Practical, real-world advice and best practices for effective project managers
If you have challenges motivating staff at work, then you have to watch this video by Dan Pink:
If you need more help on these ideas, then you should check out Learning Tree’s Management Skills course.
Larry T. Barnard, PMP, PMI-RMP, IISPM-Practitioner
CEO & Principal Architect
IISPM, International Institute of Sustainability Project Management
larry@iispm.com
There are countless ways that project leaders and the companies with which they work can be more sustainable. An organization that helps project leaders make sustainability a part of their projects is www.iispm.org. The goal of www.iispm.org is to “make project management sustainable . . . one project at a time.”
The electronic devices that make our lives easier also produce some unwanted side effects on the environment. Fortunately, many consumer electronics manufacturers are working to create products that keep us productive while reducing energy demands to lessen our impact on the environment.
Here are three of the newest environmentally-friendly, sustainable technologies reviewed at www.pctoday.com (from the December 2011 issue) that we can use to embrace sustainability for the good of people, the planet, and profits.
1. Rewritable Paper
The Taiwan- based Industrial Research Institute ( www.itri.org.tw), has pioneered a rewritable epaper that only requires heat to store and transmit images onto the screen. When you want to change the on-screen content, you place the epaper into a thermal writing device that would remove anything you wrote. The rewritable epaper would consume no electricity, and the thermal writing device would use a minimal amount of energy. The screen provides a crisp 300dpi resolution and is made of a flexible material that should be easy to mass produce. ITRI suggest that the technology could be used for digital books, electronic bulletin boards, pictorials, and situational wallpaper.
2. Canon Ink Cartridge Recycling
Canon (www.usa.canon.com) is working with FedEx Office (www.fedex.com to collect and recycle empty PIXMA inkjet cartridges. The collaborative recycling effort also involves Sims Recycling (us.simsrecycling.com) and Close the Loop (www.closetheloop.com), a company that recovers the plastic from inkjet cartridges for felt-tip pens and markers. Return a Canon PIXMA inkjet cartridge to one of the 1,600 FedEx Office locations and FedEx will send it to Sims Recycling for processing, after which Close the Loop will handle the cartridge to recycle the plastic and ink. The recycling effort is part of Canon’s Generation Green environmental initiative that brings a people-and earth-friendly approach to product design and life cycle for Canon’s printers, copiers, scanners and calculators.
3. Oracle Sustainability Reporting Starter Kit
Oracle (www.oracle.com) has introduced a new sustainability reporting add-on for its Oracle Hyperion Financial Management software. The Sustainability Reporting Starter Kit for Oracle Hyperion Financial Management is a prebuilt application that enables a repeatable, accurate, and auditable approach for consolidating environmental social and economic metrics for corporate sustainability reporting. The application includes content from the GRI (Global Reporting Initiative) Sustainability Reporting Guidelines. The content is verified by GRI, a network-based organization that produces a comprehensive sustainability-reporting framework that is widely used around the world. The free starter kit is available to customers and partners using Oracle Hyperion Financial Management.
For more information about sustainability in project management have a look at this new book from www.iispm.org: Making Sense of Sustainability Project Management.
Project management has many challenges. One of the most challenging things is the management of scope. There are many challenges to scope. Within the life cycle of a project, I would like to focus on the initial development of scope. When do you develop scope, and how do you develop scope?
Scope is developed in three main stages. The first stage of development takes place when you create the project charter during project initiation. This is the first key document created by the project. It’s used to outline the purpose of the project and get approval to start the project.
Once approved, full blown planning is needed. During planning, the project manager often employs the help of a project team and some subject matter experts (SMEs). Together they will comprehensively describe the objectives and deliverables of the project in a project scope statement. This is the second key document in the development of project scope.
The next step required is the complete decomposition of the list of deliverables into work packages. This is done through the creation of a work breakdown structure (WBS). By starting with the list of deliverables, each deliverable is further broken down until the project manager has work packages that can be delegated to individuals or teams and effectively managed. Typically these work packages each constitute one or two weeks of work. The aggregate of work packages constitutes the entire scope of the project. The WBS is the third essential document in the development of project scope.
The last and final step is the decomposition of work packages into activities for estimating purposes. This is the final step that enables the project manager to create an estimated schedule and estimated budget.
Sounds easy enough, right? But there are a few variables to consider. First of all, project philosophy suggests that planning is good, and that you should do the planning as early on as possible.
In real life, projects often neglect to plan early, and/or neglect to involve all the necessary stakeholders. Real life is always messier than virtual reality. In addition, people have to deal with politics, time constraints and many other complications.
To help project managers with the practical challenges of scope development, Learning Tree has some key courses that combine a blended style of learning between lecture, and hands-on project work. Check out Learning Tree’s wide spectrum of Project Management courses.
Larry T. Barnard, PMP, PMI-RMP, IISPM Practitioner
CEO and Principal Architect
IISPM, International Institute of Sustainability Project Management
larry@iispm.com
Requirements elicitation targets gathering the right information to develop the project requirements. The requirements for your project are the foundation for a solution that will be designed and deployed by the project and its efforts.
According to the BABOK® Guide, the tasks in the Elicitation knowledge area begin early in the project life cycle and typically peak during the more detailed requirements development phase of the project. Actually, I have found that equirements can be elicited at any point in the project life cycle, either for the first time or as the result of changes or things that have been missed or erroneously stated.
There are a number of ways to elicit requirements on your projects. The most common elicitation technique is a face-to-face meeting with one or more of your project stakeholders to gather information regarding their needs. However, elicited information doesn’t have to come directly from people. It can also come to you indirectly based upon your research and review of existing documents and other data.
The business analyst is responsible for adequate requirements elicitation preparation. On large projects, this responsibility often falls to the collective members of the business analysis team, who will be simultaneously eliciting requirements information from different stakeholders. Be sure to coordinate who is doing what when, and make sure you plan for sitting down and accumulating what everyone has learned. It is important to remember that any project stakeholder can be involved in requirements elicitation.
Interestingly enough, I notices that the BABOK® Guide has three types of elicitation techniques: events, performed work, and collected work. CBAP and CCBA exam preparers, make sure that you can recognize each individual elicitation technique and that you remember which type of technique it is! This seems like a good topic for a certification exam question.
Business analysts are increasingly becoming the critical liaisons between business and solution development (oftentimes IT), so they must communicate and relate with equal effectiveness throughout all levels of an organization. Download this free White Paper to learn how to address common business analysis mistakes.
Happy requirements elicitation!
If you are considering sitting the CBAP or CCBA certification exams for business analysts, check out our new study guide that can help you prepare to pass the test, the CBAP / CCBA: Certified Business Analysis Study Guide by Susan Weese and Terri Wagner! It’s a great place to learn more about business requirements and everything else you need to know to successfully pass the certification exam
A Model for Effectiveness as a Virtual/Remote Working (VRW) Leader
Our model addresses three key issues:
1. The focus of VRW management
Task Level— ensuring the work is done
Communication Level—managing communication
Relationship Level— managing human and organizational relationships
KEY POINT: VRW leaders need to pay attention to different things than managers in collocated situations. Many managers choose to focus on task, even when the group works closely together. Often this means that they pay insufficient attention to the things that motivate the team members, and to the relationships and communication necessary for any team to truly perform well. Often the team members will feel micro-managed, disempowered and de-motivated. It is even more tempting to try and manage task when the team is not working together, and even less likely to deliver high performance. Good task delivery depends on truly effective communication between the members to enable the collaboration necessary. As we all know, good communication requires a sound relationship. It therefore follows then that a more useful focus for a VRW leader’s attention should be on day-to-day communication, which can only be happening well if the leader takes actions that enable good inter- and intra-team relationships to develop and be maintained.
2. What Successful VRW Teams Need
Every team member is a unique individual with his/her own perspectives, interests, and needs. Our model must help us work effectively with individuals and teams and their line managers, when required.
KEY POINT: It’s all about people! People make things happen, and committed, informed, empowered people with a clear context and direction will collaborate with better understanding and success. But people are all individual and cannot all be motivated and managed in the same way. Understanding individual perspectives, interests and needs is the basis of all good teamwork, but even more so in VRW situations – it can’t happen organically, so needs to have maximum focus and attention from the leader
In the workplace, every team member has three basic needs:
1. Clarity of responsibility – Who is doing what?
2. His or her interests are met – What’s in it for me? (WIIFM)
3. Sense of identity – To what groups do I belong?
3. Leveraging the Opportunities and Mitigating the Threats Associated With Working Apart
VRW involves many combinations of separation factors:
What’s your view?
What are your favorite pointers, tips, tricks, and techniques for managing Virtual/Remote Teams? Please share your ideas by posting a comment below.
For more on managing Virtual/Remote Teams, try Learning Tree’s course on Leading Virtual and Remote Teams.
