FIST Values
Thursday, 12 November 2009
Dan Ward wrote a thesis on values and how they contribute to project success. His thesis is that success is correlated with a set of values he tags with the acronym F.I.S.T: Fast, Inexpensive, Simple and Tiny.
Dan works in defense where many projects span decades and yeild little value for taxpayers (beyond jobs in regional areas, maybe.) His work argues against an embedded bias towards expensive, large complex projects with massive scope.
(You can read his thesis yourself, here.)
Ask yourself this: If you were your project's sponsor and you were given a choice across these values, which options would you chose?
Posted by Craig Brown 7:00 AM 0 comments Links to this post
Labels: culture, Project Management, Requirements Management, values
Near enough really is good enough!
"What if 'near enough is good enough' really is true! What if it's not an attitude of laziness, but a discerning and intelligent response to a world of spin and over-production."
(podcast)
And an article to to with it; The good enough revolution (At Wired.)
Posted by Craig Brown 12:19 AM 2 comments Links to this post
Labels: Quality
Getting to Productive meetings
Tuesday, 10 November 2009
This topic is perennial... Here are some opinions. Mr Google has 50 million others.
Meetings fulfil two purposes; solving problems and gaining consensus. When you hold a meeting pick and focus on one of these purposes only.
- Stand up
- Start on time
- Book only the time you’ll need
- Know how it’s going to end
- Send an agenda and stick to it
- Tell everyone what preparation is required
- Write down what is agreed and share it out afterwards
Stand up
When you stand up you get multiple benefits. They include;
- People standing up think better that people who are sitting still. Being active helps the brain function. Standing beats sitting. Move around if you can, also.
- Standing also increases interaction. People get up and write on whiteboards, and are more likely to talk to each other rather than exclusively to a facilitator, thus building a better flow of communication.
- Lastly, if you stand up in meetings, when you are done, you will walk out. How often have you been in meetings when the content is over but people sit there through to the end of the hour?
Start on time
- I am almost always late for meetings. On the other hand I am almost always an optional attendee without a need to actually be there.
- Respect the people who care enough to turn up on time and start on time. This will set up a feedback loop that causes people who want their stake to be considered at a meeting to be there.
- This isn’t a black and white issue as culture plays a part in time orientation. For example in some companies you stay with the person you are with until they are happy with the outcome of the meeting. But it pretty much looks like a time boxed approach to problems (and meetings) is the best way to go, so maybe give up your bad habits in favour of being on time.
Book only the time you’ll need
- If you have one question and need to bring five people together to get consensus, how long do you think you’ll need? If it can be done in 15 minutes, book 15 minutes. If t will take 3 hours, book 3 hours.
- Don’t book an hour by default. This way lies the path of waste and days of back to back meetings.
Know how it’s going to end
- I constantly come back to the refrain “Start with the end in mind.” In this context there are many different ends that a meeting can come to.
- If this is a “decision meeting” you can forecast what the end will be by briefing or polling people prior to the meeting.
- If it is a “problem solving meeting” you should have an idea of what the likely outcomes will be via investigation and pre-meeting discussions.
- I tend to publish a statement of the “Expected outcomes” when I book a meeting. That way everyone knows what I am thinking in advance and has the opportunity to explore my suggestion or other ideas.
- Agendas do change and that’s okay, but know the purpose of the meeting and control its scope.
- You work on projects, right? So you know about the scope control problem. As we have discussed earlier, one of the best ways to manage the scope is by time-boxing the meeting.
A military officer who was about to retire once said: ‘The most important thing I did in my career was to teach young leaders that whenever they saw a threat, their first job was to determine the timebox for their response. Their second job was to hold off making a decision until the end of the timebox, so that they could make it based on the best possible data.’ – Mary Poppendick
- Use a parking lot for off topic conversations and address them at the end of the meeting if there is time, or let people take their issues with them to follow up in their own time.
Tell everyone what preparation is required and let everyone know the agenda
- Explaining to people what preparation is required helps get people ready for the meeting,
- But you’ll have to remember that several people won’t have time to do their homework. Be ready to give them a 2 minute précis of any background issues at the meeting.
- And for the millionth time, the agenda should be prioritised by importance. Let the unimportant things fall of the back of the meeting. Try to timebox the agenda items also.
Write down what is agreed and share it out afterwards, on the same day.
- I remembered something different to you and we need to identify this problem as soon as possible. That means you need to send out notes on the meeting the same day.
- Same day = same day. While people’s minds are still close to the topic.
- Be specific about what was agreed, including deadlines for actions. If deadlines were not defined in the meeting give people 3 days. If these things are important to you, follow them up with a call or personal message.
- And do me a favour. PLEASE don’t attach a word doc to an email. Include your notes in the email body or hyperlink to it.
There are a billion web articles on how to run an effective meeting. This has been once of them.
Picture by ►Voj► CC via Flickr
Posted by Craig Brown 9:00 AM 0 comments Links to this post
Labels: Communication
Pfffftsssshsstt!
Monday, 9 November 2009
Okay
The Hitler Windows 7 Launch IS funny.
But not as funny as this!
Seriously!?
Posted by Craig Brown 9:54 PM 0 comments Links to this post
Labels: off topic
Windows 7?
Like, whatever dudes. But if your OS really matters to you, try this for size:
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it."
Posted by Craig Brown 9:37 PM 0 comments Links to this post
Labels: off topic
Friday
Thursday, 5 November 2009
This Friday is a busy day for me. In the meantime, take a look at this.
Posted by Craig Brown 11:47 PM 0 comments Links to this post
Contracting versus Full time
Wednesday, 4 November 2009
Alister Scott provides a simple little calcultion showing comparable full time and contract rates. He compares an $80kpa full timer to a $60ph contractor and finds they earn about the same.
If you are interested in exploring contracting this explanation may help you understand that the benefits of contracting are not all financial, and that the differences in what contractors get paid is not as large as some people assume.
Posted by Craig Brown 9:00 AM 0 comments Links to this post
Labels: Contracts, professional development
What _do_ we need from our professional organisations?
Matt Hodgson worries about about the BA community repeating the mistakes of the project management community by taking a narrow definition of the role and formalising it. Embedding itself in a position from which it will be challenged to evolve.
His questions wrap around the ideas of community, discipline and roles.
If you are interested in the ongoing formalisation of the BA (and PM) roles and are wondering/worried about the directions they are headed, read his post and offer your comments.
Posted by Craig Brown 12:06 AM 0 comments Links to this post
Labels: business analysis, IIBA, PMI
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