The book is by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson, the guys who started basecamp and invented the popular programming framework Ruby on Rails. The book is not their story but what they learned in the process.

You might be tricked into assuming the book is for startups or entrepreneurs only. Well, it’s NOT. Of course there are sections in the book that deals with specific situations that entrepreneurs and startups face like funding, hiring and PR.But it is for anyone who is looking to cutting the rework and start working on things that matter,projects that make a difference or setting up business that add value and generate wealth. Its not a guide on how to quit your job.

The book talks about being lean and not to measure the success by size and bulk. The authors advocate lean organizations and teams that are easier to pivot to change. This is also evident from the size of the book which is quite lean – under 250 pages of actual content. At best the book can be described as a series of excellent blog posts that are stitched nicely together, but that’s what makes it an excellent read.

Overall, the book wins with me. However if I were to pick my 5 favorite -

1. Learning from your successes – Learning from your mistakes has been overrated. What you learn from your mistakes is what NOT to do.(which sometimes can be valuable). You actually learn from your successes. Some may find this arrogant, but it’s not that you will never make mistakes. You will make mistakes, but don’t over obsess over them. Move on.
2. Inspiration is perishable – Your inspiration does not last forever, what inspires you today may not ignite passion the same way tomorrow. Don’t shelf your inspiration, act now.
3. Scratch your own itch – Looking for that business or great product idea? Find solutions to problems that impact you. The authors did that exactly and created basecamp to solve their project management problem
4. Edit Ruthlessly – Its not the number of pages or the word count that make the difference, neither does it help to have a large number of service offerings if you can do justice. Be a curator or master chef. The first thing these guys do is edit and they do it ruthlessly devoid of any emotions. They trim the menu to carry only the specialties.
5. The By-Product - The by-product if often left unrealised and ignored. The book rework itself is a by product of running creating and running 37signals.

Above all the thing that I really liked about the book was its quite different from your standard business and marketing books that I despise to the core. It’s one of those books i’d probably keep on book shelf to re-read often.

As Seth Godin puts it very aptly in his single line review – “Ignore the book at your own peril”

PS – I have edited this review ruthlessly to keep it under 600 words

Traditionally disaster recovery (DR) solutions have been both expensive and often time consuming to roll-out.The solution often tends to carry around mass which makes it difficult and costly to both to implement initially and to adapt to rapidly technology or economic environments.

An agile DR solution that is built around the cloud aims to address these very problems by focusing on being lean and flexible

The Agile (Lean) approach

The most important part of any DR solution is to achieve business continuity in case of disaster resulting in a system downtime and reduce any recovery times. This involves securing your business critical data and ensuring its availability as well as restoring critical business and operational processes. As such instead of going in for a big bang approach for a DR solution where you aim for a 100% fail over it might make business sense to approach this in an agile and iterative manner.

Let’s break this down

• Business Critical Data – The core concept behind any DR solution is sustainability in case of a disaster and fall back on the primary site as soon as possible, with that in mind do you really want to include your complete data set as part of the DR solution? Probably not.Have a strategy for your different data sets including your master data, your transactional data and your archived data. Depending on the complexity and the IT landscape this data might be distributed or reside with the same database.The idea here is to identify your business critical data that will enable your business to operate. This needs to part of your DR strategy first.
• A Product Backlog of Your Business & Operational Process – As with data, it is equally important to identify the critical business and operational processes that your enterprise will need to be able to operate. This will need to go hand in hand while you identify your critical data sets and system. The systems and data sets that will eventually be part of your DR solution scope will be the ones that are needed to support these critical processes. Think of these process or capabilities as your product backlog. What is critical gets higher priority than others, for instance while your order processing system will be need to part of your DR solution do you really need the systems to support internal procurement process? well, you may or may not depending on your business.
• Break it Down – Technically, smaller wins will increase your probability of success as compared to the big bang approach. For instance if you are aiming for a full fledged DR capability at a remote site in a different geography, you may want to start first by just implementing a remote backup solution and then build upon that to go in for a complete standby. Be cautious here, you do not want to overdo this and decompose your goals too much or too often. I am not a big fan of thumb rules, but I will do an exception here. Break it down to a delivery item that adds value.
• Test Often but Test Agile – Test and validate your DR procedures regularly. You do want to wait till an actual disaster happens to test the effectiveness of your DR solution. At the same time it important that you have a iterative plan that has a DR validation built in periodically. Dont disrupt your existing business process or system to validate or test DR.

Leveraging The Cloud

Building your DR solution over the cloud can help cut the mass and add agility for around the DR solution. It also gives you the flexibility around the actual solution itself, for instance you may opt for a active(warm), always-on DR solution or may go in just for an on-demand passive solution.

Critical factors that influence a lean DR solution built around the cloud could include

• The Time Factor – The essence of having an agile approach to DR is the ability to roll-out the DR solution quickly. You don’t need to invest time and money to setup the upfront massive infrastructure to get going. Starting off using a PaaS or a SaaS model which would host and manage your DR site and solution might work just as well.
• The Cost Factor – One immediate advantage of implementing a DR solution over the cloud is the cost. A DR solution over the cloud which leverages an on-demand model would be more cost effective to roll-out as opposed  to a traditional in house or a even a hosted solution. It is not just the reduction in costs that is a factor here, but also value add that a cloud based business resilience solution brings in by leveraging technologies like server virtualization and rapid data replication to reduce recovery times.
• The Change Factor – DR solutions build on and leveraging the cloud have the ability to pivot quickly.These solutions can be scaled up or down rapidly in response to changing business dimensions. Also since there is seldom any upfront investment on technology, the dependency on the same is also significantly reduced.This allows the solution to be both lean and flexible.
• Solution Robustness – You can quickly and cost effectively build a DR solution that involves Multiple DR Sites via the cloud. With on-demand instance provisioning you can add robustness to your DR solution by having your instances spread across geographic regions. Under a traditional DR solution this was part of the trade-off that organizations had to make due to the cost and time involved.
• A Managed Service Model – Sometimes it might make sense to have a managed model for your DR solution.Under a could based managed model, you let the provider manage the complete disaster recover solution for you, including the initial setup and the ongoing validation of your DR process.

As always we are all ears on listening to your experiences on implementing DR solutions over the cloud. Jump in.

Like debt in general, where it is incurred to meet valid business objectives. There may also be valid cases where this technical debt is incurred for perfectly valid business reasons.Regardless of the reason, debt eventually needs to be paid off and a technical debt is not an exception as well.

However, unlike the financial debt, the technical debt is almost impossible to measure accurately.You do not have specific interest rates or payment schedules but nevertheless it is like any other debt and needs to be paid off (except in a few rare cases which we will touch upon later)

So How Does a Project Incur Technical Debt?

There may be a variety of causes but a few prominent ones could include

As the year 2011 wraps-up, I wanted to take this opportunity to share the top 10 (and interesting) technology and management trends and areas that dominated the scene in 2011. I also touched upon briefly what you can expect to watch within these spaces  the next year, 2012. The most significant technology space to watch out for me personally in 2012 would be the Green Technology space, However I did not specifically include it in the below list. Why? I believe each of the trends listed below will be influced on how Green technology evolves in 2012. Just a mention on this list would not do justice and pehpahs I would rather save this for a different post.

While this list is mainly based on my personal experiences and interests in 2011,  it is also inspired by social network interactions.

1. Agile Management makes further inroads- Agile management continued to make inroads and gain acceptance in 2011. Organizations recognized and realized its benefits. They even adopted various hybrid versions of agile even if they did not go completely agile. They tweaked agile to make it work for their custom needs like reporting, tracking and planning. We also saw PMI finally starting their Agile Project management certification program.

Watch this space in 2012 (for) – While PMI will continue to be one of the most accepted organization certifying and training agile management. There will be other leaders as well. Scrum Alliance for one, which is currently the leader in Scrum training and certification. Agile adoption might also see wider adoption extending beyond the traditional software development space, though i feel it will be still very much be within the IT industry (mostly).

2. Disaster, Risk and Security Management – While these have always been key areas of management, they become more valuable when managing in uncertain times and 2011 was no exception.Industry specific surveys have highlighted the importance of organization managed both risk and security.

Watch this space in 2012 (for) – With computing over the cloud being the frst choice with organization, security, risk and disaster management will possibly be one of the keystones that holds the enterprise’s cloud architecture together.

3. Cloudy with AWS – If  you have to name one company that has propelled cloud adoption it has to to Amazon’s Web Services. The company continued to mature its cloud offerings both directly by extending its platform services across availability regions as well as adding innovative features like supporting multiple network interfaces with Amazon’s Virtual Private Cloud.

Watch this space in 2012 (for) – There is little doubt that amazon will continue to be a leader within the enterprise cloud providers, it will be an interesting space to watch out how challengers like Rackspace for instance will play. Of course Google has been eying this space and will look for consolidation with its cloud offerings for the enterprise.

4. SME Focused Management – This has been the subject of a never-ending debate, project managers or managers in general required to be a subject matter expert. A significant majority of ‘successful’ initiatives I came across in 2011 were led by managers with significant subject matter expertise. Needless to say the demand for these managers was also significantly higher.

Watch this space in 2012 (for) – While there isn’t much to watch out in this space in 2012 or in the near future except for the fact that the debate will continue to rage on. I for one believe that with uncertain times and agile management the talk of the day , the demand managers with the subject matter expertise will outpace supply.

5. Social Media & Google Plus – 2011 was also the year when you could not possibly ignore Social media. Time magazine has the person of the year as “The Protester” , aided with social media. Social media moved beyond sharing updates and pictures to  shaping both geographies as well as brands. Google stormed back into the social media scene with Google+ and they did their homework this time around. With around 70 million active users in 6 months, it looks like they have finally managed to get social media right this time.

Watch this space in 2012 (for)  -  I hate to put my foot in my mouth but 2012  might be just as well the year of Google+. There is also the much anticipated IPO from Facebook. An interesting trend here would also be the segmentation within the social media space with niche palyers like Instagram, Path & Pintrest all fighting it out for spotlight.

6. Managing Big Data – The systems and technology to manage Big Data finally seemed to have arrived in 2011. Thanks to cloud computing, both platform based like Amazon – AWS and service based like cloudera, the technology to exploit these huge datasets are now available beyond large organizations that could afford to deploy multiple clusters of hardware.

Watch this space in 2012 (for) – With the systems and technology evolved, what would be interesting to watch is how organizations ultimately use this data. A small number of organizations have already started doing this, but 2012 will definitely be the year when organizations finally start to exploit these datasets to provide better products and services.

7. Email’s waning its majority – One of my personal favourites,  in 2011 though email continued to be the primary channel for communication for the enterprise, its dominance seemed to be threatened if not completely shaken. Collaboration tools, instant messaging and social media services all played their part in taming the email beast. 2011 is also the year when a large listed technology company went cold turkey and completely banned internal email.

Watch this space in 2012 (for) – While I am pretty certain that 2012 will be no different than 2011 for email with respect to its waning majority, what will be interesting to watch is the organizations that will adopt alternatives and those alternatives themselves.

8. The Statups and IPOs – 2011 was the year for startups and IPOs. There were some really innovative startups like Instagram ,Quora, Launchrock and Stocktwits to name a few. Unfortunately 2011 was also the year for ridiculous IPO offerings, with Groupon leading the pack. While most have them have been subject to market correction since then, there are still some overvalued items out there.

Watch this space in 2012 (for) – Facebook of course will come up with possibly the biggest tech IPO. There are also list of startups that will try to ride on the IPO wave along with Facebook. With a little inspiration, luck and caution you actually might profit from this trend. Despite uncertain times, watch out for the innovate startups that will continue to get the much needed funding and possibly change the way we work and play.

9. Enterprise Project Program Portfolio Management Systems – The EP3M space seemed less crowded this year, however there are still no clear leaders. While Microsoft and Oracle dominate this space with MS Project Suite and Primavera respectively, they are yet to be established are clear leaders within the quadrant . There were some clear challengers this year specially the companies with on-demand, SAAS and cloud based offerings which both the front runners seemed to lack, at least in 2011.

Watch this space in 2012 (for) - This will probably be an interesting space to watch in 2012 as well. Will the dominant players go in for a on-demand agile model or will one of the challengers finally scale-up at an Enterprise level to threaten the front runners.

10. Apple & Steve Jobs – I had to include this one, no matter how much you love to hate apple, they do come up with the most innovative and stable products. This was obviously a mixed year for the tech giant. While the world will continue to miss Steve for his innovation and vision, Apple did prove (once again) that the iPhone continues to be the most popular smart-phone till date.

Watch this space in 2012 (for) – The television revolution. As apple plans to revolutionize televisions like they way it revolutionized the cellphones and music, this space and Apple in particular will be an interesting space to watch in 2012.

So did I get it close for 2011? What do you think will be the most interesting space to watch out for in 2012. Something that I missed?

I have been using Facebook (actively) since 2007 and Twitter since 2009. I also remember completing my profile on LinkedIn early 2007. All of them got me excited but nothing as much as Google + when it launched early this year. I am not saying that Google+ is going to replace all or any of them going forward but what I can say for sure it is going to eat up a significant portion of the social media content out there. Though I was an early adopter, over the last couple of months I have been using Google+ extensively and have been liking it a lot. I think its a simple,uncluttered and does a good job to cut out the social media chaos for me. Here’s why -

Finding Information – Finding information on a specific topic or people who share a common interest is much more fun and effective on Google+. Yes, you do have groups,lists and pages on Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin but both the results and the interface are quite better on Google+. This is where the noise factor comes in, personally when I have tried following or joining groups on the other networks and it has always come with its share noise and the painstaking task of eliminating the noise from information. Sure Google+ is not completely noise free, but it does a much better job comparatively. Quite a few special interest communities have also sprung up all across Google+.

Unique Features – Google+ debuted with some really cool and unique features like sparks, hangouts and circles. Circles allow you to almost completely control how you share information with people in your circles as well as publicly. While twitter almost completely lacks this feature, Facebook’s implementation of lists has been sketchy so far.

Sparks (Saved Searches) on the other hand is a more sophisticated implementation of Google alerts where you can save searches of you favourite topics on Google+ as well as across the web. This adds a more social element to your searches which  is more effective than the tradtional search.

Hangouts is a completely feature brought in to Google+ where you setup a spontaneous video chat session with people from your circles. It is both fun and easy to use. You can setup a hangout with a few clicks. If there is one thing that I don’t like about hangouts is the restriction of having 10 people. Again the restriction of 10 participants per hangout may help in cutting out the chaos. What helps though is that you can use third party tools to record and share Google+ hangouts. I am quite hopeful that Google will have this as an inbuilt feature in the near future.

There is also lack of those annoying apps that you keep pooping up on Facebook adding on to the noise factor. While this may also be due to the fact that Google+ is quite young and Google has not made public all of its APIs.

Seamless Integration – There is a strong possibility that Google is already part of your overall web usage experience and it is all about adding to that user experience. Soon after its launch Google has been integrating Google+ with all its services like search, reader and YouTube. It takes the complexity out of finding, reading and sharing information.It is also very well integrated with the Chrome browser by providing official Google+ plug-ins. In the coming days these integrations will only increase and if you are a google power user you will enjoy the experience even more

A nice short Google+ educational clip

If you are already on Google+ feel free to add me to your circle @ +Sam Palani where I share ideas and posts on a topics ranging from project/program management to photography, from technology to ‘foolish’ investing. If you are not already out there, it’s never late to join in

So while I am most certainly not going to stop using Twitter, Facebook or Linkedin, I have only so much time that I allocate to social media and Google + will be having a share of that time. I am sure that would be the case with most active users. How about you?

Here is an excerpt… ( and the original post)

I personally have not been a big fan of Eureka moments and have always believed that ideas don’t happen in Eurekas, but are actually nurtured over over time (Steven Johnson talks about this in his TED talk – Where good ideas come from) But then again there those moments that which can be game changers or path changers that make you take a different perspective.

My Ah Ha moment relates back to a video Steve Jobs where he is addressing a bunch of awestruck, lucky Stanford Grads.Though I am not a big fan of the iOS(yet), the guy inspires me for his innovation, entrepreneurial skills and resilience. In that classic video Mr Jobs talks about  two things – Staying Hungry and Staying Foolish. The later part kind of resonated with me. After all being foolish we can shed our preconceived notions and ask questions which a “wise” person might hold back. Of course this is not, easy but once you are able to ask questions like a fool you quickly see the benefits. In my own experience I have been able to eliminate, evaluate and  and research just by asking questions like a “fool”. Remember again a fool can ask questions without worrying about the consequences.

So there it was my Ah Ha moment – Being Foolish when it mattered,thanks to Mr Jobs and of course Louis making me discover it once again

RIP Champ!

According to a ‘PMI research’

• 68% of the organizations using Agile techniques would find value in an agile certification.
• 63% of hiring managers would encourage their project managers to pursue an agile certification.

During the pilot phase you are also eligible to get a 20% rebate on the fees if you schedule and clear your certification on or before November 2011.

What you need to be eligible for the pilot certification

• Education – Secondary degree (high school or equivalent) or higher.
• General Project Management Experience – At least 2,000 hours working on project teams within the last 5 years. If you are already a PMP, this requirement will be considered as qualified.
• Agile Project Management Experience – 1500 hours on working in Agile teams within the last 2 years. These are in addition to the 2000 hrs above under the general project management category (cannot be overlapping).
• Agile Project Management Training – 21 contact hour PDUs earned under Agile project management topics.
• Examination – A computer based or a paper based examination.

* There is also a 30 PDU requirement within a 3 year cycle to maintain this certification. already a PMP/PgMP? The PDUs under this category will count towards mainiting your PMP/PgMP certification as well.

Other points

• This is a agile certification – It is not a SCRUM only certification and the candidates are expected to be aware and will be tested on all frameworks that supports agile like  SCRUM, Extreme Programming (XP) etc.
• During the course of the pilot paper based test (PBT) is not available – Just in case
• Unlike other PMI certification examinations you will not get the results (for he pilot program) immediately, but will have to wait until December 2011 (approx) to get your results.

The Bonus
One of the requirements of the PMI-Agile Certified Practitioner certification is to have 21 contact hours of Agile Project Management Training. The PMI-ACP Prep course from lithespeed will help you get that, and more important help you prepare for the examination.

Why lithespeed ?

• Well firstly the instructor Derek Huether , the guy knows his stuff. He is also the voice behind the very popular blog thecriticalpath.info
• Secondly you can get a generous 15% discount code simply using the discount code samx18 on their flagship PMI APC prep course.

So what are you waiting for?

So what makes them such an indispensable tool? While the reasons may be many here are a few key ones

• Project metrics drive key decision making without which most of the decision making process would be just based on guess-work.
• Brings in the objectivity to the status reporting as you can now measure and count the progress made. It gives you that all important baseline to rely upon.
• A key tool for problem solving and carrying out root cause analysis specially in cases where it is not easy to isolate cause from symptoms.
• Enables the project manager in implementing a balanced and effective project control system and effective risk management system.
• Last but not the least, project metrics enable forecasting.

Now getting back to cracking the mystery – The What, How & When

What To Measure
While there can be be numerous metrics that can be computed based onf the phase of the project to the type of the project, most of them will likely fall under the following fundamental categories.

• Scope – One of the basic components of the project management triangle yet difficult to measure (beyond the project scope document). Difficult but not impossible, a few matrics that can be used to measure scope can include
  • Change Requests – Metrics around the number of CRs entered during the project, disposed (accepted Vs rejected) can provide valuable insights around the project scoping exercise.
  • A detailed work breakdown structure – Another way to measure scope is using a WBS to break down scope into more tangible format which can then be mapped with other project phases.
• Schedule – Perhaps the most visible area once the project enters the execution stage, there are quite a metrics that have been documented to baseline,measure and report on schedule. The most common ones include
  • Earned value method used to get key performance indicators on schedule like schedule variance and the schedule performance index. There are many great references on how to calculate these so I will not go into those details here, or maybe save them for a later post.
  • The project schedule mapped with the WBS is another way to baseline and measure schedule.
  • Closely related to the project schedule is the critical path. A critical path assessment can be used to generate metrics around schedule as well

• Cost – Similar to schedule the metrics around the budget are equally critical. A couple of common ones include
  • Earned Value as used to measure schedule can be used to generate metrics around the project cost using indicators like cost variance an cost performance ratios
  • ROI assessment can be used to calculate the return of the investment made on the particular initiative based on the saving incurred or future earnings.
  • Break even analysis , similar to the ROI assessment, the break even analysis can be used to calculate precisely when you would be able to break even on the costs incurred on the project.

How To Measure
With the importance and the categories of project metrics clear, lets move on how best we can measure and generate these project metrics

• Balanced Approach – The approach to metric(s) collection process shuld be a balanced one. It should be taken care to avoid any sudden data variations.They should be capable of covering all important aspects of the area for with the metric(s) have been generated.
• Review Industry Benchmarks – Though project metrics are centric to the specific project, it is often useful to review industry benchmarks where applicable.
• Gain acceptance – It is vital that acceptance around how metrics are collected and reported is attained from all stakeholders to avoid any potential confusion or conflicts. This is also important to ensure support and ownership on the metrics to be able to drive results. If the metrics are going to be used for on-going monitoring it must be agreed upon by everyone.
• Transparent and Actionable – The collection and measurement process itself should be transparent to the audience. This further enables to get a team buy-in on the metric(s).At the same time project metric(s) should be actionable (quantifiable of-course)
• Revision and Updates - Things change during the course of your project, so your metrics may need to be revised, re-baselined  and updated as needed. Remember a stale baseline can be counterproductive.

When To Measure
With project metrics, timing is critical. Though metric collection,analysis and reporting is an ongoing exercise , the type of metric(s) and its usablity may vary. Broadly we can put these into the following three

• At the beginning of the project - These metrics will be based on historical data or raw data. Most of them will be planned estimates.During this phase the collection process itself and the on-going monitoring and reporting process needs to be socialized and agreed upon as discussed in the above section.This is where most of the baselines are also set.
• During the execution phase – This is where the rubber meets the road. The planned and the baselines are measured against the actual. Any revisions or updates are done here. We cannot afford to wait until the end of the project to do these.Metrics generated here will be used for significant decision making and project control.
• At completion of the project – Metric(s) generation does not end with project completion, but goes on into the closure phase. How well did the project do? Of course, you may have a successfully product or an outcome, but how do you measure the success of the project at holistic level? Metric generation and analysis should be part of your lessons learnt exercise.

How do you use metrics within your projects? As usual would be glad for your feedback.

Despite the fact that email ranks number one on the list of top time suckers, it may not be practical to completely avoid email. But is there a way we can minimize the damage and turn it into an asset? Yes – with a little common sense and some basic rules that I have been diligently following. Taking a clue from the agile manifesto, I decided to put them in the same format and set-up a my own email manifesto which I solemnly swear to abide by and hopefully will be able to influence a few good people to adopt the manifesto as well along the way.

The Manifesto

• Will explore and exhaust all other communication channels before choosing to email. Including but not limited an in person communication, a phone call or an IM chat.
• Check and process email only at specific times of the day or better specific days.
• Will maintain a zero inbox daily or as often you check and process email.
• Use email just as a communication tool. Email shall not be used to store and retrieve information as document management or as a task management system.
• All email will have a clear and a specific subject and the content in the email will stick to that subject and only that subject.
• Will be mindful when including attachments in email. Including both type and size of the attachments.
• Will NOT SPAM, will be mindful when doing a ‘Reply All’ and when forwarding email messages.
• Emails threads will be limited to 5 or less. If a subject cannot be covered or resolved within 5 email threads it will be taken off to a different forum.
• Will include the only the people whom the email is addressed to in the TO section. Will use the CC section only in rare cases and will NOT use the Blind Carbon Copy (bcc) option.
• Will not be disrespectful,abusive,coercive, dishonest, manipulative or misrepresent facts in my emails.

Live Manifesto

In the spirit of keeping this manifesto live and flexible your feedback will be very helpful. Would like to hear if you agree/ disagree or want to add in to the manifesto. If nothing else signing the manifesto would be cool as well

Image courtesy – Pictofigo