An executive comes to a project manager.
Exec: I would like this project to be done as soon as possible. When do you think this can be done?
PM: I think if I try really hard this can be ready tomorrow afternoon.
Exec: If I wanted to have this tomorrow I would come tomorrow, wouldn’t I?

This very relevant joke and a really good article on timeline management comes from PM Hut

A couple years ago, a company I was working with, asked me to share with them the use cases and benefits of Scrum.

The first presentation I did was pretty straight forward and there are many instances that can be found online. For example from:

• Scrum Alliance
• Mountain Goat Software

It must have really sparked the management’s interest as soon after they asked me to come up with an Agile implementation strategy for the company. This is the presentation I would like to share with you as I believe many curious, mid size, web development shops out there might be seriously thinking about adopting Agile or some hybrid form to supplement their Waterfall process. The methodology has been definitely gaining more of a mainstream status and I must say I am happy to see that.

Feel free to leave your comments, suggestions, real life experiences. You can also download it.

In college, we were taught that the perfect manager is very logical, humane and fair. Every case study had one right answer. In the real world, however, there were many different answers to a problem. Sometimes you had to do things that didn’t seem logical. Dealing with people was not always easy and text book suggestions didn’t always guarantee the desired outcome. Basically, what I learned, is that no matter how much we want to standardize business practices and divide every activity into processes, at the core of every corporation are people.

Yes, corporation, as defined under the law, is a separate legal entity with its own unique vision/mission/values, but these elements were ultimately crafted by a person! Most likely that person infused a part of themselves into the process. It is easy to forget that when we always use inanimate definitions such as stakeholder, workforce etc. The best advice I got from my boss at that time is: don’t forget, there is always another human being on the other side of the phone line. It helped me a lot while negotiating with vendors, clients, customer service etc.

So my question is, why don’t we just admit it? Why don’t we stop pretending like everything is black and white in the world of business and instead start teaching emotional intelligence and psychology as major subjects in the business programs. Lets shift the focus from just accounting and finance.

One of my professors kept advocating for the emotional intelligence. Sometimes he would spend the whole class on this instead of teaching us BUS101 and then would give us the questions that would be on the test. He did this because he was a strong believer that EQ (emotional intelligence) is more important than IQ. Of course nobody took him seriously at that time. Today, I am very interested in taking courses on the subject as I see real value in this knowledge and my work would definitely benefit from it. Instead of letting a business problem become an emotional issue, imagine being able to identify which episode caused the negative experience and triggered the response and then helping your coworker, client or customer work through it without judgment. We need to be able to recognize that some issues cannot be solved using just logic. Instead, too often I have been in a situation where one party starts to get emotional, which triggers the other party to clam up and get defensive. These situations usually take a while to resolve.

When I began consulting on my own, after leaving a full-time job, I decided to participate in the entrepreneurial workshop called Innovation Camp. Going in, my expectations were: to find my weak spots and seek improvement in those areas; to learn how to see problems as opportunities. The experience was excellent and I did find out in practice that one of the areas for improvement was negotiation. As a result, I turned to Linked In Answers and was recommended Jeanette Nyden. In sharing her unconventional wisdom, she recommends to realize that people do really stupid things, like deny responsibility for their obvious mistakes. From a child that stole a cookie from a jar and denies it while its still in his mouth, to a contractor who did a lousy job on your roof and doesn’t want to fix it – we don’t seem to change.

Lets come to terms with the fact that we are only human. We are inherently irrational due to the fact that we are heavily influenced by our emotions and character traits, which we have little control over. As much as we try, we are not robots. We do not suddenly turn human again when we leave the office. So lets set some realistic expectations for ourselves so there are less misunderstandings. Even economists stopped expecting people to act rational so why do we still assume that just because a person is surrounded by a cubicle, their cognitive process is different.

I would like to finish with another quote from Jeanette:

Life is lived in shades of gray. Americans in particular like to talk in terms of the “bottom line”, bullet points and principles. The reality of the situation is that what you are negotiating is not likely a black and white issue. There will be nuances and shades of gray. The solutions are the gray areas.

Would love to know what you think!

I am myself trying to work out the ideal framework when it comes to risk management. I have also discussed this topic with my mentor and he shared with me the process that is in place at his company, which is a risk-averse.

The risk management there starts with the brainstorming from the whole team; everyone is invited to contribute to the list of possible risks. The risks are put on sticky notes and also assigned the probability and impact. For those risks with high impact and high probability, the team tries to come up with a solution to move it down on the impact/probability graph. That’s all just prep work, however, but the biggest challenge is to actually keep these risks in mind.

I found that both PMI and my mentor suggest to actually put the mitigating strategy into the project plan. That helps to keep risks visible as you mentioned yourself that you always keep an eye on the plan and upcoming tasks. Ideally the rest of the risk log should also be reviewed periodically and included in the status updates. Of course sometimes there are risks that we did not foresee; those become lessons learned.

In an ideal feedback loop, lessons learned also serve as a base for the risk brainstorming session of future projects.

I would be interested to hear how others deal with risk management on their projects.

A man in a hot air balloon was lost. He reduced altitude and spotted a woman below. He descended a little bit more and shouted:
“Excuse me madam, can you help? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago, but I don’t know where I am’.
The woman replied: ‘You are in a hot air balloon hovering approximately 30 feet above alkali desert scrub habitat, 2.7 miles west of the Colorado River near one of the remnant populations and spawning grounds of the razorback sucker’.
‘You must be a biologist’ said the balloonist.
‘I am’ replied the woman. ‘How did you know?’
‘Well’ answered the balloonist ‘everything you told me is technically correct, but I have no idea what to make of your information, and the fact is I am still lost. Frankly, you’ve not been much help so far’.
The woman below responded ‘You must be a project manager’.
‘I am’ replied the balloonist ‘but how did you know?’
‘Well, said the woman ‘you don’t know where you are or where you’re going. You have risen to where you are due to a large quantity of hot air. You made a promise to someone that you have no idea how to keep, and you expect me to solve your problem. The fact is, you are in exactly the same position you were in before we met, but somehow it’s now my fault!’

From Stepping into Project Management

• Role: project managed redesign and development of this website with open source PHP Joomla Content Management System with an emphasis on usability and SEO
• Timeline: 5 months
• Budget: under $50,000
• Team: in-house cross functional team including information architect, writer, art director, designer, tech lead, developer, QA, IT, SEO
• Link: www.cdsltd.com

• Role: project managed redesign and development of this website with custom PHP Content Management System with an emphasis on usability and SEO
• Timeline: 12 months
• Budget: under $100,000
• Team: in-house cross functional team including information architect, art directors, designers, tech leads, developers (front end/server side), QA, IT, SEO
• Link: www.hscr.com

“Olga has done an excellent job as project manager for our website development. Her concern to understand our needs and ensure the delivery of quality results is great. She has consistently demonstrated a high level of personal integrity and professionalism. I don’t hesitate to recommend her. Top qualities: Great Results, On Time, High Integrity.” Terry Rodgers, President at HighStreet Corporate Rentals Ltd.

• Role: project managed redesign and development of this .NET eCommerce website with the proprietary Progress database
• Timeline: 12 months
• Budget: under $150,000
• Team: in-house cross functional team including information architect, art directors, designers, tech leads, developers (front end/server side), QA, IT, SEO; Client’s technical team
• Link: www.keyfood.ca

“Olga is a well organised Project Manager who will deliver project on time and capture the essence of the customer needs. She has work into stringent buget constraint and have stayed the course. I highly recommend her to manage IT projects for your company as a provider or as an employee. Top qualities: Personable, On Time, High Integrity” Jean Choquette, President at Key Food Equipment Services Ltd.

• Role: project managed design, development and integration of the first phase for this .NET online community into Ektron CMS; database creation for multiple remote live golf simulator systems to display data in user accounts
• Timeline: 6 months
• Budget: under $50,000
• Team: in-house cross functional team including information architect, art director, designer, tech lead, developers (front end/server side), QA, IT; live simulator technical team
• Link: www.DreamShotgolfHD.com

• Role: A side project for Fraser Institute, I project managed redesign and implementation of this .NET website into SaaS Marqui CMS utilizing Flash gallery SlideShowPro
• Timeline: 5 months
• Budget: under $50,000
• Team: in-house cross functional team including information architect, art directors, designers, tech leads, developers (front end/server side), QA, IT, SEO; CMS provider technical team
• Link: www.forexcellenceineducation.org