Project Management

To hit pay dirt

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Hi to all of you, and welcome to this blog about management, projects, IT, etc. and about life among all of that. I'd like to share my thoughts, knowledges, experiences and to propose them for discussions.

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Business processes and project management processes: correlation, integration, evolvement

Interesting research. Who will be next? Would it be possible?

What does a business need first in order to begin growing?

Inspiration interaction

New Year...new digital workplace trends...AI and robots

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Agile, Business Analysis, Business Analysis, Business Processes, Career development, Communication, Information Technology, Integration Management, IT Methodology, IT Strategy, Leadership, OPM, Organisation Project Management, Organizational Management, Organizational Project Management, PMO, Process Management, Project Management, Requirements Management, Requirements Management, Scope Management, Scrum, Strategy, Time Management

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Interesting research. Who will be next? Would it be possible?

Each country tries to build its own Silicon Valley, sometimes not only the one. Accordingly, the KPMG research [1] the most successful in this are New York (USA), Beijing (China), Tokyo (Japan) and London (UK).

58% of 740 global technology industry leaders believe likely or very likely shift the world's technology innovation capital by 2023. 27% of them believe not likely or not at all likely in it, and 16% of them are neutral. 

New York has a leadership position because it's a place of the biggest IT companies, like Apple, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google is planning to expand its presence in New York.

New York has a population of 8,398,748[2] distributed over a land area of about 302.6 square miles (784 km2), which provides great conditions to be a new technology and innovation center.

Beijing is an important and very power world city. The population of Beijing at the beginning of 2016 [3], according to some estimates, is 21.7 million. There are a lot of companies there, which fields are in everything from Artifical Intelligence to electromobility. Nowadays Chinese Government support technology companies and plan to give big financial support to them (CNY 10 billion).

As of 2018, the Greater Tokyo Area ranked as the most populous metropolitan area in the world.  The population of the special wards is over 9 million people, with the total population of Tokyo Metropolis exceeding 13.8 million [5]. Tokyo has a leadership position in robotics development and manufacturing. Industry leaders desire concern Olympic Games 2020.

London becomes a global capital of the fintech industry, and in my opinion, it has a historical background for this, though Zurich could have it too, but it is not developing in this way. Seven startups valued over $1 billion based in London, San Francisco is home for nine [1].

Russian Government built a technology innovation center. The idea was to get Russian "Silicon Valley". Skolkovo provides special economic conditions for companies working in the priority sectors of modernization of the Russian economy: telecommunications and space, biomedical technology, energy efficiency, information technology, and nuclear technology. The center cooperates with the world's leading universities and attracts the best specialists, regularly conducts training and various activities aimed at the development of innovation, technology, and support for startups.

In conclusion, I'd like to say my opinion, all off the new applicants for the technology and innovation world center role have different directions for development. Therefore, I think that it is possible to decentralize such a center and, perhaps, Silicon Valley will retain its priority but will become one of the components of this world center with its specialization.

Why is this important for a Project Manager? Firstly, every project has an initiating phase, each project needs money and resources. Secondly, there are no exist non-product related projects. 

Therefore, the location of the world technology and innovation capital is important. It is our future.

It would be interesting to hear your opinion.

  1. The New Silicon Valleys, PMNetwork, June 2019, volume 3, number 6, p. 12 (http://www.pmnetwork-digital.com/pmnetwork/june_2019/)
  2. "NYC Population: Current and Projected Populations"www1.nyc.gov. Retrieved May 2, 2019.
  3. http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2016-01/23/content_23215065.html
  4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metropolitan_areas_by_population
  5. www.metro.tokyo.jpArchived from the original on August 21, 2018. Retrieved August 21, 2018.
Posted on: May 29, 2019 07:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (12)

New Year...new digital workplace trends...AI and robots

New Year is coming very soon. So…it’s time for taking stocks and for new trends. I think the most important things which has been affected of all people in outgoing year were the artificial intelligence and using robots. A lot of people worry when they see how quickly these things are developing, growing up and see how they could be dangerous for people. 

But for my opinion we have to remember that these thing are only our technologies. Only people can decide how they will use. 

At this point I’d like to mention Antonio Guterres, Secretary General, United Nations, who said, that the main rules in the IT, in the using new technologies are that IT and new technologies must be safety and ethical. He said this in his speech on the Web Summit in Lisbon, November 2018, which called “Nurturing a digital future that is safe and beneficial for all”. I was there, I had listen him and it was really inspiring.

And I completely agree with him. Only if people will use new technologies, including AI and robots, in this way humans will go to next level their development. 

A lot of people feel fear that robots could change the people, but for the now it's not possible. Just look at the example from  China Xinhua News. Their experiment with the robot as a news ancor was fail, because it was not interesting to see the robot, the robot had had a voice and appearance modelled on Zhang Zhao, a real ancor with Xinhua. But a lot of people didn’t like it because there is no emotions, it was some monotonously.  And yesterday I had got the “2019 PMO Predictions: 4 trends for the digital workplace” by changpoint.com.  I see an interesting thing in these trends because they all concern the above problem.

The first trend is “Digital disruption requires new skill set from your people…but remember, they’re only human”. It means higher demand of the soft skills. We can see it now too when people must have not only technical skills, but it’s very important to have the empathy, flexibility, communication skills, emotional intelligence, creativity, the ability to teach other people, etc.   

The second trend is “Digitalization requires an adaptive mindset…and a panoramic view of the landscape”. It means that to have the ability to look at the problem from above, to understand the world processes, to know new technologies, to be flexible for changing the working methods and tools, to think strategically.

The third trend is “Adaptive technology is your friend…and your transformativeally”. It means that we have to enjoy these technologies and find the best using of them in our activities and agile technologies.

The forth trend is “Collaboration…the blending of people skills and digital delivery”. Digital delivery will continue growing up, and it could be very useful in any businesses. 

We can't also deny robot and AI father development and, for my opinion we could find the ways of effectivness collaboration, it will give us a lot of benefits. 

I'd like to propose to listen a talk between Rao Dalio and Garry Kasparov on the Web Summit 2018 “Artificial intelligence is making more and more of our decisions for us. If this capacity limitless or are there some things only human intuition can determine?”

https://youtu.be/KvLsMQPo-Hc

It would be interesting to know your view point. Don't hesitate, leave your comment. Have a nice day and successful stories!

 

Posted on: December 16, 2018 05:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (13)

How to quickly and efficiently align documents

Some of you know how hard could be to fix up with customer (especially in a large company) a lot of documents when they are part of your procurement. 

You have to correct them again and again...to have discuss them with a lot of people, which can have some different opinions about the same things, which can have some different interests. 

But how could you make this process working quickly?

I have developed a habit over the years of working in consulting to do the following things:

  1. To form a working group of experts, decision-makers in the case of a large project we need to establish several working groups.
  2. For each direction must be the person responsible for the direction and possessing powers of decision-making in contentious situations.
  3. Prepare the first edition of documents, and send them to the customer for given feedback.
  4. Give feedback from all of people which take part in the fix up.
  5. Write records of all observations in the table, record the answers to all remarks and add comments, especially if you don't agree with observation.
  6. Change documents and send them again to the customer.
  7. Organize meeting and discuss the documents, try to make the positive decision. 
  8. If the positive decision didn't find on meeting, you have to distinguish controversial aspects with description their solution ways.
  9. All final decisions must be agreed by the management Committee of this project and approved by the responsible for the project from the customer.

This is easily done when you have professionals in the field of project management, project office, and very difficult when they are not.

But some organizations don't follow project management processes, and they don't have project management professionals, techniques. And what can we see?

I was convinced on own experience, doing projects for two different large organizations. In one of them the specialists have been trained in project management according to PMBOK, the other heard nothing about it. In the first case, it was not difficult to organize the work properly and perform it easily. In the second case, it took some time on the organization of work on the project from the customer, as it was necessary to actually teach the ideology of project management and operation, as well as to overcome resistance and reluctance to change work style. But and one, and in another case, in the end, the process of working on documents was reduced to the mentioned steps.

I'll be glad to get your feedback.

Thank you for reading this.

Success to all of you. 

Posted on: November 23, 2017 11:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (13)

Composure is one of the main leadership characteristics

Have you ever worked with a nervous head? How did you feel in this situation? Don't you think that such manager behavior has a negative effect to work?

One day I was in a very difficult situation. There was a difficult project, too little time, a lot of reporting.

Last day of the deadline. Hard work. Everyone is tired. All was ready except some acts and the boot modules. We need to write code on some disk units, and at this moment the program fail has gone. Programmers are ready to quit. I don't know how to correct a mistake in the program settings and restore the system. I just support them calm down, discuss and work together to find a solution, and they are in the beginning reluctantly, and then, infected by the desire to deliver work on time, be inspired, work boils, and finally, they report that all done! I see the joy on their faces. It was very pleasant. But a lawyer has been lost all nerves, she could not prepare the last act, I sent her to lunch, and after lunch, helped her, and she did it very quickly. The analyst, who performed the last important and urgent task, had mistaken, so he did not finish his work. I had to be with him and guide him, I saw he calms down and does everything precisely and accurately. We finished our work completed in time.

And what I noticed, my composure and attitude on the result helped us. It was an incredible example of the power of composure. As you know, there are a lot of different researches about linking leaders and team performance. Some of them showed that relationship between leader behavior and team performance is indirect [1]. But I saw in my experience very direct linking. And I have to say that a leader must have great composure. It is one of the keys to successful team performance.

There is also another opinion that composure is one of the qualities of exceptional people [2]. So, we need to remember about it and improve yourself.

 I'll be glad to get your feedback.

Thank you for reading this.

Success to all of you.   

References:

  1. http://www.sbuweb.tcu.edu/mscole/docs/Cole%20et%20al.%20(2011).%20Linking%20Leadership%20Behavior%20and%20Consensus%20to%20Team%20Perf_LQ.pdf
  2. https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/246347

 

Posted on: May 21, 2017 02:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)

Scrum vs Kanban vs XP

At work I was being asked to say about differencies between Scrum, Kanban and eXtreme Programming. And I'd like to share my thoughts with you. 

  Scrum Kanban XP (eXtreme Programming)
Goal Use of cross-functional, self-organized, and empowered teams who divide
their work into short, concentrated work cycles called Sprints
To alleviate  impediments that cause us to take longer to deliver, not remove necessary pieces of the process. To organize people to produce higher-quality software more productively.
Date of birth In the mid 80’s, Hirotaka Takeuchi and Ikujiro Nonaka defined a flexible and all-inclusive product
development strategy where the development team works as a unit to reach a common goal. Scrum has
increased in popularity and is now the preferred project development methodology for many organizations
globally. 
Kanban developed in the 1940s as a subcomponent of the Toyota Production System and has its origins in these Lean and Just In Time (JIT) manufacturing processes. XP has been created  in 1996 by Kent Beck during his work on the Chrysler Comprehensive Compensation System (C3) payroll project.
Current state The Scrum framework can only be used for small projects. However, it can easily be
scaled for effective use in large projects. 
One of the reasons many groups implement Kanban is to figure out how to deliver more consistently. Kanban, as well as many other methods/processes, is often chosen and implemented by the management or leadership layer and the values and goals are communicated down to developers or other individual contributors. It's a very effective metodology for the small command programmers. Team size should be 5 or less people.
Speciality A key strength of Scrum lies in its use of cross-functional, self-organized, and empowered teams who divide
their work into short, concentrated work cycles called Sprints. Scrum is one of the most popular Agile methodologies. It is an adaptive, iterative, fast, flexible, and effective
methodology designed to deliver significant value quickly and throughout a project. Scrum ensures
transparency in communication and creates an environment of collective accountability and continuous
progress. 
In Kanban the workflow is visualised: work is broken down into small, discrete items and written on a card which is stuck to a board; the board has different columns and as the work progresses through different stages (e.g. ready, in progress, ready for review etc) the card is moved accordingly.
In Kanban the number of items that can be in progress at any one time is strictly limited.
Extreme Programming is successful because it stresses customer satisfaction. Instead of delivering everything you could possibly want on some date far in the future this process delivers the software you need as you need it. Extreme Programming empowers your developers to confidently respond to changing customer requirements, even late in the life cycle.Extreme Programming emphasizes teamwork. Managers, customers, and developers are all equal partners in a collaborative team.
Values 1. Focus
2. Courage
3. Opennes
4. Commitment
5. Respect
1. Transparency
2. Agreement
3. Balance
4. Respect
5. Understanding
6. Leadership
7. Collaboration
8. Customer focus
9. Flow
1. Communication
2. Simplicity
3. Feedback
4. Courage
5. Respect
Principles 1. Roles Guide
2. Empirical Process Control
3. Self-organization
4. Collaboration
5. Value-based Prioritization
1. Start with what you do now
2. Agree to pursue incremental evolutionary change
3. Initially, respect all roles, responsibilities and job titles
The principles that form the basis of XP are based on the values just described and are intended to foster decisions in a system development project. The principles are intended to be more concrete than the values and more easily translated to guidance in a practical situation.
Roles Core Roles:
Product Owner
Scrum Master
Scrum Team
Non-core Roles:
Stakeholders
Scrum Guidance Body
Vendors
Chief Product Owner
Chief Scrum Master
No existing roles. Some teams enlist the help of an agile coach. Tracker, Customer, Programmer, Coach, Manager, Tester. Anyone can be Doomsayer, Gold Owner (may be the same as the Customer)
Key metrics Sprint Velocity (2 weeks) Cycle time Iteration time (2 weeks)
Activities 1. Initiate
2. Plan and Estimate
3. Implement
4. Review and Retrospect
5. Release
1. To Do
2. Development
3. Test
4. Release
5. Done
1. Planning
2. Managing
3. Designing
4. Coding
5. Testing
Practices 1. Planning
2. Daily Scrum
3. Review and retrospective: Sprint Review and Sprint Retrospective
4. Extension: Backlog reinement and Scrum of Scrums
5. Artifacts: Product Backlog, Management, Sprint Backlog, Product Increment, Extensions (Sprint burn-down chart, Release burn-up chart)
1. Visualize
2. Limit Work-in-progress
3. Manage Flow
4. Make management policies explicit
5. Improve collaboratively (using models and the scientific method)
Extreme Programming has 12 practices, grouped into four areas, derived from the best practices of software engineering:
Fine scale feedback:
Pair Programming
Planning Game
Test Driven Development
Continuous process:
Continuous Integration
Design Improvement
Small Releases
Whole Team
Shared understanding:
Coding Standards
Collective Code Ownership
Simple Design
System Metaphor
Programmer welfare:
Sustainable Pace
Change philosophy Teams should strive to not make changes to the sprint forecast during the sprint. Doing so compromises learnings around estimation. Change can happen at any time. A high degree of developer discipline along with continuous customer involvement for the duration of the project. 
Cadence Regular fixed length sprints.  Continuous flow. Iteration.
Release methodology At the end of each sprint if approved by the product owner. Continuous delivery or at the team's discretion. At the end of iteration.

So, there are different methodologies you can use to manage project.
I think the main weakness in all these methodologies is poor knowledge about product. And sometimes we are trying to develop existence products when we need to create new system.
We need to choose methodology or to combine methodology tools in depending from kind of project and its scope. We need to take cognisances of experience, qualifications and conditions.

 

Posted on: October 07, 2016 12:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (13)
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