Step by Step

One week before of the Big day, my chapter sent a promotional email, announcing the event. I couldn’t avoid sharing it with my personal Social Media. 

This is me:

And this was the other speaker, yes, you can google it, he is an actor, bishop, writer, and professional speaker. 

My thoughts at this moment “Oh my gosh! This will be more challenging that expected”

The big day arrived, as the session was scheduled in business time, I was expecting about 50-60 people, in a training environment.

When I arrived at the place, I saw that. 

I asked my only POC in the chapter about the number of attendees, about 130…at this first moment I wanted to disappear.

First TODO, test the computer…as always, issues with the connections, how that was possible, I tested hundred times at home, with different monitors, friends projectors…and as always. Murphy’s law.

After, I observed a camera; I asked if they are going to prepare as a webinar, or share in someplace, my POC explained that they were going to test it for the first time. Again, I wanted to disappear for the second time. I wasn’t aware of that.

The moment arrived; I did one step ahead and did my presentation in the stipulated time.

After the presentation, my tablemates congratulated me. 

We had an amazing lunch and networking time, and then a professional speaker started his speech. Wow huge a difference! Then, I’ve realized that I was lucky to start first; else, I really would have disappeared. 

Lesson Learned 3 - Don't assume anything

Lesson Learned 4 - Be prepared for technical issues.  

Lesson Learned 5 - Challenging opportunities make me grow. 

There are two things that I love, speak and write. Translated that to my daily job, is documenting, training and coaching.

When I worked as SAP consultant, I had more opportunities to train my users, prepare documentation, present it in front of about 50 attendees, and you can not imagine how pickier, they can be with their unplanned questions.

Now as Project Manager, my training skills strength have been moved to a background, because, I use to schedule the training and verify it. But I’m not the protagonist; I’m not in front of the exigent audience trying to engage them to the amazing SAP world.

Moving to the USA, and after to a new state, was a challenge. During the last years I tried to contact my new chapter, finally, the opportunity arrived.

I realized that my new chapter members aren’t very actives in Social Media, neither the chapter. Then I proposed to talk about Using Social Media as Project Managers.

I had less than 3 weeks to prepare the presentation, that was very challenging because was my first educational/presentation in English (It’s not the same that led a SteerCo meeting, lol) and I didn’t know the attendees.

• Number of attendees
• Social Media skills
• Industry Sector

Nothing!

Hence, I decided to prepare a basic presentation with the following content.

• Introduction: Social Media – Definition, Usage data, Myths
• Social Media –In our projects/organizations
• Social Media – Platforms and usages
  • ProjectManagement.com. There are about 600 members of my chapter on this site, less than 5% have an updated profile. Then I explained the benefits to update and participate in this site.
  • LinkedIn. Account creation and tips
  • Facebook. Page creation, group creations. Benefits that I get using social media to know the team.
  • Twitter. Account creation, using # 
  • WhatsApp. What is it, how it works and how it helped me to reduce my project costs.
• Planning for Social Media. Review few key questions
• Conclusions

Lessons Learned 1 - Usually people at chapter are very busy, and take a lot of time and emails to got an answer. Be patient, but don't stop trying. 

Lessons Learned 2 - Try to understand know your audience in order to prepare properly the material. 

It seems yesterday when I joined this community. I started asking some questions as Anonym, maybe I was shy or maybe I was overwhelming to see the quantity of great contributors and people with impressive resumes and career paths belongs to this community.

When started to prepare PMP certification, I found very useful the PM Challenge, and I used it to test my knowledge in different knowledge areas.

After get my PMP certification, I started to participate, more actively, on a daily basis, discussions, polls, comments in articles or blogs.

Articles or Blog? I never had a blog before. But I love to write and share my experiences.

I asked the community, why they recommended - participate in this community with a blog or maybe an article.

https://www.projectmanagement.com/discussion-topic/42743/What-do-you-recommend-first--Article-or-Blog--

Then as we said in catalan “dit i fet” (said and done), I started the blog.

I thought about the benefits

• Challenge myself and improve my English skills.

I’ve read that writing serves to memorize and create a foundation for the newly learned knowledge. Well, maybe writing on the computer is not the same as writing by hand. Whatever, in my case, write in English something different a technical documents or meeting notes and serves to continue learning.

• Improve my network.

Although blogs are not the only or best way to meet new people, they are a means to start a relationship that can end in a new friend, contact or client. Being new in the United States, I know that I have to work and increase my network.

• Share my knowledge.

The advantage of a blog is that it allows me to demonstrate my skills and knowledge, which may surprise more than one executive or hiring manager.

From my point of view, a blog demonstrates an entrepreneurial capacity that many hiring managers may be looking for.

• Giving back to the community

As far as I remember, we can ask for PDU’s for this blog, in the category of giving back.  Today, I don’t request for those. But maybe my experience or my entries will entertain or help other members of this community.

Then I used my PM knowledge to start.

Initiating Process Group

Identify stakeholders

Project Management community, avoid writing about vacations or your how kind is your neighbor and his automatically snow removal…try to don’t talk only about IT.

Planning Process Group

Plan scope management - Content variable, from lessons learned to how frustrated I felt. (example previous entry VP of Buzzwords)

Define activities & Estimate activity duration

2 hour to write the post + grammar check.

30 min formatting and uploading in the site.

It means at least 5 hour month.

Plan schedule and develop  – 2 Post per month on Friday.

Plan Quality management – Check and ask for feedback

Plan Communication management – Review one a week the comments in your post.

Plan risk management & identify the risks

• No ideas
• No time
• No engage

Risk responses

No ideas – read a book and comment here, review the last IT news,  check the discussions, check other social media.

No time – Review the agenda, update the frequency of publications.

No engage – Read about how to create an amazing post or blog

Executing + Monitoring and Controlling

Now I’m in this step, I’ve realized that when I started the blog the frequency of posting was easy to keep.

During January I’ve only posted one entry, I’ve checked the plan, the content and now I’m checking my agenda (Control Schedule), and daily schedule to continue on plan. Was a little deviation of January + February, but with the risk analysis responses planned, I should keep going (Control Risks)

Regarding the interacting with the stakeholders (Control stakeholder engagement), not all post are having the same rating or number of comments. I’ve realized that I should work on the title and the summary in order to engage more people to read it.

I’m answering and all the comments in my posts and give more information or feedback to those that participate (Control communication)

At this point from my point of view, I’m trying to do my best. And I should keep going.

Do you have a blog? Did you plan it before start? What are your risks? 

Snakes and Ladders – Gantt

Commonly used in project management, Gantt Chart is one of the most popular and useful ways of showing activities (tasks or events) displayed against time.

Gantt Chart History

Henry Gantt, (May 20, 1861 – November 23, 1919) was an American engineer and consultant.  Some references explain that was Henry who created the chart in 1910, but looking forward in the history, the first Gantt chart was devised in the mid-1890s in the Karol Adamiecki (March 18, 1866 – May 16, 1933) publications.

Karol Adamiecki was a Polish engineer who ran a steelworks in southern Poland and had become interested in management ideas and techniques.

However, Karol Adamiecki published his works in Polish and Russian language, due to that, his charts didn’t reach the popularity that Henry Gantt in western countries.

What is a Gantt Chart? 

Basically is a horizontal bar chart that illustrates the project schedule.

On the left of the chart, is the list of the activities and on the top the time scale.

Each activity is represented by a bar.

This set up will allow us to see

• The activities that we are tracking
• When each activity will start/end and how long it is.
• Overlapping between tasks and
• Start and End of the whole project.

Creating Gantt Charts

In today's world, they are usually created by computer applications, such as Microsoft® Project, Primavera Project Planner®, and others.

There are a lot of youtube videos, books, manuals and courses that will teach you how to use those applications. 

How to present Gantt chart to your stakeholders?

Here we are! There are hundreds of publications about how to improve our skills using these tools, but nobody told you the most important. 

BE CAREFULLY WHEN YOU’LL PRESENT THIS KIND OF INFORMATION.

When I started working as a project manager, directly I exported from MS Project to a power point the schedule, and here the face and comment from one of my lovely  users: 

Then,

• Don’t make assumptions, not all your stakeholders know what is a Gantt chart.
• When you plan a meeting, take in mind who is invited before to prepare the slide about schedules.
• Simplify. 

The beginning of a new year is always shown as an opportunity to reflect our goals or resolutions fulfilled and unfulfilled throughout the year.

I’ve reviewed my goals from last year, both professional and personal, and I’ve realized, that I have fulfilled them all. Why? Simple, consciously or unconsciously, my personal life is managed as a project. Giving importance to all different process groups, I’ve achieved all my 2016 goals. Then I’m ready to start 2017 completely clean.  

If you continue reading, you’ll discover how I’ve managed the different process groups during last year. 

Initiating Process Group

During December 2015, I began to review my lessons learned, and objectives. Then I created a project charter. 

Planning Process Group

This is the key process; some of us started the year with an enthusiastic spirit, with a huge list of joys and good intentions, ambitious goals. However few people achieve this goal, and this is due to the following

• We recycle goals from one year to the next. This leads to professional and personal stagnation.
• We procrastinate. Basically, because we have defined goals and objectives that do not motivate us.
• We do not have a plan and we simply define general goals.

By following the next key tips, you will get a correct right way to plan your goals.

• Take your time to elaborate a plan thoroughly. Do not plan your goals quickly, spend time just like you would in your daily professional project.
• Create a clear categorization of your goals (Personal, Professional, Education, Entertainment, Health ...) and include a deadline for each goal. Do not leave everything for December 31st.
• Define goals that really motivate you, for example, if your dream is to play the Spanish guitar, because you’ve seen at the campground your neighbor singing around the campfire, but it really does not motivate you, the most likely is that around mid-year, you deprioritize that goal to focus on another.
• Use positive statements. Try to change expressions like “I want to stop procrastinating in my free time”, to something like “I want to do an outdoor activity once a month”
• Specify and detail all the objectives. Ambiguous objectives will give us ambiguous results. Example, Studying for the PMP Certification vs. Dedicating 1 hour to prepare the PMP Certification.

Executing process group

When you already have the objectives set, and a good implementation plan. It is time to focus on realization. Always try to pursue one goal at the time, although you can execute in multi-task mode, remember that you’ll lose efficiency and quality in pursuing your goals. Prioritize and do not stop monitoring and controlling.

Monitoring and controlling process group

Depending on the goals and deadlines that you’ve, do not forget to check and review weekly or monthly the status of your goals.

When you are reviewing the objectives, some risks that you didn’t include initially will appear, maybe you’ll have to lead with cost problems, then take in mind…you have to manage your project Go2NewYear as a professional project, you must revieww and check that you are taking care of all knowledge areas.

And if you're not getting your goals, what happens? Well, the same as in a project: it has to re-plan and execute accordingly.

Closing process group

Before to closing, remember, document lessons learned for each goal and CELEBRATE, CELEBRATE!!

Did you celebrate your goals in 2016? Do you have a plan for 2017?