviors. It's not a skill taught in business school. As the PM, if you tolerate bad behaviors, you will lose the respect of your team. So tell your team that you are going to make a serious effort to start your meetings on time and finish 5 mins early (as a courtesy to give them time to stretch before their next meeting).

Here's a practical tip to get your start your recurring team meeting on time:

  1. Create an instant message Group with everyone who participates in your recurring meeting
  2. Send an announcement to everyone in the group to remind them, "Our meeting will begin promptly in 5 mins."
Note: Instant message tools (AIM, Sametime, Messenger) will differ in how they broadcast a single chat message to multiple recipients. Refer to the user guide for instructions.

Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Don't teach your wife project management

My wife Christine asked me for status on checking the car tires for proper air pressure.
"It's a recurring task ... it needs to be done every month."
"You know you consume more gas when the pressure is low."
"Can I count on you to do it without follow up from this point forward?"

My responses:
"Mark it zero percent complete."
"What's the dollar impact?"
"No you can't. Welcome to my world."

Tuesday, May 22, 2007

Managers who yell are confusing people with horses

One etymology of the word “manage” is from Latin manus, hand. The word was originally used by the French to mean to “train a horse in its paces.” Picture a trainer in a fenced ring slapping a horse on the butt to make it canter, trot or gallop.

Managers who yell are confusing people with horses.

Monday, May 21, 2007

It's not worth my time

Have you ever noticed that people who are aren't very handy usually say "It's not worth my time?" when prodded to do a project around the house?

I used the "It's not worth my time" excuse when my wife asked me to fix something the other day. I was lying on the couch watching a basketball game when the words slipped out.

Have you ever noticed that we are always doing something stupid when we say "I'ts not worth my time?"

Friday, May 18, 2007

The Presentation Salt Mine

I entered the deep, dark presentation salt mine this week to produce a slide deck that presents options to deal with a thorny issue. Several of the options were ... well ... silly. For example, an executive asked us to double the headcount to cut the schedule in half. I can't recall the last time somebody asked me to do that. Most managers now recognize that people are not interchangeable parts, that there is a learning curve to bringing new people on board, and there is communication overhead to leading a larger crew. In short, there no straight line math between resources and schedule.

In any case, we exercised every option to demonstrate our ability to do completed staff work. The slide deck was then reviewed by multiple layers of management in a beautifully choreographed dance of meetings, edits, and updates. One executive with a touch of formatting flair even added a cool blue arrow pointing from one place to another! The finished product was truly elegant. In the reflection on my computer screen, I could see my mouth was slightly ajar as I gasped in awe at the creation.

Slide Junkies

Although the presentation salt mine did produce a stunning work of art, I'm mindful that Lotus Notes will automatically throw it in the trash (delete it) in another three months. I was left to wonder if all the work to produce the deck was worth the cost? Would it have been possible to discuss this topic with no slides? I know that I'd feel a little exposed without my PowerPoint Protection (PPP) force field, but the truth is ... there was nothing on the slides that couldn't be discussed interactively with an archaic process known in the 20th century as face-to-face communication. And here's where I experienced a revelation: when you give a presentation using PowerPoint, people are looking at the slides ... not at you. Maybe we use slides unconsciously to deflect attention?

Let's Just Talk

I challenge progressive managers to accept and encourage fireside chats where you discuss a topic with very little slideware. That cultural change could have any impact on IBM's bottom line. I recognize that executives are busy people and we shouldn't waste their time with ill conceived proposals. So all parties must be prepared. Likewise, they shouldn't waste our time by jamming us into a presentation salt mine for countless hours. After all, there is an opportunity cost to producing slides since the people creating them aren't doing value add work.