Good Customer Service

This post is relatively short and sweet.  Today I got my first Verizon Wireless bill.  It had an initiation fee of $35.00 on it.  Seriously?  I realize we all need to make a buck but this was ridiculous.  When setting up my account, I didn't even talk to anyone.  I did everything online. I called Verizon Wireless, since they don't have a Twitter account. (that's right, I asked them)  I realize the agent on the other side had to have a script she had to follow.  I couldn't be too demanding.  I was quick and too the point.

Hi, I'm a new Verizon Wireless customer.  I got my first bill and there is a $35 charge for initiating the phone.  I don't recall reading anything about this fee and I think it's excessive.  What can you do to make me feel better about this situation?

The agent paused for a few seconds.  She apologized and said I should have seen something mentioning the charge on the last screen before I purchased my plan.  Regardless, she appreciated the fact that I am a new Verizon Wireless customer and offered me one month free voice service. ($39.99)

That's all it took.  I'm a happy customer and I wanted to tell others.  Just remember, when providing good customer service, a little empathy goes a long way.

Like these images?  Find them at Pictofigo

Evernote Site Memory

If you're like me, you're getting older and your memory is starting to slip.  So, to combat that, I added a new feature to The Critical Path site.  It's call Evernote Site Memory. I've been a long time Evernote user.  They just created this new product called Site Memory, which allows you to clip an blog post or web page.  I hope you find it useful.

To start, get yourself a free Evernote account.  Click on the Elephant icon on my page that is labeled "clip".  It will grab the blog post or page and add it to your Evernote account.

Enjoy!

August PMP Certification Numbers

I know what you're thinking.  Derek, why oh why do you post these PMI numbers ever month?  Where's the value? Well, I'm kind of fascinated by a theory called diffusion of innovations. It's a theory of how, why, and at what rate new ideas and technology spread through cultures.

There was a book published in 1962 by a fellow named Everett Rogers, who defined an adopter category as a way to classify individuals within a social system.  The adoption of an innovation follows an S curve when plotted over a length of time. The categories of adopters are: innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards(Rogers 1962, p. 150)

Innovators

Innovators are the first individuals to adopt an innovation. Innovators are willing to take risks, youngest in age, have the highest social class, have great financial lucidity, very social and have closest contact to scientific sources and interaction with other innovators. Risk tolerance has them adopting technologies which may ultimately fail. Financial resources help absorb these failures. (Rogers 1962 5th ed, p. 282)

Early Adopters

This is the second fastest category of individuals who adopt an innovation. These individuals have the highest degree of opinion leadership among the other adopter categories. Early adopters are typically younger in age, have a higher social status, have more financial lucidity, advanced education, and are more socially forward than late adopters. More discrete in adoption choices than innovators. Realize judicious choice of adoption will help them maintain central communication position (Rogers 1962 5th ed, p. 283).

Early Majority

Individuals in this category adopt an innovation after a varying degree of time. This time of adoption is significantly longer than the innovators and early adopters. Early Majority tend to be slower in the adoption process, have above average social status, contact with early adopters, and seldom hold positions of opinion leadership in a system (Rogers 1962 5th ed, p. 283)

Late Majority

Individuals in this category will adopt an innovation after the average member of the society. These individuals approach an innovation with a high degree of skepticism and after the majority of society has adopted the innovation. Late Majority are typically skeptical about an innovation, have below average social status, very little financial lucidity, in contact with others in late majority and early majority, very little opinion leadership.

Laggards

Individuals in this category are the last to adopt an innovation. Unlike some of the previous categories, individuals in this category show little to no opinion leadership. These individuals typically have an aversion to change-agents and tend to be advanced in age. Laggards typically tend to be focused on “traditions”, have lowest social status, lowest financial fluidity, oldest of all other adopters, in contact with only family and close friends, very little to no opinion leadership.

Certification as an Innovation

So, what does a certification have to do with innovation?  I'm trying to draw a parallel between the industry adoption of the credential compared to diffusion of innovation.  Every month I get a copy of PMI Today and I traditionally annotate data points.  I have them as far back as September 2006.

January

February

March

April

May

June

July

August

New PMPs (Overall)

3,714

3,713

5,344

4,718

3,985

4,630

3,687

3,965

Total Active PMPs

367,619

371,014

375,959

381,111

385,096

389,726

393,413

397,378

When I look at the data from the last 4 years, the certification velocity has remained relatively consistent. (send me an email if you want the spreadsheet) For the month of August, those with the PMP certification increased to 3,965. There are now a total of 397,378active PMPs.

The questions that I pose to you, the reader, are

Where do you think the PMP credential is on the chart listed above?

Where are we on the bell curve?

Is the PMP in the early adopter, early majority, or early stage of the late majority?

Reasonable Doubt

This last week, I had the honor and frustration of serving on a jury in a criminal trial.  By working with so many stakeholders in my day-to-day activities, I figured it shouldn't be too difficult to use the same methods with witnesses and with my jury peers.  What was the goal?  Given the evidence, presented by both the prosecution and the defense, decide (as a group) if the defendant had been proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.  Unfortunately, being a juror was unlike managing regular stakeholders, where they can all maintain their own perspective throughout a project.  As a member of the jury, we had to offer a unanimous verdict; Guilty or Not Guilty.  The other very challenging thing we dealt with was a subjective term (compared to objective) called reasonable doubt.  Until all of the evidence was presented and we were asked to deliberate on the verdict, we were not allowed to speak to each other.  Only at that time were we able to define what reasonable doubt was.  Only then were we allowed to compare notes from the trial and come to a collective agreement. So that you understand why it was so challenging for use to reach our verdict, I'll condense two days of testimony into a few paragraphs.

The victim was a 73-year-old woman.  The defendant was a 21-year-old man.  After arriving home from taking the bus one dark winter night, the victim said she was assaulted by the defendant on her doorstep and her purse was stolen.  When she appeared on the stand, she said she had never seen him (the defendant) before but she would never forget his face.  When interviewed by the police the night of the attack, her son who lived with her told the police that she described the attacker to him as looking like the boy who had helped her with her groceries in the past.  The son knew who had helped her in the past and gave the police a name.  The victim was sent to the hospital and the police met her there with a series of photographs to make a positive identification.  She pointed to the defendant's picture and then another saying it he looks like him but then pointed back to the defendant and said that it was him, adding that he was on the bus with her that night.  The officer did NOT circle the photo like he normally did, when a victim makes a 100% positive ID of an attacker.

The day after the attack, the defendant was interviewed by the police.  He said he remembers seeing her on the bus but he could never do such a thing to her.  He said that he had helped her with her groceries in the past.  When he was asked where he was at the time of the assault, he said he was at his cousin's house playing video games.  Oddly enough, the cousin never appeared in court to corroborate his story.  When the cousin's wife testified, she said he was not there that night.

There was no other evidence offered.  The contents of the purse were never found.  The cell phone and food stamp card in the purse were never used.  So, what happened when the jury was asked to deliberate?  We compared notes and we debated.  When the foreman asked how many of us thought he was guilty, almost all of us put up our hands.  When the foreman asked who thought the prosecution had proved his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, everyone put there hands down but one guy.

We needed to have 100% agreement.

My argument to him was, it would be a terrible tragedy that IF this guy would be convicted of a crime for no other reason than he had helped this lady with her groceries in the past and he was on that bus that night.  Nobody was debating, including the defendant, if he was on the bus or if he had helped her with her groceries before.  But nobody could prove that he was at the scene of the crime.  By reading his body language, several of us believed he was not an innocent person but we were uncertain he was guilty of this particular crime.  The final juror lamented and we rendered a verdict of not guilty.

The defendant burst into tears as our foreman stated not guilty to each of the three counts.  The prosecution then asked each of us to stand and respond guilty or not guilty.  One by one, we responded "Not Guilty".  The judge told the defendant he was free to go.  We were then told to return to the jury room.  We all agreed we should have felt more satisfaction in freeing this guy.  Moments later, the judge entered the chamber and informed us that the defendant had been charged in the past with the same thing, assault and theft.  She said the court was not allowed to give us this information and added that she believed, based on the evidence presented, that we would find him not guilty.

As I shook my head, the juror who sat next to me in the jury box said the right thing.

Though knowing this guy has done this before kind of bothers me, but I would rather set a guilty man free than to convict an innocent one.

Image: Pictofigo

Luck versus Opportunity

Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity - Seneca (Roman philosopher). Yesterday, I finally pulled the trigger on transferring the blog from Godaddy to PowerVPS.  I saw an opportunity to transfer my blog over to cloud hosting versus just sitting on a shared drive.  My blog now joins my other properties, PM Prep Flashcards and PDU Library. In the days leading up to the transfer, I made sure I had my recent backups (both files and databases).  Note that my app developers are distributed and using Subversion so source code has always been safe. The only thing at risk was my blog and I have multiple copies in multiple locations.  If you're reading this, it means we're running on new hardware and a new network.  For the most part, the transfer went well.    There never seems to be a good time to transfer a domain and when you have a blog running on Wordpress, you also have to be prepared for a few hiccups.  If you're lucky, you don't run into any issues.

Well, the site is about 95% up.  Because I still need to configure email, related to the domain, I don't have the contact form displayed.  I also have a few back-end issues, each related to server configuration.  None are a big deal and I think the site will be 100% by the end of the day.  Now if only the DNS would propagate the change in IP faster.

I look forward the future, now that this one monkey is off my back.  I'm not 100% rid of Godaddy but I learned some lessons from this domain transfer.

5 Twitter Retweet Rules

I spend a lot of time online, perhaps too much.  I read blogs and tweets and engage people wherever and whenever I can.  Using all of these methods of communications is not necessarily for me to just spout project management doctrine.  I look to share ideas to better myself and hopefully make life a little easier for others. It doesn't matter if it's a lifehack, a web app, or discovering a blog.  There is a lot of cool stuff out there and every day I find and learn something new.

Once in a while something does rub me the wrong way.  It might be someone trying to pick a fight in the blog comments or maybe it's someone flooding my Twitter stream with noise.  This weekend it was too little sleep in combination with too much Twitter noise.

As many Twitter users know, the more followers you get, the louder your megaphone.  To counter that, the more people you follow, the louder the noise.  The noise can sometimes be deafening.

I usually see the same topic cycle through my Twitter stream 4 or 5 times before I finally click on it.  What I like about this process is that it's organic.  The link seems to increase in value the more people I listen to tweet about it.  Once it hits critical mass in my head, I check it out.

So, what's the rub?

This weekend, I had over half a dozen people tweet the exact same thing at the same time.  My Twitter feed was momentarily flooded by people who subscribed to a website.  Rather than having people I follow retweeting the link organically, the site sent out the tweet.  That feature deprecated the value rather than increasing it.  Though we all may be fighting for positions in the stream, hoping someone will hear us, I like to follow a few simple rules.

My Twitter Retweet Rules

1. If you read something notable and it provides value, retweet it
2. If you read something that is not notable or does not provide value, do not retweet it
3. If someone I trust and respect tweets something, I see value
4. If more people I trust and respect retweet the link, I see even more value
5. If several people tweet the exact same thing at the exact same time, all value is deprecated

Graphic: Pictofigo

An evening in the ER

You sometimes forget how fragile life can be, until you find yourself sitting in a hospital emergency room. A few days ago, our son celebrated his 5th birthday.  My wife threw him two parties; one was with his friends and the other was with family.  We believe our adventure began at the first party.  Though the party was private, it was in a public place around lots of other people.  Within 48 hours of the first party, our son was lethargic and complaining of a headache.  He complained of being cold but was running a fever.  Next thing ya know, he was tossing his little cookies.  That's when his experience ended and my wife's began.  My wife then complained of a headache and waves of hot and cold.  The headache got worse...and worse...and worse.  Since she has a history of migraines, she took medication with the hope it would stop it.  Then she got sick to her stomach, just like our son.  Unlike our son, she didn't get better.

Sunday night into Monday morning was rough.  She didn't sleep due to the "migraine".  I stayed home from the office so I could take care of our son.  Monday night turned into Tuesday and still the migraine got worse.  But this wasn't a normal migraine and the medication wasn't stopping it.  She called her doctor and waited.  After a few hours, and her doctor not returning her urgent call, she had enough.  It was time to go to the Emergency Room.  We called a family friend, who picked up our son, and we were on our way to the next phase of our adventure.

When I think of the ER, I have thoughts of sitting in a waiting room for 6 hours with people bleeding profusely from their heads or coughing like they have tuberculosis.  We made our way to Frederick Memorial Hospital (FMH).  I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised by the service we received.  I could include a few project management analogies in here but I'll try to stick to the story.  It took about 5 minutes to check in.  (symptoms, medications currently taking, age...)  We sat in the relatively empty waiting room for about about 20 minutes before they took us to triage.  Before being called, we saw them call the oldest and the youngest in the room and someone they flew in by helicopter.  It was interesting to see the prioritized patients moving in and out of the waiting room.  While in triage, they asked a few more questions and slapped and armband on her wrist.  A nurse appeared and told us we were being taken to "Fast Track".  She escorted us through a few doors to an area I would describe as a medical cube farm.

Within an hour, she had been seen by a nurse.  30 minutes later, a physician's assistant came.  30 minutes later, my Vicodin drugged wife and I were leaving the hospital.  So, what was causing my wife this excruciating pain?  The staff believe she was exposed to a virus that has been going around.  Instead of just making her sick, it infected a cranial nerve.  The nerve was swelling, causing the pain.

I'm still a little pissed that her doctor didn't call her back until today.  Thanks for nothing!  I would give the hospital a pretty good rating on a few things.  They definitely managed client expectations.  I literally expected a 6 hour wait.  We were in and out in less than 3 hours.  They had free WiFi.  What can I say, I like my WiFi.  It helped pass the time.  They kept us informed of what was going to happen next.  I think communications is key to keeping the costumer happy.  The last part was someone from FMH contacted me via Twitter to check up on us.  Now that is a savvy hospital!

Thank you to all those on Twitter and elsewhere who saw my initial Gowalla post.  It was very nice to receive your supportive tweets.

See you all online!

Derek

Follow-up review of the iStudy v2.0 PMP application

The iStudy PMP v2.0 is an iPhone and iPod Touch application specifically designed to help those aspiring to pass the PMP® Exam. When I did my Original Review of the iStudy PMP® application, I was pretty happy with it.  I said for $10, go for it.  One feature I really liked was the questions were completely random.  So, each test was unique.

So, how does v2.0 compare to v1.0?

Here is what changed between the two versions:

- Key summary for each question as well as page references to the PMBOK

- The initial number of questions has been increased from 20 to 35.  All 35 questions are new and were not available in the previous version.

- Improvements to the UI (better responses; works in both landscape and portrait)

- Users can now purchase an additional 550 questions from within the application.  This version leverages a freemium model.  The free version is ad supported.  If users wish to upgrade, they get an additional 550 questions for $2.99.  (Purchase from within the app).  If you’re interested in this app, you can get it from the iTunes store or go to www.istudyapps.com.

Do I think you should get it?  Again, I say go for it! It's only $2.99 for 550 questions and this version is even better than the last.

Disclaimer: Though I recommend this product, I am not financially benefiting from this review.