My team just completed an aggressive project to release a new, on demand, interactive report for our leadership. New business focus created the need for a different approach, so we undertook the challenge to rethink how we delivered this important data.

We worked the project in what we lovingly call our “scrum butt” approach. It’s not quite Agile/Scrum — it doesn’t have the discipline of these formal models — but it leverages the nimbleness of these approaches and lets our project team and experts leverage their creativity to solve problems as they work the project.

We started by confirming the need. It was well-enough defined and had urgency. Then we scoped a possible solution and provided some mock-up info. We “socialized” (I hate that term) the concept with leadership and a few key stakeholders. Surprisingly, this was enough to get international travel approval from 2 different departments (business and IS&T) for 2 team members from Germany to travel to our USA headquarters for 2 1/2 weeks to work this project.

We continued working on “socializing” the scope within our team and with a larger team of stakeholders and contributors. We assembled leaders, architects, and developers from 3 different departments to show case various solutions that already existed in this space. The goal was to get some agreement on a single future direction for all these silo’d tools. We were very pleased that everyone felt the same mandate and sense of community across silos. We followed the show case with another session to explore a new technology platform that might serve our own project and the next iteration of other existing tools. Again, we were surprised and pleased to find ready agreement in a common direction.

Finally, our team arrived on site and work began.

And you’re probably thinking that I skipped a few steps in my story. Not really. When the team arrived on site, we had a common vision and high-level outline of the larger buckets of work that needed to be delivered: a new data layer, a few key data problems solved, the interface of the tool built, and the PM side (communication, launch, training).

One key step that we skipped was gathering requirements. In this case, the requirements really were already gathered. We took the last 6 months of urgent reporting requests and the most recently delivered reports that had gone through several iterations already as our set of requirements. This way, we knew we had the salient things that were really needed and whose value had been proven despite some key data and platform weaknesses. This saved us from what typically becomes an uncontrolled expansion of requirements when we ask the open-ended question: “What do you need?”

With that high-level scope in mind, and documented very carefully on the war room white board (LOL), the team dug in and started rebuilding our earlier mockups in this new tool platform. This refined the scope, uncovered new problems, challenged some scope assumptions, etc. Every few days, we vetted conclusions with a few key stakeholders. We kept getting validation, and kept building, arguing, changing our  minds, rebuilding, etc.

In the 2nd week of the project, we had a workable alpha version that we demo’d to the leadership team. They loved it and it validated all our assumptions and decisions. We finished refining it and it will launch on 05 Dec.

It’s loose. It’s sloppy. It’s nimble. It’s free. It’s creative. And it really does work.

But what makes it work? A team of people who work together all the time, who know each other, who are experts in their field, who know and live with the business requirements every day, and who are motivated to delivery something valuable and exciting.

You won’t find it in a text book. And purists will cringe and point out quite correctly all the risks and problems.

All I know is that we hit the mark and delivered in less than a month.

Related posts:

1. Project Communication requires data, not rhetoric, not guesses
2. Mind Mapping Project Planning
3. Wrong Scope Leads To Surprise Costs

During the month of December 2011, you can save $20 (10%) on the PDU Podcast™! Order now and save 10% or $20 on a 1-year subscription to the PDU Podcast™! Click the links below to order. Upon checkout, use the discount coupon code Dec11. This discount coupon code is only good through the end of December!

If you’re PMP certified, then you need to be earning PDUs. There are lots of ways you can earn PDUs, some free, some very economical, and some downright expensive.

One of the most economical ways to get high-quality PDUs is by subscribing to the PDU Podcast™. Earn as many PDU’s as you like from PDU Podcast™. PDU Podcast™ is published by a PMI Registered Education Provider (R.E.P.) and therefore the PDU Podcast™ offers “Category A” PDUs. There is no limit to how many PDUs you can earn in this category.

Click here to learn more.

Related posts:

1. Time to get PDUs again
2. Going to certify PMP? Save now on PrepCast
3. PM Training This Week

I’ve been looking at Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) again lately. I was coaching a new brand project manager on some basics, and found myself once again focusing on the WBS and its value to the PM’s planning and control.

• The key point I drove home on WBS was that it’s the full scope of the project: If it’s not in the WBS, it’s not part of the project.
• I also showed her the various forms a WBS takes. We looked at a current small project that we’re planning and roughed out a WBS example using XMind (xmind.net).
• Using XMind, I also showed her how the WBS is then sequenced to a project network, and how some basic delivery dates produce a Gantt chart. We did all that in XMind, but it’s feature set isn’t very complete, but it’s helpful for a quick view.
• We then took our WBS example and entered it into OpenProj, an opensource, free PM management tool that looks a little like MS Project. That produced a much better Gantt chart. It was the first time she’d seen any of these tools, so it was good to take a rough example from concept through WBS to Gantt.

All of these ideas are covered very effectively in Josh Nankivel’s WBS Coach package. My new PM will be getting her copy in a week or so.  Read more about WBS Coach here. If you need a more interactive, Q&A experience to learn about WBS, consider Josh’s PM eLearning site.

Have you used WBS Coach? What’s your take?

No related posts.

Are you looking to certify PMP soon? If so, you may have landed on my blog before as I’ve written about my certification experience and various training and exam prep options that some of my colleagues and I have used.

Among those options, one of my favorites is PM PrepCast by Cornelius Fichtner. As I’ve said before, it wasn’t the tool I used to prep the exam because I didn’t know about it when I prepped for the exam. But I found it later and have been duly impressed. It’s complete, economical, and effective.

Cornelius hasn’t raised the price for several years, but is going to effect a price increase from $99 to $129 on 01 Jan 2012. So, if you think this is the route you want to go, you may want to buy now. Cornelius includes future upgrades, so don’t worry about buying too early — you’ll always have his latest stuff available to you.

To check out PM PrepCast, check out my write-up here.

Have you used PM PrepCast to prepare for the PMP exam? Comment below and tell us how it worked out for you!

Related posts:

1. PM Prepcast – A Review
2. PM Prepcast: First Impressions before Reviewing
3. PMP – To Certify or Not To Certify

There. I’ve made the first pass at separating Professional social networking and personal social networking. I’ll do a little more of that over time, I think.

Unfortunately, to do that requires the socially awkward and mildly offensive act of “unfriending” people on Facebook and rebuilding that network on LinkedIn. I made a huge point tonight of sending new LinkedIn invites to anyone I “unfriended” in Facebook tonight, and I trust that these really cool people from my professional life are equally as busy and will understand the shift.

Of course, I make a fun rant at the game posts, etc., but the real driver here is that I really have trouble sorting through the longer style FB posts to see my family things. I prefer Twitter for its forced brevity — evidence notwithstanding.

And now that I’m shifting more professional network to LinkedIn, I need to expand my active participation in that network, too, lest I be guilty of not shifting that network but abandoning it. I am more active on Twitter than any other social network, and that remains my preference by far.

So, if you’re from my professional life — come see me on Twitter (@MaxWalkerPMP) or LinkedIn (/in/MaxWalker)!

If you’re from my personal network, you probably still ought to follow me on Twitter (@MaxWalker), ’cause child, I still hate this Facebook thing and you won’t see a lot of me here. You’ll see more on Twitter.

Ciao!

Related posts:

1. Exploring Professional Use of Social Media vs. Privacy and Safety
2. Rewards — and Merry Christmas!

Recently, we brought one of those aggressive PMP exam prep boot camps onsite to prepare roughly a dozen folks to take the PMP exam. Unfortnately, a handful of the attendees failed. And that makes me question the advisability of this exam prep approach.

The boot camp style training is very up front about its approach. It’s not about learning project management or even learning PMBOK. It’s about preparing for and passing the certification exam — drills, memorization, and test taking techniques. You show up Monday, and you take the exam on Friday.

And maybe you take it again.

And maybe you repeat the class later and then take it again.

This approach doesn’t resonate with me. Still, it does resonate with some of my very highly esteemed colleagues, and it has been successful for some of them. But not for others. One colleague took the course, took the exam, repeated the exam later, retook the course, and finally passed on the 3rd try. That’s about $2,500. Twice.

I took a prep course, too, mind you. It was a weekly long training at the local university professional training extension. I made some valued professional contacts. The course was not a rigid exam prep course, however. It was most valuable it explaining PMBOK terms, logic, and approach and helping the students to translate their considerable experience into that language, to identify holes in their experience (none of us practices every PMBOK principle, it would be wrong to in most cases), and to plan out our study to learn PMBOK material and fill in those knowledge gaps. I took the exam 6-8 weeks later and passed. That was about $1,000.

In hindsight, I think I’d have fared better using the PM Prepcast about which I’ve written before. For about $100, you get the same benefits of the course I took: PM knowledge presented in PMBOK language. You take it at your own pace, letting you translate your experience into PMBOK language. That time also helps to reinforce your core PM knowledge and explore and expand some new PM skills while you’re preparing for the exam. Finally, Cornelius offers some complementary materials for those who like memorization drills.

I’ve written about all this before here. As I start working on my 2nd 3-year PDU cycle, I’m reminded of my own exam prep experience, the learning that I enjoyed, and the struggles that some of my colleagues have gone through by trying to take some exam shortcuts.

Hopefully, some of the reminiscing will be helpful to you if you’re getting ready to take the PMP exam. Good luck!

Related posts:

1. Going to certify PMP? Save now on PrepCast
2. Track and Report Your PM Hours for the PMP Exam Application
3. New PMP Colleagues!

Well, my first PMP cycle just completed last week or so. I now start my 2nd, 3-year PMP cycle.

What does that mean? Well, it means that it’s time for me to start earning PDUs again.

Now, let’s be clear. Even though I got my 60 PDUs all during my first year, I didn’t stop PM study, learning, or coaching. In fact, until it was interrupted by a recent company acquisition, we were on track to offer our 2nd PMP Fundamentals course internally here. It was going to start and finish before I could earn any more PDUs off it, so I was working hard to spread that wealth to the 4-5 other PMPs in my area. Company integration work is going to delay that training for a while, but we’ll pick it up again, I’m sure. There was a lot of interest in it.

So, how do I plan to do the PDU’s this time? Since I’ve found Astro Player for my Android device, podcast listening is way easier, so I think I’ll start with the PDU Podcast and PM Podcasts. Cornelius has really set up a a couple of nice systems, easy to document and report for PDUs, easy to listen to, and a good range of topics and material for keeping things fresh without being overwhelming.

• You can earn up to 30 PDUs (Category C) with the Free or Premium version PM Podcast.
• You can earn unlimited PDUs by subscribing to the PDU Podcast.

Because I end up doing a fair amount of mentoring and training that count for PDUs, I don’t need to try to do it all with podcasts, so I like using Cornelius’ Premium PM Podcast. But I highly recommend Cornelius’ PDU Podcast. I know his quality presentations, and if you’re not going to pursue a variety of PDU activities, his is a great, simple, quality approach.

Related posts:

1. How I got all my PDUs in 1 year
2. Save $20 on the PDU Podcast™ during December
3. PM Training This Week

I love doing quarterly and annual performance reviews. That might sound sarcastic when you read it in print, but it’s true. It’s one of my favorite things about managing people. I really enjoy reviewing successes and deliverables. I enjoy the conversations that confirm or adjust priorities and focus. Sitting down to visit with my people 1:1 is very rewarding.

Most managers work within some kind of performance review structure. From what I can tell, most of us work within an appraisal structure that imposes a bell curve for performance ratings.

Bell curves, or a normal distribution, make a lot of sense in the world. They occur naturally in large populations in the natural world. I remember studying this in school, and found that observation very interesting. So, it makes sense that one would ask managers to apply such a standard. If you accept that a bell curve distribution occurs naturally, then one must accept that a manager’s tendency to rate his team members too highly and to end up with a ratings distribution that’s too heavy on the upper end is unnatural. So, you impose a bell curve standard to encourage more correct ratings.

There is also research that talks about the negative impacts of imposing bell curve distributions too strictly in populations that are too small and in populations where you’ve already done some pruning or culling — workforce reductions — over time. In other words, if you’ve done your job as a management team over time, you’ve probably improved the skill set of your staff people, improved their productivity, improved their dedication and motivation, and “managed out” non- and under-performers. You’re left with a finely tuned, well-performing team.

Does a bell curve fit that population? Researchers seem to be divided (surprise!) about that.

Regardless of the research, you probably still are required to impose the bell curve. And that probably means that you end up under-rating some employees.

I found such a model morally offensive when I was a university student, and I find it so now.

But that’s irrelevant.

I manage employees within a larger organization and I have certain requirements imp0sed on me by the the performance management models of my organization. It’s my job and responsibility, both literally and ethically, to do that as well as I can and ans sincerely as I can.

So rather than spinning wheels whining about the model, the effective manager’s focus needs to be on how to apply that model properly and still maintain staffing motivation and commitment among that well-performing organization. After all, they’re not idiots, and they know the model, too.

So what are your ideas on how to do that?

I tend to do things very transparently. The organization has shared the model and its distribution guidelines with all staff; HR did that. So I focus on the employee’s own successes, how well they’ve met objectives, the impact of those objectives and deliverables to the organization. I talk about professional competencies (part of the model) and where has been growth, where there are strengths, and where there is room to improve. I express my sincere and heart-felt appreciation for their contributions both personally and professionally to the team and the organization. I talk about the model and its constraints, and the resulting comparative nature of the ratings. I’m open about my own feelings about the weakness of the model, but the realities of the environment in which we work — and I help them understand how widely this model is used. Then we talk through rating, if the employee has any angst about that.

How do you do that? What ideas can you provide?

No related posts.

I’ve been on a simple phone for a while. I just recently took the plunge and went back to a smart phone. Instead of Blackberry, I went Droid. Droid2, to be precise. I’m not an Apple kind of guy — way to open source minded for that — and Droid is satisfying my smart phone cravings at every turn!

Today, I spent a few minutes testing out some of the excellent PM podcasting and training options on the Droid. I’ve been using these on an more simple MP3 player for a while and writing about their effectiveness. Now here’s a quick view and how they hold up on the the Droid.

Software and Subscribing

For my Droid Podcasting software, I’m using Google’s “Listen.” Find it in the Droid Market.

If you’re a Google Chrome user on your desktop, subscribing to various podcasts can be made even simpler by installing Chrome-to-Phone on both your desktop browser (extension) and the Droid (app). Find the appropriate web page on your desktop, push it to the phone, then click the subscribing link on the phone. The Droid will recognize the XML podcast format and ask via which app you want to subscribe. Nice and smooth.

Podcasts and the Like

• The Project Management Podcast (Free & Premium versions available): The Project Management Podcast by Cornelius Fichtner is a straightforward podcast and it plays predictably very well on the Droid via the Listen app. To subscribe, visit http://www.project-management-podcast.com, then choose either Premium Download or Free Download, and follow Cornelius’ excellent and complete instructions about subscribing on different platforms / tools. Most simply, identify the direct feed URL and enter it manually into the Listen app.

• The Project Management PrepCast (PMP exam prep): Cornelius, the author, is working on better Droid access (see this link). Until then, here’s how I get it to work. It works very well! The PrepCast consists of Audio, Video, and PDF resources.
  • Video feed: You can subscribe via Google Reader to get access to the video. Install the “gReader” app on your Droid. On your desktop, subscribe to the PrepCast using the Google Reader instructions that Cornelius sends you after you subscribe. Then, in gReader on the Droid, click the episode you want. On the info page, click the globe icon at the bottom (tap the screen once to see the action icons). On the resulting browser page, click the Download link. The video then launches on the Droid video player. It plays nice and smoothly.
  • Audio-only: “Listen” is an audio-only software, but you can use it perfectly well for the PrepCast to get audio resources. It even plays the video resources audio tracks for you.  After you buy your subscription, Cornelius will email you instructions for subscribing. Launch Listen on your Droid and click to add a new subscription. For the URL, use the short iTunes URL that Cornelius will provide you. It will subscribe quickly and easily.
  • PDF resources: Use gReader to launch the PDF downloads. As with Video feeds, open the item in gReader that you want to access. On the info page, click the globe icon at the bottom (tap the screen once to see the action icons). On the resulting browser page, click the Download link. The file download will commence and be shown on your Droid status / notification bar. Open the notification bar to click the PDF file once the download is complete. It will launch in your PDF viewer (mine is QuickPDF).

• The PDU Podcast: The PDU Podcast by Cornelius Fichtner is a traditional podcast and can be subscribed the same way as you subscribed to the Project Management Podcast (above).

• PMStudent’s e-learning: PMStudent’s e-learning system consists of forums, video lesson files, and audio interviews by Josh Nankivel. I find that I can access most of these simply via the browser. Go to elearning.pmstudent.com and login to browser the various resources. The video users an embedded player on the browser.  It works via the browser on my Droid, and I can even double-tap it to zoom it to full screen, but it’s not optimized for mobile and I can’t control playback beyond pause-play. Still, I can successfully access it during my commute on the van pool, so I have no complaints, eh!

Update (2010-11-09): Josh is in the process of updating course content to be mobile-compatible. As of today, Lessons 1, 2 and 7 are all mobile compatible with m4v download links. When you click the “iPod/Mobile m4v” link, the Droid downloads the m4v file. Once the download is complete, you can launch it with a single tap from the expanded notification bar. It launches into the native video player. Nice job, Josh!

• PMStudent’s WBS Coach: The WBS Coach is a downloadable package from Josh Nankivel at PMSTudent.com. Depending on which package you buy, you’ll have video, audio, and pdf files. Because this package does not require a subscription, you don’t need to worry about setting it up in gReader or Listen. Instead, simply put the expanded package on your SD card in a dedicated directory/folder. Then, use a file manager such as ASTRO (see Droid Market), to list the files and launch (click) the file you want to access. The files will open in the default audio, video, or pdf view apps — or ask you which to use. It’s very straightforward, just like accessing it on your desktop via your file manager (Explorer, Nautilus, Dolphin, Konqueror, whatever).

• PM411.org: PM411.org is a traditional podcast and can be subscribed the same way as you subscribed to the Project Management Podcast (above). Visit http://www.pm411.org on your desktop browser and identify the RSS feed URL (currently, it’s http://www.pm411.org/feed), and enter that URL manually into the Listen app.

• What’s Up in PM? What’s Up in PM is a traditional podcast and can be subscribed the same way as you subscribed to the Project Management Podcast (above). Visit http://whatsupinpm.com/ on your desktop browser and identify the URL at “Subscribe to feed” (currently, it’s http://www.whatsupinpm.com/rss), and enter that URL manually into the Listen app.

How’s it working for you? I’ll be interested to hear from you!

Related posts:

1. PM Prepcast – A Review

I just put up a page here on CottagePM.com to talk about the need for file backups. “Duh,” you say? But are you backing up your project files? I didn’t think so.

You’ll be sorry if you don’t back up those project files.

Click here to check out the cross-platform solution I’ve adopted for my own backups. I recommend it.

Related posts:

1. Example WBS from my new small project