Process Groups Poster

Process Groups

After we published our first Scrum Posters, I was asked if we were going to create Non-Scrum Posters.  The answer is YES! Today we completed our (first) one-of-a-kind Pictofigo Project Management poster.  The Project Management Process Groups poster is now available to purchase from Cafepress. There are links below and a new link in the header of this site.  If you wish to apply this image to your own products, just go to Premium Pictofigo and purchase the high resolution file.

Are you studying for, or have recently passed, a popular project management exam? PROJECT MANAGEMENT PROCESS GROUPS captures five process groups and playfully details several of the activities of each. Includes Initiating, Planning, Executing, Monitor & Controlling, and Closing.

Mini Poster (Size: 17" x 11") just $14.99

Small Poster (Size: 20" x 13") just $19.99

Large Poster (Size:34.5" x 23") just $24.99

Pictofigo Premium & Agile Scrum

The Sprint - Male ScrumMaster

A few months ago, I partnered with Pictofigo, which provides high quality free hand drawings for Agile and Scrum proponents, tradition project managers, professionals, presenters, developers, web designers...  The list of people and groups which can benefit from these free drawings goes on and on.  Why use a Pictofigo drawing?Basically, if you need a drawing and the usual clip art just isn't going to cut it, Pictofigo could be a nice solution for you.  The count of free drawings is currently over 700 and growing.

So, what is new?  It's called Pictofigo Premium.  Pictofigo Premium, a brand new service, offers high resolution drawings for download and use.  These are print-ready graphics.  At launch, there are four premium drawings ready for download with more on the way.

If there is one thing I've learned, it's to offer visual aids to help communicate information.  That and they cover unsightly holes in the wall.  As a result, I've partnered with Pictofigo to create one-of-a-kind Agile Scrum posters.  Our first poster titled THE SPRINT will be offered in both male and female ScrumMaster versions.

The Sprint

Perfect for dressing up any shared workspace. THE SPRINT (Male ScrumMaster) captures each of the Scrum Roles, Meetings, and Artifacts in an easy to follow workflow format. It doesn't matter if you're a chicken or a pig, you and your team will love this. This version depicts a male ScrumMaster with his team.

Large Poster (Size:34.5" x 23") Get it now for just $24.99

Small Poster (Size: 20" x 13") Get it now for just $19.99

Mini Poster (Size: 17" x 11") Get it now for just $14.99

But what if you want to make more posters for yourself and your team and don't want buy one poster at a time?  What if you want to make this your desktop wallpaper or put it in your next PowerPoint presentation?  Well, you can get the same high resolution file used to create the poster directly from Premium Pictofigo!

Get The Sprint (Male ScrumMaster) in 300DPI

Get The Sprint (Female ScrumMaster) in 300DPI

Don't forget to check back really soon! We'll be linking to the The Sprint (Female ScrumMaster) poster and also Scrum Roles (Male and Female ScrumMaster) posters

The Story of Monte Carlo

Once upon a weekday meeting, I had a story to tell.  It was the tale of a project manager, who’s name really rings a bell. He quantified the total project cost, he didn’t miss a dime. He also computed the schedule, he was always aware of the time.

He used all these input values, with random amounts being his friend. He ran these simulations.  I thought they would never end.

The outcome was a distribution, a bell curve if you like.  On the edges we saw some low points, in the middle there was a spike.

Monte Carlo was this fellow’s name, he was a heck of a numbers guy.  We asked him if he ever made things up.  He said he would merely quantify.

Now don’t think Monte worked alone, he had a counterpart.  Her name was Jane Stake-Holder, he worked with her from the start.

Jane could be quite demanding, sometimes ignoring project scope.  But Monte managed the situation well, knowing creep was a slippery slope.

His technique was well documented, a change would make everything slip.  He told this to Jane Stake-Holder who you'd think would do a back-flip.

But numbers don't lie and neither did he, Jane knew Monte would put up a fight.  She backed down and submitted a change request, the schedule would extend to the right.

Graphic: Pictofigo

A Critical Path Facelift

After having the same look on my website for over 2 years, I think it's time for a facelift.  So, if you come to the site within the next week and notice things looking a little different, don't fret!  In addition to the frontend changes, I plan to move the site over to PowerVPS (Virtacore Systems), who hosts my other sites.  So, grab yourself a fresh cup of coffee (or tea) and continue enjoying my rants and insights. If you think the graphic above looks a little like me drawing a Critical Path, you should go to Pictofigo and check out their other offerings.  Thank you again to Pictofigo for doing such an awesome job!

Regards,

Derek

Stakeholder Management Strategies

On occasion, I read a piece that speaks to me.  Recently, it was a post titled The Yellow Brick Road - What Do Your Stakeholders Expect, written by Bas de Baar, an independent project consultant based in the Netherlands.  Bas clearly articulated a story of his youth and aligned it with a stakeholder management strategy. I loved this piece. If there’s one thing I think project managers and the like need help on, it’s developing stakeholder management strategies. I sometimes sit in meetings, as an observer, to see how the vendor is interacting with the client. Representing the client, I know what makes them anxious and what doesn’t. As the meeting progresses and the client feels they are not being provided enough information, they commonly become very anxious.

In the Yellow Brick Road piece, Bas described fond childhood memories of an annual family vacation.  As part of the planning process, his father wrote detailed driving instructions on how to find their way.  Based on the checkpoints his father had documented, Bas knew how much further they needed to travel to reach the next checkpoint or complete their journey.

Now imagine how much different his memories could have been, if his father hadn't provided him with those documented checkpoints? Imagine if every time Bas become anxious from the long trip, he had to ask his father how much further they had to go?

I seemingly remember, as a child, doing this every time I got into the car.

How much longer until we're there?

5 minutes

Put yourself in your stakeholders' shoes.  Try to align your communications and management strategy with their current perception of the journey.

Graphic: Pictofigo

Value Proposition for the Expensive Meeting

I got a lot of feedback from people after they read of my $17,902 meeting post.  I spoke to a few others in my office and they all agreed that the number sounded plausible. As I'm writing my proposal for corrective action, I will deliver it in the form of a value proposition. A value proposition is an analysis and quantified review of the benefits, costs and value that "something" an organization can deliver to customers and other constituent groups within and outside of the organization. It is also a positioning of value, where Value = Benefits / Cost (cost includes risk).  (Thank you Wikipedia for basis of that definition)

But, it's not as simple deliverable.

I use 7 stages of analysis.

• Customer or market - Who am I creating the value proposition for?
• Customer or market value - What do they say they value? (not what I say they value)
• Offering - What is the product or service being proposed?
• Benefits - What are the benefits? (Time, Money, Productivity,...)
• Alternatives - What substitutes or alternatives are there? (like doing nothing)
• Differentiation - How is my proposal different from anything else being offered?
• Proof - What evidence do I have that I can do what you say?

In this case, I'm going to request a formal review of the Communications Plan, modifying it if necessary.  Because this is a status meeting (which is about reporting by one-way communication) not everyone needs to be there in person.  Before I go deep into my analysis, I'm going to bet I can apply the Pareto principle (80-20 rule) to get my point across.

If we do not devalue the benefit of the meeting, we can increase the overall value by decreasing cost.  That decreasing of cost, I would propose, would be asking 32 out of the 40 people to not attend the meeting in person.  By having 8 key linchpins (as defined by Seth Godin) attend this meeting, we could ensure the status is delivered and the message is not lost.

Other indirect communication methods could be used to ensure the information is distributed.  The slide deck and meeting minutes could be posted to a central location, allowing those who didn't attend the meeting in person to know what happened.  Whatever the final outcome, there is a big opportunity for cost savings.

Graphic: Pictofigo

Free High Quality Hand Drawings

While trying to locate some graphics for a recent blog post, I received a notification from Twitter that an account called Pictofigo had followed me.  Curious about who they were, I checked out the Pictofigo website. This was exactly what I was looking for!  Pictofigo provides high quality freehand drawings for project managers, presenters, and web designers in an easy and efficient way. It is 100% free but I would recommend making a donation to keep them motivated.  If I was an adviser to their organization, I would recommend they establish a paid tier and start charging for their product.  With just 172 drawings (graphics) in their database, I would love to see their product offerings grow.

The graphics remind me a lot of a very cool tool called Balsamiq.  You can use Balsamiq to create mockups of websites or applications.  I haven't personally used Balsamiq so maybe I'll contact them to see if I can do a review of their product.  In the meantime, you can go to Pictofigo now and get some graphics.

Graphic: Pictofigo

Expense of Meetings

meeting

I just came from a monthly meeting, scheduled to last 2.5 hours.  I counted 40 people in the room, ranging from administrative assistants to top executives.  I wanted to do an unscientific estimate of the cost of the meeting.  I used Meetordie (meet or die) to arrive at my total.  (Thank you to Deanne Earle of Unlike Before for telling me of the site) I plugged in a few simple values and... the meeting had an estimated cost of $17,904.  The information provided by the vendor, from my perspective, was not worth nearly $18,000.  Please realize this is a required monthly meeting. The slide deck was distributed to everyone on the project via email, allowing them to review the materials at their leisure.  They do need to be kept informed.  But, instead of going about their day, many who received the slide deck came to the meeting.  We all sat in a room as the vendor read from the slides.  Now, this was no Steve Jobs keynote address.  The vendor pretty much read word-for-word off the slides.

Just because the vendor may be contractually obligated to have this meeting, they should propose an alternative to what they're doing.  There either needs to be more value or less cost associated with this meeting.

Thoughts or comments?

Graphic: Pictofigo