Journyx Project Management Blog

IT certifications are one way to distinguish between well-trained job candidates and prospects whose skills on specific hardware or software aren’t quite up to par.

At least that’s the way it’s supposed to work. In recent times, however, an overabundance of certifications and widespread cheating on exams caused in part by lax security at testing centers have tarnished IT certifications’ reputation in the eyes of many human-resources executives and hiring managers.

“It’s a big problem,” agrees Don Sorensen, marketing vice president at Caveon, a Salt Lake City test security company. He says there are “literally hundreds” of so-called “braindump” websites that share or sell test questions.

According to a 2007 report from the Association of Test Publishers, of 101 IT vendors and certification test centers surveyed, slightly more than half said that 46 percent or more of their IT certification tests had been copied, stolen or breached in some other way in the recent past. Some test givers said their new tests could be found on braindump websites within a month of being published, and in some cases, as soon as two days, according to the report.

Read the rest at Inc. Technology.

Before we talk about team building, we must have a fair idea of the word “Team”. Team is a collection of people, often from diverse but related groups, assigned to perform a well-defined function for an organization or a project.

From the word, team comes “Team building”. Team building as the name so evidently suggests is the process of building an effective team. A team building exercise helps in making for a strong cohesive unit that has a common goal and purpose. It also involves coordinating the dynamics of the group to improve its efficiency. When you build a team, it is important to identify the strengths and weaknesses of each and every team member. This will enable you to assign tasks that they will be good at.

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

I’ve often heard people complain about intense projects: They’re too much work and emotionally draining. But oddly, I’ve noticed that people seem to have more trouble after an intense project than during one.

Read more at: http://journyx.com/rss/redir/cworld-nowwhat.html

“If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.” - Francis Bacon

Leaders face dilemmas every day. Decisions we make are translated into real-world outcomes, with each decision cascading into other actions. Sometimes, we mentally frame difficult choices and decisions in terms that simplify them—at least on the surface. We turn them into black or white just to get some clarity around them, yet in reality, they are not black or white, not either/or—they are gray.

How we address these difficult choices—as black and white, or as gray—will determine the feel of our organization. It will determine how people interact, and how work gets done. It will determine the strategies of both our present and our future.

Read more at PM World Today.

I’ve talked in previous articles about aspects of being a great project manager, including what I view as business-oriented leadership: driving forward and leading the team to ensure that a project is launched, planned, and executed with alignment to business goals and customer needs.

I haven’t yet touched much on a different aspect of leadership, which I refer to the “leadership persona” - not just what you do as a leader, but also how you come across to others as you lead the team. Along the line I have heard particular managers labeled as strong leaders based (apparently) on their extroverted motivational styles. “He’s really good at keeping the team charged up.” “She’s excellent at inspiring everyone even when the project is difficult.” Did this mean that “rah rah motivational leadership,” being good at making speeches to keep the team jazzed, was a must? That’s how it came across to me at the time.

Over time I have concluded personally that successful team leadership does not depend on the “rah rah” version of extroverted leadership as a foundational requirement. But I do believe that how you come across to people as you fulfill the project manager role can significantly add to or subtract from your effectiveness and the team’s energy, morale, and success.

We ask people to do hard things - work hard, meet tough deadlines, operate in the midst of uncertainty and pressure. It is certainly helpful if the way we lead makes it easier for them to follow and contribute and get it all done with a positive attitude! I have looked back at times to ask myself, who made me feel we had a chance of a great outcome, who instilled in me a sense of confidence and trust, even during particularly challenging projects or organizational situations? And when have I felt I was a good leader in this way, or a NOT so good leader?

Here are a few vignettes:

Communicating through more than words: I remember being PM for a new medical software application, lots of feature decisions to make, rapid iterations to make business-critical milestones several weeks apart. One day I was walking down the hall thinking about a decision I had to make. I passed one of the team members and he said, with quite a bit of worry in his voice, “Wow, what’s wrong?!” Startled, I said “Nothing, why?” His answer was, “You just looked really tense and I thought something had gone wrong on the project.” I realized that he had seen my problem-solver face. Coming from an engineering background, where a primary joy in life is in wrestling nasty problems to the ground, intense worrying of the details of a problem is normal, not negative, actually a positive! But there I was, giving this team member the impression that the sky might be about to fall in. Was I walking around looking like this all the time? There were certainly enough challenges on this project that it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility. Yikes! When a project is intense already, who needs their leader walking around looking like doom?

Read more at ProjectConnections.

It’s a management axiom that the smarter the employees are, the harder they are to manage. Employees with a high degree of left-brain intelligence, which is common among IT professionals, can be demanding, blind to the opinions of others, easily bored and bent on being “right,” according to the people who manage them.

“Highly intelligent, highly technical people inhabit a subculture where knowledge is social status and power, and correctness is key,” says Clinton Nixon, a senior developer at Viget Labs LLC, a Web design, development and consulting firm in Falls Church, Va. This can lead to disgruntlement when inevitable disagreements occur, particularly between employee and boss.

So, while you may dream of supervising a brilliant staff, be careful what you wish for — or at least learn the best way to manage ultrasmart people. Here are six tips from those in the know.

Do Manage Results, Not Process.
It’s perfectly reasonable for bosses to tell you what to do, Nixon says, but when it comes to how the work gets done, a controlling atmosphere can be frustrating. He recalls working on a Web shopping cart that needed new shipping options. Because the software wasn’t very extensible, Nixon suggested rewriting the code, which he estimates would have taken two weeks. “Dealing with all the special cases in the current code would have taken at least a week, so investing another week made sense to have something more maintainable afterwards,” he says.

Nixon was overruled. But because of all the bugs already in the software and others that were introduced because of the new variable, it took three weeks to finish the new feature. “We could have rewritten it in less time,” he says.

“You can’t take people who have a passion for something and then start to build walls around them,” says Jack Hughes, CEO of TopCoder Inc., a Glastonbury, Conn.-based company that stages coding competitions. A staff made up of those types of people does need structure, but that structure should be geared more around results than process, he says.

“You should format things in terms of the results you’re looking for rather than proscribing the way in which they need to get those results,” Hughes says.

Read the rest at ComputerWorld.

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

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

Day One

Today was my first day inside a prison - the Cleveland, Texas correctional facility. I’m participating in a program where CEOs help teach inmates how to start a business.

Catherine Rohr is the driving force behind the PEP, which is a faith-based program for prisoners who want to become entrepreneurs. She has a rule for participants: “No perverts, no criminals, no slackers.” Her selection process is rigorous: she is looking for men who are smart, soon to be released, and committed to changing their lives. Out of 89 admitted to the current class, I will witness only 40 graduates.

They frequently have 17 hour days. Today I had a 14 hour day.

If you believe that people cannot change, you should come see this place.

The state releases prisoners with $100 and a bus ticket back to the place where they got arrested (where all their misbehaving friends are). $100 doesn’t give you much of a start.

PEP grabs them when they get out and separates them from what caused the problems in the first place. They are connected with other successful graduates of the program in order to keep them on the right track.

How well does this work? The recidivism rate (re-incarceration) is 4% for this program as opposed to an average 50% nationwide.

Our society is cynical, nowhere more so than in prison. The most cynical of us all end up here. These guys have chosen a new path and they have an amazing woman for a leader. She’s working miracles here every day.

- Curt

In my previous article (Measure What Matters) I spoke about the concept of interacting based on relationships versus transactions. I believe teams and families function more effectively (optimizing performance and personal satisfaction) when relationships are the foundation of our interactions. When these relationships stem from an underlying base of trust (Vulnerability-Based Trust) the stage is set for a more dynamic level of communication.

The primary purpose of any team is to get work done in the most effective manner and achieve outcomes that add value. Ultimately, the result of the work is the value proposition and the interaction is just the means. But, so much of project management is about how the work gets done within the constraints of the project, not which work has been selected for the project. That is why there is so much focus on process—the flow of work and information within the project. There is a belief that if we improve the process, better work will get done faster and use less resources, which is the Holy Grail of Project Management.

Unfortunately, with this belief in process comes an attempt to apply a single, though arguably flexible, process—a customizable, one-size-fits-all approach. I find this to be somewhat of an oxymoron to project work, which is by definition “a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service, or result.” It seems only logical that the more unique the effort is, the more the processes would have to be different.

So, what makes a project unique? First of all it is the level of uncertainty of the outcome; meaning how clearly the final results are defined. Do we know exactly what the outcome should be (as might be the case in repetitive installations of a product into a known environment)? Or, are we discovering the intended outcome within a set of cost and time boundaries as the project unfolds? Secondly, how often will the project or applied process be repeated? What is the frequency or reusability of the process?

Read the rest at ProjectConnections.