Life's change agent

Death is very likely the single best invention of life. It is life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.

Steve Jobs 1955-2011

Knock, Knock. Who's There? IT

IT; "Have you got a minute?"
CEO; "As long as it's just a minute - I have a customer meeting."
IT; "We need to upgrade to Windows 7. XP is going out of support. I have worked out the licence cost - we got a good deal before the suppliers year end. I have got the justification...."
CEO; "I've got to go. I suppose we have to do it.... While you are here, can I connect my iPad to the network?"
Discuss....

From Global Solution to Big Problem

In six easy steps:

1. Central:     "Here's our Global Solution"
   
2. Local:         "Does it work for me?"
   
3. Central:     "We will get down to the detail later but it can do everything we need. We will work together on this, now let's get on.."
   
4. Local:        "But I can't use it because it doesn't do this"
   
5. Central:     "This is the central solution – you have to use it"
   
6. Local:         "OK. Make me.."
   

Coach a team with 100 words

Footballers are not known for their extensive vocabularies.

So it was hard to tell whether it was a compliment or an insult when Italian Fabio Capello, England's football coach, said he could manage the national team using just 100 words.

"If I need to speak about the economy or other things, I can't speak," he told reporters. "But when you speak about tactics, you don't use a lot of words. I don't have to speak about a lot of different things. Maximum 100 words."

To see if it could be done, first the BBC went to the Oxford English Corpus, which has identified the hundred commonest English words found in writing globally:

1. the 2. be 3. to 4. of 5. and 6. a 7. in 8. that 9. have 10. I 11. it 12. for 13. not 14. on 15. with 16. he 17. as 18. you 19. do 20. at 21. this 22. but 23. his 24. by 25. from

26. they 27. we 28. say 29. her 30. she 31. or 32. an 33. will 34. my 35. one 36. all 37. would 38. there 39. their 40. what 41. so 42. up 43. out 44. if 45. about 46. who 47. get 48. which 49. go 50. me

51. when 52. make 53. can 54. like 55. time 56. no 57. just 58. him 59. know 60. take 61. person 62. into 63. year 64. your 65. good 66. some 67. could 68. them 69. see 70. other 71. than 72. then 73. now 74. look 75. only

76. come 77. its 78. over 79. think 80. also 81. back 82. after 83. use 84. two 85. how 86. our 87. work 88. first 89. well 90. way 91. even 92. new 93. want 94. because 95. any 96. these 97. give 98. day 99. most 100. us

Source: Concise Oxford English Dictionary (11th edition, 2006)

You will be pushed to make many phrases from these – although you may do better from the list of the top 25 Nouns, Verbs, and Adjectives.

The list of nouns makes interesting reading:

• man is 7th, whereas child is 12th and woman 14th
  
• the highest-ranking body part, hand, is 10th - eye is the next in 13th place, followed by head at 27
  
• Work is at number 16 whereas play and rest do not feature in the top 100!
  
• war is at 49 with no sign of peace
  
• problem is 24th and there is no solution in sight
  
• friend is 30th with no enemy or foe
  
• book is number 41 whereas computer does not feature in the top 100 and is below paper
  
• Money is surprisingly low at 65 and cash is nowhere to be seen: this low ranking is perhaps explained by the fact that we have so many synonyms for money.
  

 

Not to be outdone, Cambridge has now been through the Cambridge International Corpus.

The dictionaries contain more than one billion English words, and their context, used regularly in newspapers, books, emails and conversations. Experts tracked down around 8.5 million football-related words before refining them to the 100 most commonly used football nouns, verbs and adjectives.

The list of 100 football words are:

1 – ball 2 – cup 3 – player 4 – Game 5 – Match 6 – Win 7 – Lose 8 – Play 9 – Team 10 – Goalkeeper 11 – Defender 12 – Fullback 13 – Midfielder 14 – Winger 15 – Striker 16 – Forward 17 – Defence 18 – Midfield 19 – Attack 20 – Pitch 21 – Goal 22 – Goalposts 23 – Crossbar 24 – Woodwork 25 – Box 26 – Touchlines 27 – Left 28 – Right 29 – Kick 30 – Pass 31 – Tackle 32 – Cross 33 – Dribble 34 – Shoot 35 – Strike 36 – Score 37 – Equalise 38 – Foul 39 – Defend 40 – Attack 41 – Header 42 – Touch 43 – Mark 44 – Dive 45 – Referee 46 – Linesman 47 – Assistant 48 – Offside 49 – Handball 50 – Free kick 51 – Penalty 52 – Corner 53 – Goal-kick 54 – Caution 55 – Suspension 56 – Yellow 57 – Red 58 – Cards 59 – International 60 – Tournaments 61 – Stages 62 – Competition 63 – Friendlies 64 – Qualifiers 65 – Group 66 – Quarter-finals 67 – Semi-finals 68 – Progress 69 – Final 70 – Shoot-out 71 – Tactics 72 – Training 73 – Formation 74 – Possession 75 – Pressure 76 – Defensive 77 – Attacking 78 – Patience 79 – Fitness 80 – First-half 81 – Second-half 82 – Half-time 83 – Injury-time 84 – Extra-time 85 – Physical 86 – Technical 87 – Clever 88 – Pace 89 – Skill 90 – Talented 91 – Fans 92 – Supporters 93 – Passion 94 – Spirit 95 – Pride 96 – Excitement 97 – Defeat 98 – Disappointment 99 – Humiliation 100 – Sack.

 

Perhaps we could run a project with just 100 words? Maybe even just 40:

Meeting, stakeholder, initiation, deliverables, deadlines, scope, budget, sponsor, on-time, quality, document, time, report, review, communication, progress, management, change, office, benefits, cost, business, case, plan, control, milestone, task, estimate, program(me), team, design, analyse, package, work, schedule, risk, slip, delays, overrun, shelved…

Leave a comment with your suggestions.

The Project Mahout

How do you get an elephant from A to B?
There are four ways: You can

• Push it,
• Pull it,
• Pick it up and carry it, or
• You can climb up onto the elephants back and whisper in its ear "There is a bun in that direction."

In change management, the subject has got to see the benefit of the change. If change is being imposed then you have to carry the elephant.
And for programme management and international project management, you have a herd of elephants.
This will take:

• A whole tray of Krispy Kreme donuts.
• Good knowledge of the individual tastes of each elephant.
• You also want to pick the right elephant to ride – and lead the herd.

This blog is the bastard lovechild of reading the "Lazy Project Manager" while watching "Passage to India"!

Keep your plans agile and objectives personal

Your project plans need to be detailed for the near term so that everyone knows:

• What they are working on,
• What their accountability is for the deliverables and quality and
• How this fits into the greater objective.

The only thing that is certain about a long-term detailed plan is that it will be wrong. PMs can learn a lot from military strategy—a General doesn’t plan a battle in detail but depends on soldiers knowing their objectives, so they can react to events and seize opportunities.

“A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week.”—General George S. Patton

This was my contribution to Lessons Learned in Project Management: 140 Tips in 140 Words or Less
A compilation of project management advice put together by John Estrella  - which is available from Amazon - Kindle edition only in the UK

The Global Project Managers toolkit

As you venture forth on a multinational project delivery, what tools you need to increase the chances of success?
As soon as you start to cross borders, the geographic and cultural separation mean that the trusted team management techniques such as "Management by walking around" and "the team that drinks together, thinks together" no longer apply.

Project Management.

A management process is essential for the success of any project. Let's face it: most Financial Services companies are very good at transactional execution but major projects are not their strong point. Project management is not about what you need to do on the project (see development methodology below) but how you control it:
•    Setting the scope and the business case for the project.
•    Identifying the tasks to be performed during the project, controlling the resources, managing the deliverables and quality.
•    Managing changes to the scope of the projects and risks.
•    Having gateway checkpoints and audits of the project.
•    Ensuring that the project meets the requirements, stays within budget and delivers the benefits.
Project management methods such as Prince2 and PMP are built around the core of the Executive Sponsor and the Project Manager. The Sponsor leads the project, makes the big decisions and assigns business resources the project needs. The project manager plans the project and is accountable to the business for the project delivery and achieving the benefits.
Software vendors and consultancies will, of course, offer to do the project management but Prince2 is very specific that the PM should not be from the supplier as they will ultimately be accountable to the supplier not the business, and introduce "lock in" with one supplier. Project management should anyhow start before the supplier is selected.
An international rollout may need broader programme management –providing strategic control of subsidiary projects such as the RFP process, software delivery and business change by country. Treating a multinational project as a programme can allow local project management and local accountability for achieving benefits.

Development Processes

There are broadly two types of development or implementation process:
The first, Waterfall - or "Big Design Up Front" – concentrates on gathering requirements at the start of the project, before going on to the traditionally more expensive design and programming stages.
The second, iterative processes, are widely seen as more suitable for package implementation and where there is business change going on in parallel, with requirements evolving through the project. They use prototyping, rough cut of configurations of a package, and pilots to test assumptions and refine the requirements. Each iteration can be seen as a mini project, which has a better chance of completing successfully and with measurable benefits coming out from each cycle.
The most highly iterative methods, such as scrum and extreme programming, where users and programmers are locked together in intense brainstorming and prototyping sessions, could be seen as less suitable for international projects because of the need for the team to be co-located, defining complex requirements like lease accounting and considering the collegiate requirements of different business units.
The implementation method is distinct from the project management. Where you are working with a supplier it is often best to use their methodology will be geared towards defining the specific deliverables for their system configuration..

Business Process Management

Many large organisations, particularly with manufacturing origins, will have their own Business Process Management or Re-engineering methodology – such as Toyota and Six-Sigma at GE. These are built around scientific calculation of the value each step adds to the end product. Many of these will be difficult to apply to financial processes – let's be mischievous and ask what value Credit add to a deal? – although Citibank in the eighties embraced the concept of "the bank as a factory".
In practice for systems enabled business change it will be better to build process redesign around best practice workflows provided by the systems supplier.
With a multinational implementation a single "cookie cutter" standard process can be difficult to impose, because of regional requirements, the different sizes of each business, and even particular individual talent.
But what is more important than the one-off process design is to develop a culture of continuous improvement across the operation with international sharing of best practice.

Collaboration Tools

Initial face to face team meetings are essential to build up trust and understanding at the early project stages. For teams that are dispersed for their day to day work it is important to use collaboration technology to keep them together virtually.
Audio conferencing (with local dial in numbers to cut down on cost) can be enhanced by web conferencing (using tools such as Webex or GoToMeeting to view presentations, whiteboards and even application demonstrations). Videoconferencing using webcams will work with these – up to a full telepresence if project budgets are that big.
Instant messaging is not just for teenagers and helpful to ping a quick question to a distant colleague. Email, although pervasive, is not best for project communications with long and intertwined email exchanges hard to follow. A central project document storage, intranet (shared within the organisation) or extranet (giving access to suppliers as well) provides a common project "knowledge base". Web based document storage or a Wiki (based on the technology behind Wikipedia) are now common solutions. Microsoft SharePoint 2010 adds the ability to have simultaneous editing of Office documents, publish and track project plans, create web based databases and even workflows from Visio diagrams.
And for the future, look at the demonstration Google Wave – think of a combination of instant messaging, email and a wiki.

Technology

For the global system itself what help is there from the technology? Microsoft's dotNet and rival J2EEE application development provide support for the basic number and date formats. But architectural solutions for the all the "multi" stuff has to come from the system design.
A web based application will certainly greatly assist with the deployment of the system over long distances than an older "thick client" PC application would allow. The amount of data displayed on the screen is improved with modern design and improved features like "type-ahead" make many web applications a richer experience than PC desktop programs.
Highly modularised service oriented applications speed system configuration by having "building blocks" to quickly support particular requirements. You also use web "applets" components to tailor your own screens and dashboards.
Virtualisation frees your application from being tied to particular hardware and servers. Software as a Service (SaaS) allows you to get software on a "pay per use" or utility model. If the software supports your needs this can be a quick way to set up and test software. On-going costs may come out higher in the long run but you are insulated from many of the hassles of in-house IT such as upgrades, and if things don't work out you have not lost the upfront investment! Make sure that SaaS software supports multinational requirements and don't forget that although it simplifies the technology delivery it doesn't take away any of the complexities of Business Process changes needed.
The logical conclusion of this is cloud computing, highly virtualised, highly scalable, internet based software. One note of caution is hidden in the terms of service of Amazon Web Services: "We strive to keep Your Content secure, but cannot guarantee that we will be successful at doing so, given the nature of the Internet. Accordingly... you bear sole responsibility for adequate security, protection and backup of Your Content and Applications."
Of course, while these tools can assist your international projects, in themselves they will not assure success. When combined with experienced practitioners they can leverage skills, reduce project risks and greatly increase productivity.
© Nic Evans 2010.