Other Posts Archives - Page 4 of 21

Managing expectations

I love our product, AceProject. I have unwavering faith in the system as it is now, and its potential in the future. When the whole gang here sit down to have lunch, I really like to dream up the future's AceProject together. To share our vision of what AceProject could be in five years.

And it's all good.

Because the team and I know what can really be done, and how much of our dreaming is just dreams. When we sit on the next version planning meeting, things get more practical: what CAN we do? True, we could recode the entire system, but that would mean no new features for our users for a long time. That would make our users unhappy.

We need to balance both the expectations of people who use AceProject everyday, and the expectations of the visionaries we have on the team. Our clients expect us to release new features at least twice a year. Our dreamers on the team (and I am one of them) expect AceProject to […]

By Daniel Raymond|2009-10-27T19:43:00-04:002009-10-27|

The new quiet revolution?

Webcom in Montreal today was a very stimulating conference. While the last one, in May, was all about being open (APIs, OpenID, etc), this one seems to be all about 2.0. The revolution in marketing, medias, products and doing business in the modern world.

In the spirit of the conference, I decided to use Google Wave to document the conferences I was going to attend during the day. A few participants joined me in my documentation of the wave. I’ve had a Google Wave account (and the envy of more than a few of my peers) for a few weeks now, but I hadn’t had a chance to really use it.

With Webcom, everyone was taking notes and sharing their impressions of Webcom. While I was more inclined to summarize what was being said, others we adding context and reference links. The result is a rather complete document of the talks. It was more than a wiki (no coding required) and it was more than simple collaboration (everyone is in the same document and […]

By Daniel Raymond|2009-10-22T22:54:00-04:002009-10-22|

Live Google Wave at Webcom today

Today I am at Webcom 2009 in Montreal. I've decided to use Google Wave to take notes from the presenters. So far it's going really well! I'll tell you more about my experience later this week.

By Daniel Raymond|2009-10-22T14:29:00-04:002009-10-22|

Have you ever tried to nail jello to the wall?

How about fitting a square peg in a round hole? Or attracting bees with vinegar?

With these examples, it's obvious that the wrong approach is used. It could be the wrong tool, the wrong strategy or just the wrong idea.

Why do we keep doing it then?

We like our tools. Even if they don't work. We like them because we're used to them and we've learned to work around their shortcomings. Even when our tools have big problems, we tolerate them because at least we know what the problems are.

Alas, it comes a time where we must move on from our old, clunky, comfortable tools to shiny new ones.

Understand it's time for a change

Before we can start looking for a new tool, we should make the case against the old one.

Focus on the pain points of the tool. Get a list of the tool's shortcomings, and explain them in a way that sounds as neutral as possible.
Stay away from blaming the people using the tool. We must remember that people like familiarity and making them feel […]

By Daniel Raymond|2009-10-20T17:21:00-04:002009-10-20|

Something to think about: the project’s impact on our planet

Can our project management style affect the environment? Most of us would say yes, as long as we're working on a type of project that is physical in nature. For example, if we're building a bridge or a building, it's obvious that the project has an environmental impact. It's also obvious that the building style and practices chosen will have an impact.

But we don't think about the environmental impact of office work. Beyond telecommuting to reduce our carbon footprint, here are three areas where we can affect climate change in our project management practices.

The paper-free office is not a dream. As project managers, we have an impact on how we produce our status reports and other documentation to support the project. We have a choice on the media we use to distribute this information. Let's keep this in mind when we have a choice between printing and emailing a PDF file!
Kick-off and team building activities with the planet in mind. Even if it's only choosing reusable glasses and mugs, our project team's carbon footprint […]

By Daniel Raymond|2009-10-15T19:57:00-04:002009-10-15|

Nobody likes having a rash

If we wear an ill-fitted shoe, there will be friction between our foot and the shoe. If left unchecked, this friction will turn into a painful blister. Afterward, we will be unwilling to wear the shoe again because of the pain that friction cause our poor foot.

The same process happens if there is friction in our projects. If friction prevents someone from doing their job on the project, they will associate these negative impressions with the project as a whole.

This is why we should work hard at removing friction and making things easy for the project team, internal and external.

It should be easy

It should be easy for the stakeholder to request changes
It should be easy to a member of your team to raise a flag about an issue with the project
It should be easy to the sponsor to know how the project is going.
It should be easy for everyone involved with the project to know what's the next step

How easy are these things in your project?

By Daniel Raymond|2009-10-13T16:55:00-04:002009-10-13|

PMBOK changes: it’s in the details

This week Josh from pmstudent.com contacted me to update a study help Excel sheet I built back when I was studying for my PMP exam. With the PMBOK update, the spreadsheet was obsolete.

As I was updating the processes, inputs and outputs, I noticed that while the processes themselves hadn't changed much, the inputs and outputs terminology has changed quite a bit – and for the better! For example, instead of listing all the management plans (human resources management plan, comminucations management plan, quality management plan, etc.), the PMBOK nos simply lists "project documents." A much simpler term.

I saw two new things in the inputs and outputs:

Requirements traceability matrix. It's a table designed to link requirements with their origin, like a business need or a project objective.
Stakeholder register. Similar to a risk register, it's a document where information about the stakeholders is kept. This is useful to make sure all stakeholders are involved in the project at the proper level.

Download the study helper: Excel 2000-2003

By Daniel Raymond|2009-10-08T15:42:00-04:002009-10-08|

Finding the productivity sinkholes in your day

As we go through our day, we tend to repeat the same gestures or tasks over and over without realizing it. If we have enough of those repetitive tasks in our day, they take over and we feel we have no time for anything else! Unfrotunately, because they're the kind of thing that evolves on and creeps up on us, we don't realize their importance until they become productivity sinkholes.

Productivity sinkholes steal time from us. They force us to do and redo the same thing many times. Why? Just because we never planned on these tasks to be required so often. Or because we feel it's faster to do the task than figure out a way to automate it.

And we're right: automating a task can be longer than doing it once. But if afterward it cuts the time to perform the task in half, we will be saving a lot more time down the road.

Here's an example. We used to create our quote by hand, in Microsoft Word. We had a basic template, but it […]

By Daniel Raymond|2009-10-01T17:32:00-04:002009-10-01|

Is sales a dirty word in your organization?

In most of the places where I've worked, the sales team was never seen positively. It seemed working in sales made you a worse person for it.

It seems sales is seen as a manipulation effort to extract money from people, barely above theft.

It's time to adjust our perspectives, no?

I was once travelling with a sales rep and he told me "you know, sales is the team that goes and gets the money for your paycheck. It's great that I get to sell a product that works so well." There is the symbiosis. We need sales to develop relationships with our clients and we need a great product and great service to keep the client coming back.

Sales is really only pre-sales customer service.

By Daniel Raymond|2009-09-28T18:02:00-04:002009-09-28|

Software as a service greens your workplace

Chris Thorman from SoftwareAdvice.com wrote an interesting blog post today, comparing the energy consumption of a traditions client-server architecture in your corporate Intranet to a laptop-carrying group using web-based software.

Chris' numbers are surprising: the software-as-a-service (SAAS) users end up consuming 88% less energy after the move from desktop computers and intranet-based software.

The difference in the numbers is based on two major differences:

The users in the Intranet scenario are using a desktop computer, while the SAAS scenario puts laptops on the user's desks. Desktop computers do consume a lot more energy than laptops.
It is assumed that in the Intranet scenario, the server is dedicated to the application, while in the SAAS scenario it is shared. While it is true that SAAS applications will often host hundreds (if not thousands) of accounts on the same server, we cannot assume that each Intranet application will use its dedicated server. Still, it is unlikely that an intranet server would have hundreds of applications running on it.

Software as a service is a good way to green […]

By Daniel Raymond|2009-09-22T15:47:00-04:002009-09-22|