July 2007

I’ve been doing quite a bit of reading lately on Agile Software Development and Agile Project Management and have come to the conclusion that the folks that created the Manifesto for Agile Software Development could have just as easily named it the Manifesto for Agile Management (with a few minor changes of course).

If you’ve never read the manifesto, please don’t get put off by the Software Development terminology…it’s definitely worth reading.

The main theme of the manifesto is as follows:

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Working software over comprehensive documentation
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Responding to change over following a plan

If you take a second to think about it, this can be rewritten as the Manifesto for Agile Management by changing a few words. After rewording, the manifesto is:

Individuals over processes
Engaged teams over organizational charts
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Responding to change over following a plan

If you were able to run an organization business with the Agile Management Manifesto in mind, I truly believe employees would be excited to come to work and clients would love you. Think about how engaged a person would be if they knew that they had the ability to do their job unencumbered (or at least less encumbered) by formal processes that do but impede their ability to deliver value to the client.

I think the Agile Management Manifesto is a great way to run an organization and/or project team.

There seems to be a lot out there in the blogosphere and internet about Agile Management and Agile Leadership…a few interesting and noteworthy posts on the subject can be found at:

• David Anderson’s Agile Management Blog
• Agile Advice
• All About Agile
  

[tags] Agile Management, Agile, Lean, Project Management, Leadership [/tags]

MS Project has become an industry standard for project planning and I think it has value for a project manager, but a project manager should not rely on MS Project or any other software do to do their job for them. Software doesn’t manage projects….people do.

Steve Shu has a good blog post over on his blog titled “Why I dislike Microsoft Project for Management Consulting“. His argument against using Microsoft Project as a tool for managing projects in the consulting field revolves around a central theme that using MS Project creates “barriers to communication” during the project. He’s absolutely right.

If I ask a project manager if they can describe their project, send me their project plan or provide a status and they send me a Microsoft Project plan (or worse, a Gannt chart) I know something is very wrong. Here’s why:

• MS Project doesn’t communicate the goals of a project well. I can review a MS project plan and tell what the milestones are but it takes a lot of digging to get the ‘high-level’ objectives from a project plan.
• MS Project is not the project plan. It is a representation of a project plan. A Gantt chart is not a project plan either.
• MS Project does not provide an easy method to communicate status. There are reporting features that can be used to show status, but in my experience, project managers don’t use these reporting features well.

A good project manager should be able to communicate status, project goals and all other project details without showing me (or anyone else) their MS project plan and lord help you if you show me a Gantt chart when I ask for a project plan
If you want to be a project manager you should definitely learn to use the various software products on the market. If you want to be a great project manger, work on your leadership, communication and problem solving skills to allow you to lead the project team not just manage the project tasks.

Knowing how to use MS Project (or any other project planning tool) is a good skill, but it won’t save you or the project when the unexpected happens….and the unexpected will happen.

[tags] Project Management, Microsoft Project, MS Project [/tags]

Bear with me folks…I feel like a little rant on a couple of topics ranging from Recruiting to Blogs to Books. Sorry for the long post.

I’m tired of receiving 50 emails & phone calls from 50 different ‘recruiting’ companies for the same position.

Example - A local company is looking for a Project Manager in Plano TX…and they’ve been looking for one for at least 6 months…and I’ve been contacted at least 50 times for this position over the last six months.

Note to organizations: Use a real recruiter that understands how to find those people that fit into your organization. Stop using ‘body shops’ to find your employees/contractors. A few good examples of great recruiters are Max Pons, some Technisource recruiters, Genesis10, and Tridenta.

I’m tired of the half-truths and untruths told by recruiters and organizations.

Example - Another local tech company has a job posting for a “Technical Solutions Project Manager” that they’ve had listed for over a year. According to a friend of mine who works at the company, this posting is a way for the company to capture resumes for their resume database for later use…they have no intention of ever hiring for this position.

Example - I received a phone call from a ‘recruiter’ who wanted to talk to me about an ‘exclusive job’ that they were recruiting for. After speaking with him, I realized the job was the same PepsiCo job that I’d heard about from 50 other recruiters.

Note to organizations: Keep lying to employees and potential employees and you will be out of business. Being less than honest will be easily spotted and the good employees will leave and the not-so-good employees will stay.

I’m tired of receiving multiple emails and/or phone calls from the same ‘recruiter’ about the same job.

Example - I received 12 phone calls over the course of 3 days from the same ‘recruiter’ who wanted to talk to me about a contract position. Over the course of these 3 days, he left a voicemail every time. When I got back from my vacation, I called him to talk with him about the position…turns out he couldn’t find my resume and didn’t know what job he wanted to talk with me about.

Note to organizations: If you farm out recruiting, at least farm it out to knowledgeable people (much like those mentioned above).

I’m tired of reading the same blog post on 10 different blogs.

Example - Gizmodo and Engadget…most of the content on these 2 blogs cover the same topics/technology/products.

Example - Just about every blog that focuses on business, leadership, management, project management or technology. I’m afraid that my own blog is included in this example.

Note to bloggers (myself included): Write some original content. Don’t just rewrite something you found on another blog. If you do take a blog post from another author, spin it in a different direction than the original author did to make it your own story (with appropriate reference to the original author of course).

Some examples of very good blogs with what appears to be original content are Seth Godin, Charles Green’s “Trust Matters”, David Maister’s Passion, People and Principles, Levitt & Dubner’s Freakonomcis Blog, Jim Stroup’s Managing Leadership and Dean Bubley’s Distruptive Wireless. Mike Schaffner’s Beyond Blinking Lights and Acronyms is another very good blog. There are a few others, but these are the ones that pop into my head as having original content and/or making me think about topics in a different way.

I’m tired of reading ‘the greatest business/strategy/management/leadership book ever written’ and it being nothing more than a lot of words thrown into paragraphs that do very little to shed any new insight onto the subject.

Example - The Strategy Paradox. Is it just me or is this book one of the most boring every written? At the outset, I was extremely interested in the concept of the book since it talks about complexity and paradoxes, but after reading the first few chapters, I can’t bring myself to finish it. I constantly found myself thinking “OK…so what…that’s common sense” (e.g., the behaviors that position a company for success also maximizes its probability of failure). I still think the concept of the book is great, but the writing leaves a lot to be desired and the so-called ‘case studies’ aren’t really that supportive of the main argument of the book.

Example - Rich Dad Poor Dad. This book (and most of the other books in the series) is nothing more than a rehashing of common sense topics. There may be a few nuggets of information in the book(s) but not enough to warrant paying full retail price for.

Note to Authors and Publishers: How about some original content? Something like Guy Kawasaki’s “Art of the Start” or Ricardo Semler’s books “Maverick” and “Seven Day Weekend”.

[tags] Business, Strategy, Blogging, Books,  Recruiters, Recruting, Job Hunt, Human Resources [/tags]

I just finished the book “Agile & Iterative Development: A Manager’s Guide” by Craig Larman.

This book provides a very good overview for managers of the Iterative & Agile Development methods. I liked this book…it isn’t too in-depth…perfect for someone who needs to know the basics about Scrum, XP, UP and other Iterative/Agile methods.

Two things about the book that keep it out of my ‘recommended book list’ are:

1. I thought it could have used a bit more editing/revision prior to release as their are some minor errors, but on the whole this is a very good book.
2. Removal or Revision of Chapter 4. This chapter is an attempt to bring all of the agile/iterative methods together into a ’story’ but it just doesn’t work that well for me. What might have helped is to move this chapter toward the end of the book after all the methods have been discussed.

Overall…this is a good book and one worth reading if you are interested in learning more about Iterative & Agile development topics. The book really made me think about the ‘tried and true’ PMI methods for managing projects and how those methodologies aren’t really a good fit in the world of software development.

After reading the book (and a few other Agile books) I’ve begun to think about ways to move Agile methods from software/product development to other areas such as IT Management, Service Management and other areas of business.

[tags] Agile, Agile Management, Agile Project Management,Iterative Development, Agile Development, Software Development [/tags]

Sally Lemke, a nurse in the Chicago area, was named VNA Foundation “Super Star” on July 10th. She’ll be without a Job on July 30th according to the Chicago Sun-Times.Ms. Lemke is, by all accounts, a great person and a great nurse. She’s volunteered her time to making the world a better place for a lot of people. She’s been in the Peace Corps and has been involved in setting up many health clinics across the country to serve the underprivileged. While in Chicago, she has helped setup a very well regarded prenatal care group with the Cook County Health System.

Apparently, the Cook County Health System isn’t run well and is in a cost cutting mode right now and are using the the nursing union as a scapegoat for the system’s financial woes. According to the Chicago Sun Times story:

Cook County Board President Todd Stroger’s aides blamed Lemke’s departure on union contracts that place more weight on seniority than talent.

Lemke came to the county just 18 months ago, after an impressive career that has seen her working in grass-roots, community-based programs across the country. She is a nurse practitioner, a position that requires advanced education and allows her to provide care similar to a physician.

County officials, she said, offered her little choice: a lower-paying job as a basic floor nurse or a layoff.

Hospital chief Dr. Robert Simon called her “one of the best nurses we have” and “we want to retain her,” but he said there “really isn’t” any administrative or management job he could offer her. “She decided to leave to go some place that will respect her talents,” he said.

Simon has repeatedly said there’s no bureaucracy or patronage that can be cut in order to save nursing jobs, but nursing union officials say that’s not true.

When I see something like this, I have to wonder…was this bad timing or bad leadership? Most times, its bad leadership.

Its my opinion that a good leader would see the awarding of the “Super Star” designation to Ms Lemke and use that to their advantage to build a better public image of the hospital system and attract more nursing ’super stars’. Instead, the leadership of the hospital did the opposite thing and showed that they really don’t care about having quality nurses as part of their organization.

Hat tip to the Freakonomics Blog for links to the original stories.

[tags] Human Resources, Leadership, Bad timing, Bad Leadership [/tags]

CIO.com has an article titled “Intel’s E-Mail Overload Solution” that describes the steps Intel is taking to combat email overload.

What I found interesting was the amount of time Intel’s employees were ‘wasting’ every week on due to email….a number that is probably pretty accurate for most organizations. The article states:

What they found: “Knowledge workers spend about 20 hours a week doing e-mail, and one-third of that e-mail is useless,” explains Zeldes. Worse, 70 percent of e-mail gets handled within six minutes of arrival and the average worker is interrupted every three minutes, according to research. “When you switch between tasks, you incur a cognitive reorientation cost,” says David Sward, a senior human factors engineer at Intel and one of Zeldes’s partners on the infomania project. The bottom line was that Intel’s workers were wasting about six hours a week.

Six wasted hours while working on email….1.2 hours per day wasted on inefficiencies. My guy tells me it is actually more than that, but at least a company is thinking about this issue and six hours is nothing to be sneezed at.

Intel’s plans to combat this waste of time seem interested. Some examples are:

1. Enabling workers to shut down e-mail and IM notification for specified durations
2. E-mail “quiet time” methodologies such as batching e-mail on the server and delivering it once an hour
3. “no e-mail” Fridays (or another specified day)
4. moving enterprise wide status reports and organizational announcements from push e-mail to an RSS subscription

I like first two options and think the last option is brilliant but I’m not too keen on option #2. Interesting ideas….I’d love to see how these work out.

[tags] Email, Information Technology, inefficiencies from email [/tags]

Scott Herrick has a very good post on his Cube Rules blog titled “Networking for Shy People” that is definitely worth the read whether you are shy or not.

One of the clearest descriptions Ive ever read of networking is provided by Scott when he writes (emphasis is mine):

First, learning that “networking” isn’t something you do, like going out and painting a picture by number. Instead, networking is simply knowing and helping other people. The more people you help, the more people you know, and the larger your network gets.

I wish more people understood this. Most people think that networking is a bunch of people standing in a room exchanging business cards and talking. Of course, that can be a method that a person can use to network, but networking is about helping others.

Thanks for the blog post Scot.

[tags] Networking, Relationships [/tags]

If you haven’t seen the “Project Cartoon”, you need too. The original can be found here at http://www.projectcartoon.com and they’ve now given people the ability to create their own versions of the cartoon. Check it out if you have a few minutes to waste. Thanks to the 800-CEO-READ Blog for the link.

I took it upon myself to create my own cartoon titled “The New Job” in honor of some of my recent posts about hiring challenges (see here and here).

[tags] Cartoon, Hiring Challenges [/tags]

Charles Green over at “Trust Matters Blog” has a pretty good post titled “Credentials, Elitism and Web 2.0” that discusses the ‘credential’ problem in the world today.

Take a read of Charles’ post…it has a very interesting discussion about some ‘library traditionalists’ vs Wikipedia that is good all by itself…but the best part of the post is the following few sentences (emphasis mine):

Credentialism is a disease in academia these days. Universities brag about the number of faculty with top-school PhDs. The BA now does what the high school diploma used to do—serve mainly as the cutoff point for any meaningful job. The line of sight between education and any meaningful sense of competence is getting more obscure, not less.

If someone earns and MBA, does that automatically qualify them to run a business? Does earning a law degree automatically make someone an expert attorney? Not in my opinion it doesn’t.

Expertise and experience must accompany a credential to give it some weight. Credentials are worthwhile things to have but an overemphasis on them and underemphasis on experience and expertise can lead a person or organization down a dark path.

[tags] Education, credentials [/tags]