Guessing is not a strategy: How to build decision velocity with AI and real-time data
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Updates....
| It has been awhile since I posted anything, but a lot has been going on. I’ve been working on preparing for PMI’s Congress and the other events happening this fall, as well as the project that the IT&T SIG is doing with the Scrum Alliance. So far we’ve held four webinars with the Scrum Alliance and they’ve gone quite well. We’ve had good attendance and great questions. There will be another one this coming Tuesday at 8 PM Easten and the beginning on October 7 we will switch to a 12 Pm Eastern start so that we can make the calls easier for our friends in the EMEA region. I’ll be posting a listing of events that the SIG is putting on in Denver and beyond sometime over the weekend. In the meantime, if you are planning on attending the PMI Congress, will be there on Saturday night (10/18) and find yourself often waking in the week hours, in a cold sweat because you can’t stop thinking about how to make Scrum and traditional project management work better together, please send me an email and let me know ([email protected]) we’ve got something in the works you might like to get involved with. |
Posted on: September 25, 2008 12:22 AM
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My Name is Dave and I Suffer from an Organizational Dependency
Categories:
GTD
Categories: GTD
| I have organizational issues. I give GTD a bad name. I have tried many different systems; paper based, electronic, writing on my hand in Sharpie (not so helpful if you also suffer from a Purell habit). There was a brief period a few years ago when I owned a Palm T3… now I love my iPhone and it helps, but the Palm T3 was, for my money, the greatest PDA ever made and I will never forgive the Geek Squad at Best Buy for rendering it beyond use while trying to fix it.
Then, a few months ago… Jott. And throughout the valley, there was much rejoicing. I could Jott myself all day long…in public, while driving, whenever. It was awesome. I finally felt like I had things on the road to being sorted again. Then, this week, those Capt. Hammers at Jott had the unmitigated nerve to move out of beta. And now, they have the audacity to want me to pay them… with actual money… for what basically has become “organizational crack”. (Do those quotes make it look like there is such a thing?). I am in dire need of either rehab or something better… or someone who can convince Palm to put the T3 back into production. |
Posted on: August 23, 2008 08:53 AM
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Good Cop/Doom Cop
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I am working on a project right now with a practice lead that grew up in Melbourne. What this means is that in the part of the US that I live in, as long as he is smiling and ends every few sentences with the phrase "no worries mate", regardless of what he says, folks are just plain happy to talk to him. He is a very positive guy. He lives in a world where he doesn't have "challenges", he has "opportunities". He is the power of positive thinking. It is an amazing thing to witness... and sometimes, being afflicted with the terminal ailment of project management, it leaves me feeling like I'm from an alien race.
We got into a bit of a debate today regarding the whole good cop/doom cop thing. Typically, when we are discussing things related to the project, a shard of jagged glass nowhere remotely near the table is, to him, a glass half full of the most profound vino known to man. He looks at things through a lens of what will be, when things line up perfectly... which, they naturally will... no worries mate. I think, for what he does, this is completely necessary and a very good thing in that someone with that positive, can-do mindset is absolutely needed. Me? Well... lets just say, you can have a glass filled to the brim, resting safely in the center of a table designed to keep it from spilling a drop and all I see in a very fragile risk factor that will most certainly crash to the floor, spill everywhere and result in deadly sharp fragments of glass hiding all about on the floor just waiting to start cutting into everyone who comes near. But the way I look at it, that's kind of the gig. One of our jobs, as PMs, is to see the risks before the others do and be ready for whatever can, and will, go wrong. In a perfect world, we are all Radar O'Reilly, hearing the choppers minutes before anyone else does. The conversation left me wondering, is it better for a PM to be optimistic and able to approach the project through the smiley, shiny happy people lens, or are we doing a better job of serving our projects and clients looking at the world like a bunch of Schleprock's and preparing for the inevitable... and, are there actually people out there who have been able to find themselves some kind of balance or middle ground? |
Posted on: August 14, 2008 10:28 PM
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The Post Modern PM
| During MITPM in Kuala Lumpur I got to listen to Dr. David Frame give a talk in which he explored a number of PM methodologies and how none of them served every purpose. The general gist of it was that there are lots of methodologies/tools available and that you need more than just one. This is something that I consider to be a big deal in the evolution of a project manager. Getting past the point where you consider one approach to be the “one true way”, and on to a place where you see each approach as viable and important is a huge leap. It is also where the creative part comes in and when being a PM gets to be an actually fun job. In his talk, Dr. Frame used the phrase “post project management”. It seemed to fit, but at the same time, to beg for just a bit more. It started rolling around in my head as post-modern project management. If the post modern movement was a reaction against what had become standardized forms and something which achieved success by the ironic blending of the dissimilar, then wouldn’t the blending of things like Scrum and PMBOK fit that same bill? (Yes, I took just enough postmodern film classes in college to make me dangerous.) If so, then I’d argue that for a PM to success in today’s’ job market, a PM has to evolve to this post modern state in which all tools hold equal weight and are only as good (or bad) as the way in which they are implemented. |
Posted on: May 27, 2008 05:59 PM
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PMI 2008 EMEA Leadership Meeting - Malta
 [pictures from Kuala Lumpur and Malta] Right now I am in Malta for the PMI’s 2008 Leadership Meeting and Global Congress. IT&T SIG Past Chair, Mark Lurch, and I arrived here late Saturday afternoon straight from Kuala Lumpur by way of Dubai. While Mark and I were not here in time to attend the VCP update given by PMI on Friday, the word on the street is that PMI is moving forward, full steam ahead with the project. This has the potential to have a heavy impact on the IT&T SIG in the coming 24 months and I’ll be posting more about that in the next few days. Right now, I just want to post some of the highlights so far. Saturday evening the IT&T SIG EMEA Regional Director, Jose Pinto, hosted a networking event for the IT&T SIG Leaders (and potential leaders) throughout the EMEA region. The event was a huge success. We had a full room and a very entertaining and wonderful presentation on the wines of Malta by Don Victorio, the owner of the vineyard that produced all the fabulous wines we sampled. Jose gave a wonderful speech, welcoming all our guests and I had the chance to say a few words as well. It is a rare thing for us to get to meet face to face with the folks from this region that help support all we do. In addition to myself, Mark Lurch and Jose, IT&T SIG Vice Chair, Petra Goltz; VP of Professional Development, Vasilj Petrovic; and VP of Technology, Daniel Hunt were all present. At the event we had the great pleasure to meet the 1 IT&T SIG member that we have in Malta, Syam Ravi Menon who works for Information Systems, LTD , a Maltese System Analysis and Design company that also provides Training and Software Development Services. Syam is a very charming guy who is doing all he can to help spread the word about PMI here in Malta. I’m hoping to be able to tape him for a video podcast while we are here on the island. Another highlight was meeting Emad Aziz, PMP, who came from Cairo to attend the events here. Emad works for Brisk Consulting, a consulting company based in Egypt that focuses on delivering operational professionalism in Egypt and the Arabian Gulf. While the jet lag was a little too heavy for me, and I turned in early, the crowd apparently stayed until about 2 AM listening to the Don’s stories about life in Malta. All in all, the evening was a great success. Jose did an incredible job putting everything together. Yesterday I was able to attend a few of the Leadership Meeting sessions, including a workshop given by IT&T SIG Vice-Chair, Petra Goltz on working with different cultures. Those types of talks are always fascinating when they are held in EMEA because there are just so many different groups of people working together. I shot some video during Petra’s presentation and I’ll be posting that in a few days. The day ended with the PMI Leader to Leader discussion where PMI Vice-Chair Yan Ping Chen led the proceedings and the leaders from various PMI components got to ask the experts about all things PMI. This is always one of the most informative times of the Leadership Meeting. PMI President and CEO Greg Ballestrero; Executive VP and COO, Mark Langley; PMI Chair, Philip Diab; and others fielded a number of questions about the state of PMI, its’ competition and business model for the coming years. Clearly, PMI is on a path to grow both its’ certification offerings as well as a number of other products. When the meetings were over for the day we took to the seas. A number of boats took the attendees to the island of Gozo, which is just a short ride across the water from Malta. There we were treated to a lovely dinner at a local winery under the stars. The boat ride over offered some great sites of the islands surrounding Malta. It is a very cool thing to ride across the water, watching the sun go down beyond cathedrals that are some of the oldest gems of the history of the Catholic Church. Today is the start of Global Congress and we’ve got a few folks already lined up to interview for the podcast. I’ll be posting more as things unfold and I’ll get the video up as soon as I can. |
Posted on: May 19, 2008 05:29 AM
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