Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Monday, August 16, 2010
Chapter 11 - Clear communication
There are 4 major communication needs in a team.
1. Responsibility - make sure everyone know their responsibility clearly
2. Coordination - provide chance for cross-member work happenging
3. Status - Everyone should know what happened and happening, make sure everyone is at same page
4. Authorization - Everyone needs to know all decisions made from customers, sponsors or management which related.
Kick-off meeting is an important moment which formally announce - Time to start! whatever happened is history, we are now in the field. Sponsors should host the meeting to introduce the project purpose and relationship to business again.
What skills a good PM should own? Answer is strong communication skills. Negotiating, listening, conflict resolution, writing and other skills affect ability to work.
1. Responsibility - make sure everyone know their responsibility clearly
2. Coordination - provide chance for cross-member work happenging
3. Status - Everyone should know what happened and happening, make sure everyone is at same page
4. Authorization - Everyone needs to know all decisions made from customers, sponsors or management which related.
Kick-off meeting is an important moment which formally announce - Time to start! whatever happened is history, we are now in the field. Sponsors should host the meeting to introduce the project purpose and relationship to business again.
What skills a good PM should own? Answer is strong communication skills. Negotiating, listening, conflict resolution, writing and other skills affect ability to work.
Chapter 10 - High-performance project team
When I worked for Siemens, they post a slogan at hallway, "No one is perfect but a team can be". That is true, but how to build a great team is not an easy topic. The challenge of building a project team includes
1. Teams form to solve problems and they must solve problems together - not everyone is team-oriented especially some extra-smart guys. They tend to work independently.
2. teams are temporary so they must learn to work together - Not everyone can work with anyone, ego is a often seen issue between each other. Everyone may have different "way" to work.
The main job for a PM to do is to be a leader. Be a leader and do like a leader. Building a positive environment is always a good leader should do. In my career, I have seen someones have the ability to build a positive environment and I always want to work with them. Beside that, a leader needs to be able to "listen" instead of "talk", listening is more skill required than talk sometimes. PM needs to understand team say and find out potential problems and solve them.
In case study, Habitat for Humanity is a not-for-profit organizations involve lots of temporary volunteers. Since most team members are temp, PM needs to be able to make each other working together on-the-fly. That is a tough task. Compared to work at corp, team members are working for living. Volunteer work needs something non-money to make the work making sense. Habitat builds learning opportunities for every volunteers to fullfil their goal. That proves money is not the only incentive for team to work together.
1. Teams form to solve problems and they must solve problems together - not everyone is team-oriented especially some extra-smart guys. They tend to work independently.
2. teams are temporary so they must learn to work together - Not everyone can work with anyone, ego is a often seen issue between each other. Everyone may have different "way" to work.
The main job for a PM to do is to be a leader. Be a leader and do like a leader. Building a positive environment is always a good leader should do. In my career, I have seen someones have the ability to build a positive environment and I always want to work with them. Beside that, a leader needs to be able to "listen" instead of "talk", listening is more skill required than talk sometimes. PM needs to understand team say and find out potential problems and solve them.
In case study, Habitat for Humanity is a not-for-profit organizations involve lots of temporary volunteers. Since most team members are temp, PM needs to be able to make each other working together on-the-fly. That is a tough task. Compared to work at corp, team members are working for living. Volunteer work needs something non-money to make the work making sense. Habitat builds learning opportunities for every volunteers to fullfil their goal. That proves money is not the only incentive for team to work together.
Chapter 9 - Balancing the trade-off
Everyone has trade-off experience in daily life. My friend always buy the best price he can find in bay area for same model car. He is willing driving 100 miles to compare and get the best offer he can find. He trades his time to get better deal. In project management world, the trade-off is between Cost, Schedule and Quality. When we want something done faster, better prepare more budget. High paid consultant is another example, they do fast and great quality work when employers pay more.
Even Quality could be compromised by getting faster schedule. It is the worst idea to do that. Instead of getting a 80% working 20% failed products, we would prefer offering a less function product with 100% working all the time. The 3 US car makers spend tons of money to advertise their improvement on quality now as a result they sacrifice quality before. Most of time, US cars offer more standard features than Japanese cars but customers would prefer a more reliable cars even with less features.
In Boeing 767-400ER case study, Boeing shows great advantage they have in past years. They have done so many airplane designs and therefore Boeing can use parametric design to get a more accurate project estimate. When newer smaller companies may not have same advantages, they still can learn a lot from industry study.
Even Quality could be compromised by getting faster schedule. It is the worst idea to do that. Instead of getting a 80% working 20% failed products, we would prefer offering a less function product with 100% working all the time. The 3 US car makers spend tons of money to advertise their improvement on quality now as a result they sacrifice quality before. Most of time, US cars offer more standard features than Japanese cars but customers would prefer a more reliable cars even with less features.
In Boeing 767-400ER case study, Boeing shows great advantage they have in past years. They have done so many airplane designs and therefore Boeing can use parametric design to get a more accurate project estimate. When newer smaller companies may not have same advantages, they still can learn a lot from industry study.
Chapter 8 - Accurate Estimating
The full title The Art and Science of Accurate Estimating says everything. To accurate estimate is a combination of art and science. To a new PM, it is a science to follow existing method or path to do project management. However it is an art to master project management.
Almost everyone (no matter you are a PM or not) has similar experience like being asked how much time you need to accomplish some tasks in a 30-second meet with boss. And almost everyone will try to squeeze a date and reply with it. That is so-called "Ballparks in elevators" estimation. When it may not be a good idea to NOT answer boss's question, author suggests to double and double the time OR throws ball back to boss to ask details. Either one will work just a little bit better than nothing. The best way is avoid to answer the question at all.
When a company has done "enough" projects before, the "Parametric estimation" helps by using finished projects as reference to do a more accurate estimation.
Beside PM and who implement project, actually every stakeholders should be responsible for accurate estimates.
In Tynet, Inc, case study, Tynet improves their project performance by adopting phased estimating method. By adding more defined phases and interactivity with customers, Tynet can reduce the chance projects fail later. In short term, more activities may seems increasing "time to finish", it really reduce risk to fail dramatically.
Almost everyone (no matter you are a PM or not) has similar experience like being asked how much time you need to accomplish some tasks in a 30-second meet with boss. And almost everyone will try to squeeze a date and reply with it. That is so-called "Ballparks in elevators" estimation. When it may not be a good idea to NOT answer boss's question, author suggests to double and double the time OR throws ball back to boss to ask details. Either one will work just a little bit better than nothing. The best way is avoid to answer the question at all.
When a company has done "enough" projects before, the "Parametric estimation" helps by using finished projects as reference to do a more accurate estimation.
Beside PM and who implement project, actually every stakeholders should be responsible for accurate estimates.
In Tynet, Inc, case study, Tynet improves their project performance by adopting phased estimating method. By adding more defined phases and interactivity with customers, Tynet can reduce the chance projects fail later. In short term, more activities may seems increasing "time to finish", it really reduce risk to fail dramatically.
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Chapter7 - Realistic Scheduling
A realistic schedule is essential to a successful project. We all saw a project schedule and yell "is this schedule crazy?"
Most unrealistic schedule comes out with lack of the following
1. not enough knowledge of work to be done - especial PM most of time not the one with enough tech skill
2. incorrect order of task - for example lock a box then open it to put something in
3. external constraints beyond the control of team
4. no skilled people; no enough equipment available
Milestones can be used as useful markers to track the schedule. A PM can use milestone to know the relationship between different tasks. To mark input from one party to another.
Gantt charts can be used to show relationship between tasks and to allocate resource. Computer software can do most of job. However a PM still need to understand the tasks to make sure software makes sense.
Most unrealistic schedule comes out with lack of the following
1. not enough knowledge of work to be done - especial PM most of time not the one with enough tech skill
2. incorrect order of task - for example lock a box then open it to put something in
3. external constraints beyond the control of team
4. no skilled people; no enough equipment available
Milestones can be used as useful markers to track the schedule. A PM can use milestone to know the relationship between different tasks. To mark input from one party to another.
Gantt charts can be used to show relationship between tasks and to allocate resource. Computer software can do most of job. However a PM still need to understand the tasks to make sure software makes sense.
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Chapter 6 - Work Breakdown Structure
Now we start building detail blueprint from ideas.
SOW is more like talking about what we need at last. WBS is more like putting what we need on activity.
First step, starting at the top. Doing top-down approach. SOW deliverable are good candidates to be top items (called summary tasks). Then add "verb" to make items to become activities. There are several favors to organize WBS. Some may emphasize on components when some may emphasize on phases.
A key point regarding the relationship between top and bottom items is the sum of bottom items should be same as top item.
Work package size is a guideline which requres PM to make tasks smaller. Common rules are like 8/80 [no task smaller than 8 hours or larger than 80 hours] and reporting period rule [no task be longer than distance between two status points].
When PM plans for completion, PM also need to plan for quality. An early action for better quality can save tons fixes later.
SOW is more like talking about what we need at last. WBS is more like putting what we need on activity.
First step, starting at the top. Doing top-down approach. SOW deliverable are good candidates to be top items (called summary tasks). Then add "verb" to make items to become activities. There are several favors to organize WBS. Some may emphasize on components when some may emphasize on phases.
A key point regarding the relationship between top and bottom items is the sum of bottom items should be same as top item.
Work package size is a guideline which requres PM to make tasks smaller. Common rules are like 8/80 [no task smaller than 8 hours or larger than 80 hours] and reporting period rule [no task be longer than distance between two status points].
When PM plans for completion, PM also need to plan for quality. An early action for better quality can save tons fixes later.
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