drunkenpm

2012-01-03T00:00:00.001-06:00

Questioning the "Cost of Sound"

I was listening to an interview on the radio today with one of the authors of a book called Healing at the Speed of Sound. The interview was intriguing enough that I’ve already started reading it, but what stuck with me the most from the interview was a question that was asked about the “cost of sound”. The idea being that any kind of noise around you, ambient noise from an air conditioner, the hum of electricity, water running though a pipe in the wall, children in another room or co-workers in a nearby cube, all have a cost associated with them. Since we can’t actually shut our ears, the way we can our eyes, we are always in listening mode. Even if you wear earplugs or noise cancelling headphones, you are merely swapping one noise for another. Noise is something we can’t entirely block out; our brain will always be processing the sounds around us. The reason that the “cost of sound” question stuck with me so much is because I started thinking about different work environments, how different types of people need different soundscapes to maintain productivity and yet, beyond making sure no one is disruptively loud, we pay little to no attention to sound when we put people together in a workspace.

So, what I’m wondering is, does anyone measure the impact of sound on productivity in an office setting. And, if anyone does, is there a way to translate the negative or positive actual cost (currency) impact of one sound scape over another on a given project? Can changes in sound scape be translated into cost or risk? And, is sound like other environmental conditions?

If the Hawthorne Works studies indicate that simply changing a variable in a work situation will result in increased productivity simply because of change, does this apply to sound? If I start playing Never Mind the Bollocks in the office, will folks be motivated to work more efficiently or quicker? Once their productivity has stabilized, if I replace the Sex Pistols with Kenny G, are they still going to see an improvement?

2011-09-23T11:07:00.000-05:00

#46(ish) Using Social Media. Two Years Later

2011-09-20T09:15:00.000-05:00

Points to Bas

Editing the new episode of Project Potion. Points to @projectshrink (Bas de Baar) for coming up with a reason to actually use Flipbook - to catch up on recent tweets into a specific hash tag.

The new episode includes a look back at how our use (as project leaders) of social media tools has evolved over the past 12-14 months. It should be up in a day or so.

2011-09-19T11:20:00.000-05:00

25 Incredibly Useful iPad Applications
Check out Andrea McDougal's blog post on 25 Incredibly Useful iPad Apps at Masters in Project Management

The site is geared towards helping people find a great graduate program for PM (cough - University of Texas at Dallas - cough), but her recent blog post on iPad apps has some great ideas in it.

2011-08-23T09:38:00.000-05:00

Agile and Project Management Talks at SXSW 2012

Last year I attended SXSW for the first time. While I had intended to spend my days basking in the onslaught of music and film that it is known for, what I actually spent my time doing was focusing mostly on the talks that centered on Agile and Project Management. Each of the presentations on PM and Agile were very well attended. In some cases there was a line waiting to get in, so there is a definite hunger for information at the event. Unfortunately, with the exception of one talk (given by Brett Harned and Pamela Villacorta) the content presented in most of the PM and Agile talks was disappointing.

SXSW 2012 is right around the corner and they’ve opened the area where people can vote on proposed topics. If you’ve got a few minutes, follow the links below to become an SXSW 2012 Panel Picker, search for Agile and PM presentations vote Thumbs Up for the ones you think look interesting. This Spring, there will be another crowd of PMs in Austin who are interested in learning about project management and how to do it better. Help make sure the talks they get to choose from are going to help them raise their game. Who knows… you may end up working with some of them someday.

SXSW 2012 Interactive Panel Picker http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/index/10

SXSW 2012 Music Panel Picker http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/index/12

SXSW 2012 Film Panel Picker http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/index/11

And while you’re voting, you may want to consider…

Project Leadership Through Personal Branding

(ProjectShrink Bas de Baar and Dave Prior)

http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/10995

Developing Music and Software Across a Distance

(Dave Prior with Panda Transport’s Kathy Compton and Thierry Holweck)

http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/12133

2011-07-26T13:24:00.000-05:00

Updatey...

I've been very slack about keeping this blog up to date since the Spring. What can I say, "I ran out of gas. I... I had a flat tire. I didn't have enough money for cab fare. My tux didn't come back from the cleaners. An old friend came in from out of town. Someone stole my car. There was an earthquake. A terrible flood. Locusts! IT WASN'T MY FAULT, I SWEAR TO GOD! "

I'm working on it though and within the next few days I'll have all the ProjectShrink videos updated along with links to some other things I am working on, like my new Projects@Work blog which is called "The Reluctant Agilist".

And next week... NYC! to teach a Merlin class and a 3-day CSM class. Very psyched for that.

More to come...

2011-05-11T09:59:00.000-05:00

Presentations on the Mac, iPads and Project Management

Over the past few weeks I've been able to give a few presentations about doing project management on the Mac and on the iPad. I had a few requests so I thought I would post them.

The first is the presentation I gave in the Philadelphia Walnut St. Apple Store on how to manage projects using a Mac.
Managing Projects on a Mac

The second is the one I gave at the PMI Lehigh Valley Professional Development Day on how to use the iPad as a Project Management tool.
The iPad and Project Management

2011-03-11T10:25:00.001-06:00

The iPad 2 and Project Management

Last year when Apple unveiled the iPad, I, along with countless others were overcome with that all too familiar craving for new gear from Cupertino. Having tried and quickly abandoned several tablets running the other operating system, I was hopeful that the iPad would gain the acceptance it has rightfully earned, but as a project manager, I was mostly curious about how this new device would fit in with my job. The Windows tablets I had tried in the past always seemed to make my job harder. So, when I purchased it, I wasn't exactly sure what I was going to do it… but like I said… The craving…

Since then I've found a number of ways the original iPad enables me in managing projects and best of all, I'm able to use it with Merlin.

So last week when the new iPad was introduced, I was mostly focused on trying to figure out how this new model would enable project managers in a way the first generation didn't. The increase in speed, the lighter form factor are all very cool, but as a PM, those aren't really problems for me when I use the first version. The two enhancements I see in the new model that I think will have the greatest impact on project management, and the workscape in general are the HD video connection and the cameras. Here's why…

The first version of the iPad is a strictly personal device. When I first got it, I spent a lot of time trying to work out how it could be used in a collaborative way. With it's size, ease of use and connectivity, it seemed like it might be viable as a shared device. I was originally thinking it might serve as a great replacement for an Agile task board, and instead of standing around a board, Agile teams could pass it around the war room when they were together, and then, with the connectivity, it could serve virtual teams as well. But, there's not an App for that. The closest viable thing I found was Google' chalkboard - which was cool, but too small to be of any real use. With the new video out and the ability to show the whole screen, we have something even better. In meetings, rather than standing and working at a whiteboard, or a flip chart, we can work on the iPad and have the video show up on a screen. This will give us the same capability to work freehand by using any one of the apps that lets a user write and draw with their finger tip. When we're done, we can store the file in the cloud and share it with whomever we need to. This may not seem like a big deal at first blush, but think about all the time you spent (or have spent) typing up or otherwise capturing information from a whiteboard of flip chart. This would completely remove that step. Yes, we can take pictures of what ends up on the whiteboard or flip chart in a meeting, but it isn't as easy to recall those and update them later when we need to. As soon as someone creates an App that will also record audio and tie it back to the graphic file we create, the iPad will begin solving the same need that both Livescribe and Papershow solve. If the Gen 1 iPad gave us new options, the Gen 2 has the potential to deliver an easier way to work. Given the volume of work most PMs carry nowadays, this could be very significant. (Plus, we could end up with a lot less conference room doubling as storage for those electronic white board that always seem to be broken.)

The new cameras brought me back to something I have been thinking about since the set up was first introduced in the iPhone 4. Project Managers spend a lot of time writing, (editing, correcting, explaining, etc.) status reports. Our job is primarily one of communication and status reports are a critical part of that. However, we now have another option. It may take awhile to become accepted, but it would enable us to communicate far more effectively, in less time, than what we do now. With the self-facing camera it is easy to shoot a quick video and export it to email or iMovie. With the new iPad (or iPhone) PMs could record video status reports in short video status segments, tag them so that it is clear to anyone watching what the relevant topics are, and then post those. (In Merlin, you could even store them in the project file as elements.) Once we have all our snippets done, we could use iMovie on the iPad to assemble a full status report and post that as well. So, for those who want just the pieces relevant to them, they are available. For those who want the full report, we have that too. The argument against this is likely to be that it is faster for a consumer of our status report to just scan through ti quickly if it is written. That may be true, but writing is a limited form of communication when you compare it to video. Think about how many status reports, emails, etc. have been misinterpreted because all the reader had to go on was text. With video, you get facial expression, vocal tone and all those other nuances that can help someone get a clearer picture of when the PM is trying to convey serious concern, or even just make a joke. Think about all the communication struggles we continue to have in working with geographically spread teams and how much of that could be addressed if we were simply able to add additional layers of communication through voice and facial expression. Yes, scanning a text document may be faster, but the question is, does that quick read really provide an effective enough method of information consumption? This one may take a little while to catch on, but it would be hard to argue that increasing the depth of information it offers could do anything other than benefit a project and the people involved.

In both of the above examples, the new iPad has the potential to change how we handle our day to day work as project managers. It may not be Angry Birds, but if it can save you time and help you collaborate and communicate more effectively then it may be as magic as they claim.

2011-03-11T10:15:00.005-06:00

Potion 21 - Dave Goes to Macworld... Again

2011-02-15T09:09:00.000-06:00

Lessons from the Yurt Part 2 - Interview with Kathy Compton

Part 2 of my interview with Kathy Compton from Panda Transport

2011-02-08T10:46:00.001-06:00

Lessons From The Yurt - An Interview with Kathy Compton from Panda Transport

This is one of my all time favorite interviews. Last fall I had the great fortune to meet Kathy Compton and Theirry Holoweck from Panda Transport at the Øredev 2010 conference. One of the really unique things about Panda Transport is that this two person band exists 1/2 in the US and 1/2 in France. In talking to them I realized that those of us who struggle with offshore have a lot to learn from the music world. Kathy has focuses in using vocal techniques and body language as ways of making herself a more effective performer - to me, this ties directly back to a PMs ability to utilize body language, emotional intelligence, etc. to be more effective in our jobs.

This part one of the interview. Part 2 will be posted in a week or so.

2011-01-27T19:52:00.000-06:00

Macworld 2011 for Project Managers - Day 1 Recap

It has been a busy couple of days for ProjectWizards. Earlier this week Frank Blome and I taught a Merlin class here in San Francisco and it was a great success. We had Architects, Marine Biologists, folks from Apple, Google and a number of other companies. After some meetings yesterday we got set for the 2011 Macworld Expo to start today.

Since the departure of Apple from Macworld, the event has continued to scale down, but that is not necessarily a bad thing. This year it was held in a smaller hall in the Moscone Center than in previous years, but the space seemed to be pretty full with a variety of booths. The show still seems to be moving in a more consumer driven direction in that the lion’s share of exhibitors were there to demonstrate products that would be available and appealing to the general public. There are still lots of cases, skins and products that are more about accessorizing devices than actually using them. There is a large area devoted to devices and software that will be more appealing to musicians and the App Area, while smaller than last year, is still filled with a lot of new exhibitors and products.

My main goal was to seek out products that would be valuable to project managers and business. I plan to spend more time on the floor tomorrow and I will hopefully be able to get a few interviews in, but here are the things that stick out for me at the end of one day on the expo floor…

Both ShowWX+ and Papershow by Canson were back from last year. ShowWX+ is a laser pico projector capable of 848x480 resolution. It is about the size of an iphone and weighs only 4.3 oz with the batter. According to the rep I spoke with briefly, it is capable of projecting up to 61 inches of video goodness. However, in their booth, they were projecting video into a small section of an 8 ½ x 11 sheet of paper. The form factor of the projector would be a great thing for anyone who travels and teaches or gives presentations, but I would want to see it on a large screen before hand.

Papershow, on the other hand, actually gave me chills. It looked cool last year, but didn’t seem totally realized. What I saw today was quite different. If you have been reading books like Visual Meetings, by David Sibbet or Back of the Napkin by Dan Roam this is definitely something you’ll want to check out. Papershow comes with a pen, a special USB dongle and special paper. As you draw on the paper with the Papershow pen, what you put to paper appears on your screen and can be projected onto a surface. The writing on the pages is tracked by the camera built into the pen, which records position on the paper by tracking against tiny pixels that you can’t see unless you look very closely. You can change the color od the ink, the width of what you are drawing, etc. Once you are done creating your document, you can simply create a PDF of your work and email it out. I’m going to try to get to spend some time in a one-on-one interview with them tomorrow, but so far, Papershow is my favorite so far.

LiveScribe was there with the new Echo SmartPen and I’m still of the mind that if you are a project manager, you need this pen as badly as you need coffee, aspirin or oxygen. The LiveScribe technology also works on the pixelated paper premise, but the pen records what you write on the page while it is also recording audio. So, if you are taking notes in a meeting, you will have a record not just of what was said, or your written notes of what was said, but they are tied together. So, when the meeting is done, if you tap on the page, it plays back what was recorded while you wrote that particular text. This has saved my butt on more than one occasion and I HIGHLY recommend it.

There is much more I have to write about, but right now I’ve got to head out to the Greatest Party in the World, Cirque du Mac, which ProjectWizards is proud to sponsor. I will have another blog entry, and hopefully a few video snippets posted tomorrow.

Slainte!

2010-12-31T12:24:00.000-06:00

Letting Go of the Concrete Liferaft
http://scrumalliance.org/articles/309-letting-go-of-the-concrete-life-raft

2010-12-23T15:26:00.000-06:00

ProjectPotion 19 - The Year of the iPad

2010-12-23T15:19:00.000-06:00

ProjectPotion 18 - Dave Goes to Øredev

2010-11-16T11:21:00.002-06:00

Øredev 2010 Wrap Up

Someone should give Michael Tiberg a cape!

I’m just back from Øredev 2010 and it was awesome! I am very fortunate in that I have the opportunity to attend and speak at a lot of conferences but none of them are like Øredev.

For the unfamiliar, Øredev is held each fall in Malmo, Sweden. It is put on by Jayway and organized by Michael Tiberg and Emily Holweck (who should also get a cape). This year they drew over 1,000 attendees from all over the world. The primary focus of the conference is development, but the topics addressed cover such a wide range that there is never a moment when you can’t find something that will spark your interest.

The conference kicked off with a Keynote called Mission Critical Agility by Dr. Jeff Norris from NASA. He gave a great presentation on innovation, failure and how unlikely events drive success. It was very inspiring and included some fascinating anecdotes about Alexander Graham Bell, as well as some very cool ARToolKit material about the moon landing. (There is no way I could explain ARToolKit and do it justice, but here is a random YouTube video that will help: http://bit.ly/41Wg0x).

The theme this year was Get Real and the tracks included Java, .NET, Smart Phones, Architecture, Cloud and nosql, Patterns, Agile, Web Development, Social Media, Collaboration, Realizing business ideas, Software Craftsmanship and, the conference’s secret weapon: Xtra. The speakers are encouraged to make their presentations as challenging as possible, so there is rarely a session that doesn’t make you feel like you’re watching a TED video. (And in fact, they taped every session and they will be posted in a few days.)

The Xtra track was an experiment this year and I really hope other conferences start to include tracks like this. Along with the sessions about HTML5, Java Provisioning in the Cloud and Agile Release Planning, the Xtra track had sessions on Understanding hypnosis, the lifecycle of a coffee bean as it makes it’s way into your cup, MIDI, Photography and using your voice and body to become a more effective speaker. While these topics may not seem to fit with the rest of the conference, they provided a balance I’ve not seen before and it made an awesome conference even better. The technical talks I attended challenged me from an intellectual perspective and I can definitely say that being asked to sing part of a human chord in Kathy Compton’s session “Music: the language of the eternal kinderkind” definitely put me out of my comfort zone – but in a good way.

I’ll post an update when the videos are live. If you missed it this year, you may want to start planning to make the trip next year. It is a truly unique thing.

2010-11-03T12:06:00.000-05:00

Øredev 2010

In just a few short days Øredev 2010 will kick off in Malmo, Sweden. I’m really looking forward to getting to participate again. It is hands down my favorite conference to be a part of. The material presented is usually quite challenging and the attendees are a very sharp group.

ProjectWizards Meetup in Malmo, Sweden

While I am are there, ProjectWizards CEO, Frank Blome and I are hoping to be able to meet up with the Merlin users in the area. So if you’ll be in Malmo next week, and would like to join us for a drink and a chat, please respond to this post and let know and I'll get in touch with you to give you the details. We have not set the date or time yet, but will do so as soon as we have an idea of how many folks to expect.

Dave’s Presentations at Øredev 2010

I’ll be giving two presentations at Øredev this year., so if you feel like stopping by, please let me know so I can say Hi. The topics I am speaking on are:

The Burning Man, The Empty Pool and Sit Down Failures in Framework and Collaboration (Track: Agile, Wednesday 16:40 - 17:30)
Social Media and Personal Branding as Project Leadership Tools (Track: Social media, Friday 13:10 - 14:00)

2010-10-11T08:27:00.000-05:00

Interview with Riaan Rottier from Cochlear Ltd.

An interview with Riaan Rottier from Cochlear Ltd. Dave and Riaan discuss how Cochlear has used Agile practices in a traditional project environment, the challenges that approach can present, Agile 2010 and the certification question.

2010-10-05T13:51:00.004-05:00

An Interview with Brian Rabon from BrainTrust Consulting (Audio Only)

An interview (audio only) with Brian Rabon from BrainTrust Consulting. Brian discusses his approach to Project Management, his work in Agile and his experiences in working towards becoming a Certified Scrum Trainer.

2010-09-30T06:00:00.001-05:00

Interview with Fred Kluth from Funny Garbage

Several weeks ago ProjectWizards held our first NYC Tweet Up and Frank Blome and I had the chance to meet Fred Kluth. Fred works as a Interactive Production Manager in NYC for Funny Garbage and last week he was able to take some time out of his schedule for a brief video interview about his role as a project manager, his rules for Facebook and how he was able to use social media to land his gig.

2010-09-26T21:19:00.004-05:00

Why You Suck at Offshoring, Even with Agile
(Recap and Retrospective) - Part 2 of 2

Thushara and I have had a great response to our presentation at Agile 2010. Because there seemed to be interest, we did a recap of our presentation and also held a retrospective. This is part 2 of 2.

2010-09-26T21:11:00.005-05:00

Why You Suck at Offshoring, Even with Agile
(Recap and Retrospective) - Part 1 of 2

Thushara and I have had a great response to our presentation at Agile 2010. Because there seemed to be interest, we did a recap of our presentation and also held a retrospective. This is part 1 of 2.

2010-08-10T00:52:00.001-05:00

Project Potion 17 - Death of the Phone Call

2010-08-05T14:47:00.002-05:00

Offshoring and the Technology Gap

Next week I'll be co-presenting at the Agile 2010 conference in Orlando, Florida with Thushara Wijewardena. Our presentation is called "Why you suck at off shoring, even with Agile". The plan is to discuss and debate some of the issues people run into when they are doing offshore projects. Thushara, who lives in Sri Lanka, will be covering the offshore side and I'll be handling onshore. We've both got a fair bit of experience in the area, but in order to make sure we'd covered all our bases, we interviewed a number of people to get their take on it. Heading into it, I felt pretty confident, based on my experience, that the majority of the difficulties that onshore managers and teams struggle with are brought about by their own approach and an assumption that offshore must learn to adapt to the onshore way of working. My basic argument was that the onshore teams really had to find a better way to adapt how they approached working with an offshore team if they really wanted to get the most out of them. Working with teams spread across the globe, in different time zones, from different cultural and educational backgrounds is never easy, but I do believe that the responsibility for enabling the offshore team falls largely on the onshore team's shoulders.

The most interesting interview I had was with a gentleman I know who comes from India and has been in the U.S. since the 70's. He has years of experience in testing out different ways to make offshore successful. Some of the lessons he has learned seemed to be directly counter to my assertion for the talk, but he had some very solid explanations of how and why he came to those conclusions.

One of the things he said is that there are certain job functions that an onshore team should probably never send offshore. Architect and BA were among these roles. By way of explanation, he offered a story...

The company he ran had been contracted to develop a POS system for use in retail stores in the U.S. He had one of his top leads head over to India to spend time with the team they had formed. The requirements had been fully defined, all the developers were trained and things seemed ready to go. During the discussion of the requirements, the lead asked the team how many of them had ever worked on a POS system before. None of them had. The second question was how many of them had ever seen a POS system before. Only one team member indicated that he had and when he was asked to describe it, he described the back of a cash register. So, while the team was comprised of experienced developers, and they had a full set of requirements, none of them had ever had experience with anything like what they were being asked to develop. Now, while this would not prevent them from actually executing the requirements, without some level of familiarity with what it would be like to interact with such a system, or what the job function of someone who had to use it was like, how likely is it that they'd be successful in their implementation? In this case, they were fortunate that their lead, although born in India, had spend several years in the U.S., knew the client, how they worked, etc. Without his knowledge of how this POS system needed to be used, the team would have been lost no matter how good they were.

What I found most interesting about this was that while I had been focusing on the idea of culture as being a significant stumbling block for onshore teams who are unable or unwilling to adjust how they work to adapt to the offshore teams, I had not considered how the implementation of technology in the day-to-day life of people in one country or another could have such a significant impact on the work. It wasn’t just a matter of the onshore and offshore teams respecting one another, or making sure they all knew how to develop in the same programming language, or that they had well defined requirements. In this case, the fact that none of the team members had ever run across a system of this kind presented a huge challenge and no amount of cultural sensitivity, or training was going to cover the gap created by the varying levels of technology implementation on a day-to-day level.

If you are planning on attending the Agile 2010 Conference in Orlando and would like to hear more of what Thushara and I have learned during our research for the presentation, please join us on Thursday, August 12 at 11 AM in room A-4.

And if you have any feedback on the above, I'd love to hear it.

2010-07-28T13:22:00.000-05:00

Project Potion 16 - The Yeti