Journyx Project Management Blog

I hope you won’t take it personally if I start with a brief rant. After all, it isn’t often that I have a chance to address a large number of project managers. So, before we get onto the main points, I can’t resist mounting my soap-box and giving you a short lecture on why good writing matters.

Because in my experience - roughly quarter of a century writing everything from TV ads to annual reports, for organizations of all kinds - an awful lot of people in positions like yours just don’t get it. Oh yes, they pay lip service to the importance of effective communications, but, as soon as they put fingers to keyboard … out seeps the usual mind-dribble about “bespoke methodologies facilitating optimized leveraging of synergistic blah-di-blah”.

So let me spell it out: Every word counts. Every single piece of written communication produced by you or anyone in your organization has the potential to make a difference to the performance of your organization.

Why? Because the words we use in writing don’t just express our ideas, they can help to mould and shape them. They can explain what we do, and help us understand how we could do it better. They can play a vital role in building happy and productive working relationships. And, of course, they can give us an advantage over our competitors.

Read on at MaxWideman.com.

Yes, children, once again it’s time to hear from the Grumpy IT Guy. This one is actually being written the day after the last one reached your avid ears; that’s how grumpy I am right now. You want to know why? Of course you do, or you wouldn’t be readin’ my little piece here, now would ya?

So there I was, at the request of one of the executives, trying to download and install some sort of log analyzer for something he was doing, when the product site told me, “Hey, bonehead! You’re using Internet Explorer. We like Firefox. Nannynannybooboo!”

Alright, it didn’t really say “bonehead” or “nannynannybooboo,” but I sure felt it. I went ballistic.

This was the third time this week that I experienced what I like to call “Developer knows best.” If there are any developers out there, please listen up, alright? You don’t. That’s all there is to it. To force me to use a tool which I have not selected as being the best tool for my particular job because:

a) It’s easier for you to write in that one
b) You just “don’t like” the other prevalent tools in the arena
c) You’re trying to make some hippie statement about increasing market share

…is entirely wrong. I have, for a variety of reasons, chosen Internet Explorer 7. I’m not going to argue about Firecrap being better or worse than Internet Exploder. That’s your thing, not mine. I’m going to tell you quite simply that it is the tool I choose to use.

By the way, once I got the software installed, I saw no difference in usage. Yes, I checked.

Recently, a multi-protocol chat client we’ll call “Pidgin” ran into a similar situation. The developers decided that the auto-resize of a text window based on how much you’re typing is “much cooler” (or whatever idiot reason they chose) than the “manual resize” feature, so THEY TOOK OUT THE MANUAL RESIZE FEATURE.

Well, guys, people were using it. We were happy. If I wanted your application to auto-size, I’d turn it on. I don’t. Now, however, I can’t do anything but that. Oh, wait, I can uninstall it, which is what I did. Technically, I can ban it from use at my company. I think I’ll do that!

Actually, if I did that, I’d be inflicting my personal viewpoints on a base of users, wouldn’t I? I have people here using Outlook, Thunderbird, our web client, and some other tools I don’t know about to check their mail. Some folks use OpenOffice, some use Google Docs, some use Star Office, some use Microsoft Office. It’s the tool that makes them feel the most comfortable doing their job. I let them use it. Rather, more properly, I do not inflict rules and strictures upon them because I have some ill-conceived notion that my choice is better than theirs.

Let me explain a truism of programming to you. This is most recently attributed to Colin Powell, but actually comes from Helmuth von Moltke (the Elder). No battle plan survives contact with the enemy. How does that apply, you wonder? Well, it’s quite simple. No matter how good you are at writing software, you can’t possibly take all my needs into consideration. You can call your software “feature complete” if you like, but that doesn’t mean it does what the bulk of people want it to do in the way they want it done. You MUST, therefore, be open to input on how to make it useful for those of us who will be using it.

When a developer makes a decision to enforce strictures on his users, he is playing God. He might know more about writing the particular software than I do, but I can guarantee that I know how to do MY job better than he does. I wouldn’t tell a developer that they had to use a certain editor to write their code; they shouldn’t tell me I have to use a certain browser to see it.

Wake up, guys. You’re just becoming the cliché that you really didn’t want to be. Get over your God Complex, or get out of the field and go teach in a public school where your dogmatic insistence on opinions disguised as fact is an accepted norm.

- The Grumpy Journyx IT Guy

Accountlink, the Timesheet-QuickBooks interface, now officially supports QuickBooks 2008 Pro, Premiere, and Enterprise. Actually, it has for several months, we just forgot to announce it here in the newsletter. So if you’re one of those “early adopter” types who are already using QB ‘08 nearly halfway into the year, well, now you can feel confident that Journyx is right there with you!

And if you’ve been holding off on giving Journyx (or Intuit) money until this announcement was made, well, open up that checkbook and start throwing around your sweet, sweet lucre! You’ll make someone’s day just a little greener. Er, brighter.

Learn more about Accountlink at: http://journyx.com/rss/support/quickbooks.html

If we are going to be successful, we can no longer look at our organizations as departments, divisions, or branch offices. We must look at the bigger picture and resolve to work together in ways we may never have done before. We may even need to cooperate with the competition. Think of all the mergers and acquisitions in the past few years. Your number one competitor today could be your partner tomorrow…

Read more at: http://journyx.com/rss/redir/projmag-teamwork.html

One of the things that we at Journyx like to think makes us something more than just your average, ordinary everyday Timesheet provider is the belief that our products truly help our customers in their businesses. So in an effort to put some science behind that theory we went out to visit a few of our customers and chatted with them about what Timesheet has really done for them.

With an eye towards sharing these results with other customers and prospects, we filmed these conversations. And now, after several months of sifting through the footage and wrestling with video codecs, we’re finally ready to present a dozen or so clips to you, the viewing public.

Watch a few of these clips on our site at: http://journyx.com/rss/products/timesheet/

Or add ‘em to your favorites at youtube: http://journyx.com/rss/redir/jxyoutube.html

Building effective partnership is closely connected with one of the basic and well-known rules of business: you should learn what your clients really need (or help them determine their need) - and do your best to follow their interests and expectations when offering them corresponding products or services…

Read more at: http://journyx.com/rss/redir/pmwt-transparentpm.html

Holy mackerel! It’s almost June. I’m not even sure why that’s shocking, but it is. It already feels like it’s been a very long year and yet, somehow it seems odd that it is, indeed, almost June. Perhaps it’s just the preconditioned response to observing that half a year is nearly done. Maybe it’s that I can still remember the unsettling way that the last few months of spring used to drag on back when I was a kid, waiting for school to finish. Either way, I’m sure at least a few of you are feeling the same thing as I am when I ponder this passage of time: Stress.

Yes, stress. The stress at realizing that with five months in the books you’re still somehow behind on projects you were certain would be done by now. You’ve worked hard. You’ve managed your time well. You’ve leapt, stunningly, over obstacles that would’ve blocked any normal human being. You’ve navigated the treacherous rapids of internal resource constraints. You’ve done everything right and yet you’re still playing catchup. How on earth is this possible?

Well, it just might be that your initial plan was flawed. Heresy, I know. You’re reading this blog because you’re a black belt at project management (or at least are on the verge of taking your test). You know project management like nobody’s business. And yet, you’re in trouble. So rather than pulling out your hair, stop for a minute. Take a breather and refresh your understanding of the basics of project management. The suffering you save next time around just might be your own.

Of course, this doesn’t do anything for your (or my) current state of affairs. But hey, I, I mean, you have still got June to finish up those critical 1st half projects. Get back to work!

-Andrew Trent, Journyx Director of Web Content

Top programmers are not easy to find. It takes time to cull through dozens, if not hundreds, of resumes to find the magic combination you want, and it takes hours to perform interviews. After all of that, you still need to jump through hoops to make sure that your best candidates accept your offer rather than someone else’s.

Yet all too often, these hard-to-find (and hard-to-hire) employees are neglected once they come on board. While proper compensation is, of course, a large part of employee retention, the top programmers need more than a great pay check. Here are 10 reasons why your star programmer might be looking to leave, and what you can do to convince them to stick around.

#1: Poor pay
No one works purely out of a charitable nature. So when your best people feel like their pay is severely out of line with market standards, they may start to view other pastures as being much greener than yours. Your worst enemy in retaining the stars is the thought, “I am the worst paid senior developer in this town.”

I see a lot of companies that look at what the market is like only when they hire someone. Meanwhile, your best people are often aware of what is happening in the market consistently. If you have not re-evaluated your pay packages in a while, you need to. While the package may have been competitive when you hired someone three years ago, your best employees may be able to get a substantial raise by making a lateral move (if not taking a higher level position) to another employer.

#2: An uncertain future
The best people often have no intention of leaving until something out of the ordinary prompts them to stick their toes in the job market waters. At one company where I worked, the trigger for a mass exodus was the sale of the building our employer was renting to a major company that obviously was not going to keep leasing to us. A lot of people panicked and wondered whether the loss of the office space would prompt a move of the operation to another city. Instead of sitting around waiting for the other shoe to drop, they left. At another company where I worked, a large layoff spooked those who survived, and they left as soon as they could.

There is little you can do to prevent these outside influences from occurring, but you can do a lot to reassure your people when they do happen. Your best programmers are not dumb; they know when you are trying to puff them up with hot air instead of being forthright. When these events happen, give your people the straight truth and show them what you and the company are doing to prevent the need for your stars to lose their jobs. It’s a tough path to walk, but too many managers cave in to the temptation to cover up the problems — and those cover-ups tend to drive people out even faster.

Read the rest at TechRepublic.

Readers of this blog know IT initiatives generally fail for business, organizational, or cultural reasons. Sure, technology screw-ups occur all the time, but that’s one of the realities to be managed. Success or failure ultimately depends on how project leadership manages the full range of technical- and non-technical issues.

Blogger and enterprise architect, Mike Kavis, who’s obviously been through some battles, has created ten guidelines describing critical areas of weakness in many projects:

1. Poor Communication. Enterprise projects usually impact a large amount of people. This requires constant communications to all levels of people throughout the organization. A strong communication strategy can help with this.

2. Underestimating or ignoring impact of change. This is another way of saying poor change management. People need to know WIIFM (what’s in it for me). Resistance to change can kill any project. Your initiative must have a champion who carries a lot of clout.

3. Lack of Leadership. IT Leadership requires excellence in three key areas: Technology, Business, and People. If the leadership is missing any of the three components you are doomed.

Read the rest at IT Project Failures.

Day Two

My feeling while visiting the prison was that Catherine Rohr, PEP’s leader, is executing extremely well on her mission, which is to make these men successful when they exit the justice system.

This can be difficult when you have to consider and satisfy the following groups:

* the Texas Department of Criminal Justice,
* the GEO corporation who runs the privately operated prison along with the GEO guards and warden,
* the prisoners themselves,
* the churches who volunteer their time,
* the press,
* executives like myself who go to provide input on business plans,
* the families of the soon-to-be-released inmates who, in many cases, have written off this person who may have mistreated them,
* long term inmates who provide assistance as teachers and assistants in the program,
* her employees,
* her husband,
* MBA advisors from universities like MIT and Harvard,
* graduates of the program who return to cheer on the current students and other participants,
* Best Western Hotels of Cleveland, Texas who provide discount rates to program participants,
* and a variety of donors - both individuals and charitable organizations.

Many of these groups have conflicting needs. For example, some groups prefer a more religious tone than others. GEO is concerned about increased liability from all of the visitors. Obviously, keeping this blizzard of stakeholders even marginally happy is not a trivial task.

So how does she do it? She does it, in part, by keeping everyone motivated with the taste of success. Anecdotes are presented constantly while you’re there, such as the class valedictorian’s acceptance speech or the returning graduates’ explanation of how PEP has helped them get jobs, business suits and driver’s licenses upon release, as well as counseling that almost certainly kept them from recidivating.

For example, one man had been imprisoned for 15 years and was then released. He needed a job. To hold the job, he needed to drive. To drive, he needed a license. To get a license, he needed a social security card. To get a social security card, he needed to prove who he was and get a birth certificate.

When he finally got all these things together, the state of Texas told him that he had an expensive ticket from 1984 that was unpaid. Since the state releases prisoners with only $100, he obviously did not have the money to pay the ticket. He told someone at PEP, “Forget it, I’ll just drive without a license. This is too hard.”

This, of course, would have violated his parole and landed him back in prison. PEP said, “No, no, no! We’ll help.”

Today he’s working and paying taxes. They stopped him from making, by his own admission, a very bad decision.

Exposing participants to successful stories like this is part of Catherine’s success formula. In addition, for math-heads like me, loads of statistics are presented: 4% recidivism rate (0% in the most recent years), cost per graduate vs. cost of incarceration per year ($14k one time vs. $22k/year). Catherine provides growth in number of prisoners served, growth in organizational budget and headcount, and other metrics of growth.

Supplying stakeholders with all of this good news keeps them motivated and involved, which helps her to continue her good work.

- Curt