In case you didn’t know, there are a couple of free software packages available that fit nicely into the Project Managers tool box. The first is Control CE 6.3. The vendor states that this free program can be used for Process Mapping, Business Improvement, Business Reengineering, Software Package Implementation, and Quality Management.
The vendor goes on to say “Whatever the project, it all starts with an understanding of the business from a process and metrics perspective. That means mapping processes, and identifying KPIs. To get REAL ownership and buy-in they need to be developed in LIVE workshops. Control-CE was designed to be used confidently by consultants with little training, in live workshops where people have a short interest span.
Whilst control-CE has some great process mapping functionality, it extends beyond simply creating hierarchies of diagrams”.
I have reviewed and used the Control CE software and find that it is quite powerful and worth a look.
The other free software program is Open Workbench. According to the vendor, “Open Workbench is an open source desktop application that provides robust project scheduling and management functionality. Already the scheduling standard for more than 100,000 project managers worldwide, Open Workbench is a free and powerful alternative to Microsoft Project.
Open Workbench provides all the functionality and benefits that project managers expect in a world-class scheduling application:
• Open Workbench can be used and distributed free of charge throughout an enterprise.
• Open Workbench is a stand-alone desktop application that provides robust project scheduling functionality.
• Open Workbench provides the unique ability to generate project schedules based on resource constraints.
• Open source developers will find a ready-made community of business users interested in their enhancements and extensions.
The source code and other developer information are available on SourceForge.
The open source distribution and community development model will now bring quality, innovation and cost advantages to the project management world. Open Workbench can also be used in a fully integrated fashion with CA's Clarity solution. Please visit www.niku.com/go/owb for more details.
I have found Open Workbench to be a powerful standalone project management scheduling software package. Again, you will have to determine if Open Workbench's features and functions can work for you.
Hopefully some of you will find one or both of the above software packages useful. Your comments are always welcome.
Monday, March 30, 2009
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
My Rules for Project Management
Remove people from your team that don’t ask questions, don’t talk with other team members, won’t provide documentation, or won’t do analysis.
Only people that aren’t competent won’t show off their work
Question authority or live with the result
A sense of humor can help get teams through tough times. Keep in mind, some managers don’t appreciate humor unless they initiate it.
A working meeting should have no more than five people. Meetings with more than five should be reserved for providing updates or relaying information.
Paper status reports are worth what they are printed on.
Project failure is planned at the beginning of the project. Project initiation is the most important phase.
Be honest in all your dealings.
Project managers are expected to offer their opinions, but be accountable for your words.
When it comes to project scope, what is not in writing has not been said.
Have verifiable milestones
End of project surveys must be completed and the results distributed to the team
Bad conclusions lead to more bad conclusions
Documented assumptions are believed to be true for planning purposes
The best lessons learned come from failures
Without data you only have an opinion
Data doesn’t tell the whole story.
Bad data leads to bad decisions
Senior management is usually clueless when it comes to what your project is all about
A bad project team will never deliver good project results
If your project sponsor isn’t responsive you should put your project on-hold until such time they can become involved
The bottleneck is at the top of the bottle
A project manager’s main job is to keep the customer happy
At the end of a project if you have met all scope, quality, budget, and schedule objectives, but the customer isn’t happy your project is a failure
Documentation doesn’t replace knowledge
Most people want to do good work. Many times they don’t have the tools or information they need to perform well, or they aren’t managed properly
Project managers aren’t successful if their team members aren’t successful
Not all successful project managers are competent and not all unsuccessful project managers are incompetent. Sometimes you just have to be lucky
Good project managers are insecure by nature
An introvert can’t be a (successful) project manager
A project manager with lots of enemies won’t be able to be successful over the long run.
You must be a relationship guru and be ready to fall on the sword sometimes
A project manager must be a motivator
If you don’t listen, you can’t plan
Project managers deal with change. You must be the change agent for your project. Your project sponsor is the change salesman.
Only people that aren’t competent won’t show off their work
Question authority or live with the result
A sense of humor can help get teams through tough times. Keep in mind, some managers don’t appreciate humor unless they initiate it.
A working meeting should have no more than five people. Meetings with more than five should be reserved for providing updates or relaying information.
Paper status reports are worth what they are printed on.
Project failure is planned at the beginning of the project. Project initiation is the most important phase.
Be honest in all your dealings.
Project managers are expected to offer their opinions, but be accountable for your words.
When it comes to project scope, what is not in writing has not been said.
Have verifiable milestones
End of project surveys must be completed and the results distributed to the team
Bad conclusions lead to more bad conclusions
Documented assumptions are believed to be true for planning purposes
The best lessons learned come from failures
Without data you only have an opinion
Data doesn’t tell the whole story.
Bad data leads to bad decisions
Senior management is usually clueless when it comes to what your project is all about
A bad project team will never deliver good project results
If your project sponsor isn’t responsive you should put your project on-hold until such time they can become involved
The bottleneck is at the top of the bottle
A project manager’s main job is to keep the customer happy
At the end of a project if you have met all scope, quality, budget, and schedule objectives, but the customer isn’t happy your project is a failure
Documentation doesn’t replace knowledge
Most people want to do good work. Many times they don’t have the tools or information they need to perform well, or they aren’t managed properly
Project managers aren’t successful if their team members aren’t successful
Not all successful project managers are competent and not all unsuccessful project managers are incompetent. Sometimes you just have to be lucky
Good project managers are insecure by nature
An introvert can’t be a (successful) project manager
A project manager with lots of enemies won’t be able to be successful over the long run.
You must be a relationship guru and be ready to fall on the sword sometimes
A project manager must be a motivator
If you don’t listen, you can’t plan
Project managers deal with change. You must be the change agent for your project. Your project sponsor is the change salesman.
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Business Process Basics
Project managers need to ensure that customer's are satisfied with a project's deliverables. Part of this process is ensuring that the customer's business processes are optimized. You can't provide the best possible project results if your customer's processes aren't efficient. Improving processes is about improving quality while reducing costs and waste.
Processes need measures. If you don't have measures then your processes aren't worth the paper they are printed on. Processes have to meet the needs of the organization, business unit that executes them, and the customer's requirements. Measures also help to identify and solve process problems, and help to ensure they are meeting the customer's requirements.
When it comes to process improvement, a good project manager understands:
How to develop team skills
How to break down work into processes
How to solve problems and to find the root cause of the problems
How to recommend solutions to problems that are acceptable to the majority
How to lead a team and when to let the team lead
Measure the effectiveness of a process by:
Looking at the cycle times between process steps
Identifying bottlenecks that cause unnecessary delays
Identify problems that cause defects to occur
In order to help develop good business processes, a project manager must have the knowledge, skills, and experience to ensure that the right people are doing the right things at the right time, using the right tools and delivering the results that are expected.
Processes need measures. If you don't have measures then your processes aren't worth the paper they are printed on. Processes have to meet the needs of the organization, business unit that executes them, and the customer's requirements. Measures also help to identify and solve process problems, and help to ensure they are meeting the customer's requirements.
When it comes to process improvement, a good project manager understands:
How to develop team skills
How to break down work into processes
How to solve problems and to find the root cause of the problems
How to recommend solutions to problems that are acceptable to the majority
How to lead a team and when to let the team lead
Measure the effectiveness of a process by:
Looking at the cycle times between process steps
Identifying bottlenecks that cause unnecessary delays
Identify problems that cause defects to occur
In order to help develop good business processes, a project manager must have the knowledge, skills, and experience to ensure that the right people are doing the right things at the right time, using the right tools and delivering the results that are expected.
Monday, March 16, 2009
Use a Process to Manage Big Changes
Good steps to consider when making major changes in your organization. It was taken from the book "Leading Change" by John P. Kotter (see source information at the end of the posting).
1. Establishing a Sense of Urgency
a. Examining the market and competitive realities
b. Identifying and discussing crises, potential crises, or major opportunities
2. Creating the Guiding Coalition
a. Putting together a group with enough power to lead the change
b. Getting the group to work together as a team
3. Developing a Vision and Strategy
a. Creating a vision to help direct the change effort
b. Developing strategies for achieving that vision
4. Communicating the Change Vision
a. Using every vehicle possible to constantly communicate the new vision and strategies
b. Having the guiding coalition role model the behavior expected of employees
5. Empowering Broad-Based Action
a. Getting rid of obstacles
b. Changing systems or structures that undermine the change vision
c. Encouraging risk taking and non-traditional ideas, activities, and actions
6. Generating Short-Term Wins
a. Planning for visible improvements in performance, or “wins”
b. Creating those wins
c. Visibly recognizing and rewarding people who made the wins possible
7. Consolidating Gains and Producing More Change
a. Using increased credibility to change all systems, structures, and policies that don’t fit together and don’t fit the transformation vision
b. Hiring, promoting, and developing people who can implement the change vision
c. Reinvigorating the process with new projects, themes, and change agents
8. Anchoring New Approaches in the Culture
a. Creating better performance through customer and productivity-oriented behavior, more an better leadership, and more effective management
b. Articulating the connections between new behaviors and organizational success
c. Developing means to ensure leadership development and succession
SOURCE: Adapted from John P. Kotter, “Leading Change,” Harvard Business School Press 1996
1. Establishing a Sense of Urgency
a. Examining the market and competitive realities
b. Identifying and discussing crises, potential crises, or major opportunities
2. Creating the Guiding Coalition
a. Putting together a group with enough power to lead the change
b. Getting the group to work together as a team
3. Developing a Vision and Strategy
a. Creating a vision to help direct the change effort
b. Developing strategies for achieving that vision
4. Communicating the Change Vision
a. Using every vehicle possible to constantly communicate the new vision and strategies
b. Having the guiding coalition role model the behavior expected of employees
5. Empowering Broad-Based Action
a. Getting rid of obstacles
b. Changing systems or structures that undermine the change vision
c. Encouraging risk taking and non-traditional ideas, activities, and actions
6. Generating Short-Term Wins
a. Planning for visible improvements in performance, or “wins”
b. Creating those wins
c. Visibly recognizing and rewarding people who made the wins possible
7. Consolidating Gains and Producing More Change
a. Using increased credibility to change all systems, structures, and policies that don’t fit together and don’t fit the transformation vision
b. Hiring, promoting, and developing people who can implement the change vision
c. Reinvigorating the process with new projects, themes, and change agents
8. Anchoring New Approaches in the Culture
a. Creating better performance through customer and productivity-oriented behavior, more an better leadership, and more effective management
b. Articulating the connections between new behaviors and organizational success
c. Developing means to ensure leadership development and succession
SOURCE: Adapted from John P. Kotter, “Leading Change,” Harvard Business School Press 1996
Friday, March 13, 2009
Office Politics and Gossip
- This Soviet war poster conveys the message: "Don't chatter! Gossiping borders on treason" (1941).
According to Marilyn Haight, at BigBadBoss.com Office Politics “is the use of one's individual or assigned power within an employing organization for the purpose of obtaining advantages beyond one's legitimate authority.” Those advantages may include access to tangible assets, or intangible benefits such as status or pseudo-authority that influences the behavior of others. Both individuals and groups may engage in Office Politics."
I think most people would agree that those participating in office politics seek to gain an advantage. Being a skillful office politician may get you recognized or promoted, but it may also come at the expense of your or another’s integrity.
Remember, gossip is usually destructive (at a minimum unfair) to somebody, and should be discouraged whenever possible. If we are honest, we would all admit that we participate in office gossip. We need to limit office gossip to be the exception, not the norm in our daily conversations with others.
Be accountable for your words in the workplace. Work should be fun and our work relationships should be positive and healthy. Healthy work relationships are dependent on gossip being kept to a minimum.