The Pain Of IE6 And Application Development

Yesterday, a vendor advised my client the new feature requested to be implemented doesn't work quite right with Internet Explorer (IE)6.  The feature works fine with all "modern" browsers but IE6 is a major pain point.  You may ask yourself why we're even having this conversation.  Well, because we're talking about the Federal Government.  There are legacy applications out there that were built on IE6 and it's not an easy migration.  There are some Agencies which ONLY use IE6 and the users don't have permissions to install a new browser.  So, what do you do?  Do you embed a browser check in your code and advise the users they need to use a different browser?  Do you "fix" what would otherwise be a clean implementation by making it work with IE6?  I've seen issues with IE6 happen over and over again.  Even with my website(s), I pay attention to legacy Internet Explorer traffic.  I'm happy to report my IE6 traffic is 11% of my overall traffic, down from 21% a year ago.  Still, I will continue to test IE6 until it falls below 10%. What lesson can we take away from this?  Do your homework!  The vendor should have done an analysis (or known stakeholder system requirements) before implementing the new feature.  Catching it in QA is too late.  A little due diligence or prototyping could have saved a lot of time and money.  Knowing the current customer base, the vendor should have known this feature would not be accessible by all and advised the customer.  What would you do?

I would love to read your comments or feedback.  Please post them below.

Regards,

Derek

The December Numbers Are In For PMPs

Yes, the December numbers are in.  This morning, I received my copy of PMI Today.  In it, the December 2009 numbers for Project Management Professional (PMP®) certifications were published.  So you don't have to go searching for it, here are the numbers:

	December Totals
New PMPs (December 2009)	5,403
New PMPs (YTD)	75,107
Total Active PMPs	361,238



If you asked me if PMI was headed in the right direction, my response would be

I don't know if PMI is going in the right direction, philosophically, but Project Managers certainly see the value in the certification.

If you are a vendor targeting project managers, you can see which direction the data is going.  If you are in a project management field and have been sitting on the fence about pursuing the certification, you can see which direction the data is going.  No, I’m not being paid by PMI to write this post nor am I a PMI fanboy.  If I had data supporting how many Certified Scrum Masters there were on a monthly basis, I would probably publish that here as well.  Until then, I’ll focus on the PMP.

I also think I will begin making this a recurring monthly post.  You have to be a member of PMI to get a copy of PMI Today.  I believe they are shooting themselves in the foot by not showing the growing trend of PMP certification holders.  I’m also going to go back as far as I can to show more historical data.

What do you think?   I welcome your comments or feedback.

Regards,

Derek

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This Is How You Know When To Kill A Project

According to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMB0K), projects are authorized due to internal business needs or external influences.  Project end is reached when the project's objectives have been achieved or when the project is terminated because its objectives will not or cannot be met, or when the need for the project no longer exists. This leads me to today's post.

Instead of finding the newspaper on my porch the other day, I discovered someone delivered a yellow pages book (business directory).  It’s been years since I actually opened a phone book.  There are no longer personal phone numbers in the book, only businesses.  Out of curiosity, I opened it to discover 1 in 4 of the advertisement being nothing more then ads to advertise in the yellow pages!  Did you follow that?  Advertisements to advertise.  I can appreciate the idea of continuing to print the phone book.  Anyone not having access to the Internet still needs to find a directory of businesses.  But after reviewing the quality of the product, it makes me question if it is time this thing went the way of the dinosaur.

All this time I thought the people receiving the phone were the customer.  They are not. It's the advertiser.  The creation of the project (or business) of printing phone books use to actually satisfy a need or provide a public service. People needed to find people and businesses needed a medium to tell potential customers they existed.

We've addressed the original need to start the project.  What about to end it?  With the increased usage of Google and Bing, very few people actually read their phone books to locate businesses.  Until businesses advertising in the phone book believe the cost of advertising in that medium outweighs the benefit it provides, it will continue.  Sounds a little bit like the newspaper industry, doesn't it?  There is a very similar parallel between the newspaper industry and the printed phone book industry.  They both believe or promote the scarcity of information.  That scarcity justifies cost.  To the contrary, we now live with an abundance of information.  That information is freely distributed and reaches a broader audience.

I find it ironic, printed on the phone book, the printer asks us to please recycle our “outdated” phone books.  To satisfy their request, this brand new phone book is going right into the recycling bin.  Though I do believe the end is near for the paper-based phone book, I have a recommendation for them.  Since this printing company has our address to deliver the phone book, why don’t they send us a letter asking if we would like to opt-out of future deliveries?  You tell me, are you more apt to read something you've opted-in to or something sent to you like spam?

Photo courtesy of Getty Images

The Impact Of Social Networking On Project Management

A few years back, while studying for the PMP exam, I committed the formula for calculating communications paths to memory.

[N(N-1)]/2

So, what's the big deal? Why is it so important? If you're in the Project Management (or leadership) field, you know all too well how important communications is. I used to call myself a project manager. I now prefer to use the term project leader. What's the difference? According to Warren Bennis and Dan Goldsmith (1997) there are 12 distinctions between managers and leaders.

• Managers administer; leaders innovate.
• Managers ask how and when; leaders ask what and why.
• Managers focus on systems; leaders focus on people.
• Managers do things right; leaders do the right things.
• Managers maintain; leaders develop.
• Managers rely on control; leaders inspire trust.
• Managers have short-term perspective; leaders have long-term perspective.
• Managers accept the status-quo; leaders challenge the status-quo.[*]
• Managers have an eye on the bottom line; leaders have an eye on the horizon.
• Managers imitate; leaders originate.
• Managers emulate the classic good soldier; leaders are their own person.
• Managers copy; leaders show originality.

In order to both innovate and do the right things, I listen and listen a LOT. (Some people listen; some wait to talk) I've watched executives and managers, who knew absolutely nothing about a subject, make uneducated decisions because they were too stubborn or proud to consult a subject matter expert (SME). Good leaders do not operate in a vacuum. They exchange ideas and information with people. Offer free information and it will come back to you tenfold. Listen to knowledgeable people and then make a more educated leadership decision.

Where does social media fit into the grand scheme of things? Old-school managers and executives who believe in the bureaucratic organization and status quo, tend to lean toward command-and-control or top-down management. That group is operating under the assumption people higher in the organizational chart know more. New-school leaders believe in social media. Why? It strips away all of the nonsense and connects people to people. They have real conversations as human beings. They educate and they listen with a freedom to connect at an exponential rate. They are not confined to the notion of an hierarchical organization.

My example is my current engagement, which I have been at for 13 months: Within my direct cross-functional organization chart, I have 28 contacts to interface with. There are no plans to increase the size of this group. [28(28-1)]/2 is 378 communication paths. Not too bad.

Turn now to option number two, social media like Twitter and Facebook. For arguments sake, I'll say I have 200 followers on Twitter with a growth rate of 10% a month. (I'm actually have 450+ and counting)  Each Twitter Follower is a communications path.

[200(200-1)]/2 = 19,900 communication paths

After one month it would be projected to increase to 21,945 communication paths

Every Friday, people I follow on Twitter recommend others in the industry who I should consider following (#followfriday). Every week, I learn more about my craft and more importantly I get to form relationships with people all over the world. By bypassing the organizational structure to get my information, inbound communications is at a much higher velocity and is now flowing up through the organization.

Social Media helps you be a project leader.

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12 distinctions between managers and leaders by Bennis, Warren and Dan Goldsmith. Learning to Lead. Massachusetts: Persus Book, 1997.

Thank you Laurel Papworth for the use of the Social Media Campaign image

* I recommend reading Fighting Status Quo by Pawel Brodzinski

Refine Your Process If You Must Deviate From It

As I mentioned in my post yesterday, Seeing Value From The Customer Perspective, if you think you need to deviate from a documented or understood process, rewrite or refine your process to account for the deviations. Merriam-Webster defines process as a series of actions or operations conducing to an end.  If you are unwilling to modify your process, the deviation is unworthy of being done. I've had a vendor tell me they didn't need to document their processes because they were agile.  (Notice the lack of an uppercase A in Agile).  Leveraging Agile concepts does not mean a lack of documented process.  IF the customer tells me they see the greatest value in delivering documentation, what is this vendor going to respond with?  Sorry, we won't deliver value?  If you use Waterfall, you may be used to generating more paper.  You have to consider documentation on a case by case basis.  Some customers have legitimate needs for documentation and other have wants.  Now go back and read that last sentence again.  Needs...Wants...

I personally like to go light on documentation.  What I need and what the customer needs are usually two different things.  That being said, I like to understand the rules (governance) before I start anything.  The Microsoft Visio document I included in my last post was a good example of a high level governance (functional flowchart) document. After completing the flowchart, I then detail each activity in a separate document.  What is the input and output?  Is there a formal deliverable associated with the activity? The idea behind the separate document is you won't need the flowchart to describe the process.  For those who have successfully navigated a SOX audit, you know what I'm talking about.  But I digress.  The flowchart activities I documented are not groundbreaking.  The process in this case is an Agile Scrum process with a few defined quality assurance decisions points.  You do not need to go into the Nth degree to understand this process.  Identify some touch points where the vendor and customer interface.  Identity some decision points.  That's it!

I've done these flowcharts for several customers.  I've created them for both Waterfall and Agile development approaches.  If you're looking for a free Microsoft Visio template, which you can edit at will, you can download it here. I zipped it to make downloading easier.  If you're looking for other free templates or worksheets to use on your project or program, you can download them there.

What do you think?  To document or not document.  That is the question. I welcome your comments or feedback.

Regards,

Derek

Seeing Value From The Customer Perspective

I recently sat in a meeting between a vendor and client, where the client was attempting to communicate their need to route new work deliverables to an existing Change Control Board (CCB). The contractor came back and said they believed the CCB in this case would not provide value and perhaps it should be bypassed.

Note to all vendors: Just because a process does not appear valuable to you, it does not mean the process does not provide value. The use of the CCB provides a (formal) control point helping to prevent unauthorized work and cost overruns. This goes further then just having a client billed for unauthorized work. Any work done without prior authorization has a risk of negatively impacting project schedule, cost, or quality. The mere act of doing unauthorized work impacts the scope.

I don't care if you're using Agile, Waterfall, or other methods to deliver value.  What is important is you understand your process and what mechanisms provide the greatest value to the customer.

If you think you need to deviate from a documented or understood process, rewrite your process to account for the deviations. If you are unwilling to change your documented process, the deviation is unworthy of being done.

I created the Visio diagram (above) a few months back to help both the customer and vendor visualize what we were trying to accomplish.  The challenge was implementing Scrum in a very formal and controlled environment.

I certainly recognize many don't have such a formal process.  Instead of CCBs, you may call them Product Backlog Review Meetings.  Counter to this, you may have a very fluid and simple software development life cycle (SDLC).  If so, you still need to understand your process and you still need to communicate with your customer.  Understand what their highest priorities are and deliver.

Free Report from WBS Coach Josh Nankivel

I just reread my free copy of Top 7 WBS Mistakes Project Managers Make.  Though I am now a paid affiliate of WBS Coach, I had to first review the products.  I reviewed WBS Coach multiple times (just to be sure).  At $39.99, I wasn't sure if it would meet my expectations.  Well, it did and then some.  I got 5+ hours of video, audio, and textual training and a 68 page PDF textbook.  It even included a one-year unconditional money-back guarantee.

The WBS Coach product includes:

• Core Lessons: 8 Lessons on WBS concepts, tutorials, and applications
• Instructor Interviews: 3 interviews, approximately 2 hours
• Q&A Sessions: Bonus video and audio based off student feedback
• WBS Checklist: Practitioner checklist for immediate real-world use
• PDU Credit: Course qualifies for 5 PMI PDUs
• PDU Reporting Guidebook: Claim PDUs without guesswork

If you're not sure about spending the money, get this free report first.  It's informative and...did I already say it was FREE?

1 of 100 PM Related Questions I Ask Myself

Hmmmmm

Question 1: In the hope to help the Project Management industry mature, should project management related templates and worksheets be freely distributed to the project management community or should there be a reasonable fee charged? I am a strong believer in the wisdom of crowds.  If there was a consortium of types with diverse backgrounds in Waterfall, Spiral, RUP, Agile, Scrum, XP... don't you think they could come up with some pretty good stuff?  In this case, all templates would be freely distributed.  I have to admit, the majority of my traffic is from people looking for free templates and worksheets.  It's tempting at times to put them behind a pay wall and ask for 99 cents.

What do you think?

Image courtesy of misallphoto on Flickr