Copyright 2009 by Joelle Godfrey

It’s 2012.

I really cannot believe it’s 2012.
And we are now three weeks into January of 2012.

If you’re new here, on the third week of every month, I pull together all the links that I’ve run into since last month that made me think or laugh.

January’s Bug on a Windshield links are related to Personal Effectiveness, Project Management, and Fun.  Enjoy.

Personal Effectiveness

• What Bruce Lee can Teach Us About Living
• Three Stages of an Idea
• 7 Obsessions Guaranteed to Improve your Life
• Keep Your Home Clean in 20 Minutes a Day for 30 Days

Project Management

• 20 Questions all Project Managers should Ask
• 12 Reasons You Will Be a Better Leader this Year
• Four Facets of the Cross-Culture Project Manager
• Professionalism 101

Fun

• Mirai Mizui Tatamp (To See the Neat Anime Without the Explanation YouTube)
• Most Popular Wallpaper Site
• Sarien Net – Portal for old Sierra On-line Adventure Games
• Lord of the Rings Lego
• Relaxpls

That’s all I have for this month. Leave me a comment, send me a tweet. My id is jgodfrey.

Zen Garden Trees - Copyright 2010 Joelle Godfrey

The world is formed from the void,
like utensils from a block of wood.
The Master knows the utensils,
yet keeps to the block:
thus she can use all things.

- Tao Te Ching

When I began tweeting the PMBOK 3 years ago, I received lots of questions and some challenges about why I was tweeting the Project Management Body of Knowledge.

• Did I think it was infallible?
• Did I think there could be other ways of doing things?
• Did I think that it was impossible to do a project without its rules and standards?

Answers

• NO
• YES
• NO.  And the PMBOK doesn’t contain rules – it just contains guidelines. In parentheses, its formal title is: PMBOK Guide.

I think the pushback and questions may be a human reaction to what looks like an organization trying to say – this is the only “Right” way to do things.
We all know that

• There are many types of projects – some simple, some complex
• Many types of groups and organizations and…
• Many ways to run a project.

What the PMBOK Guide does for you is give you access to the Processes, the Tools & Techniques, and the Best Practices – in short: the Utensils you need to get the Work done.

How you use them is up to you.

My name is Joelle Godfrey and I tweet on Project Management, Business and Japanese. Leave a comment or send me a tweet, my id is jgodfrey.

Do you have New Year’s Resolutions for Project Management?

If not, why not?

Last year I read an article that kicked me in the tookus by asking a simple question: What are you pursuing?

Like the African Proverb mentioned above, we have to have to have something in our sights or we lose ground.

This is the start of a brand new year with 51 more weeks to go.

I use resolutions, principles, everything but the kitchen sink, to leverage my self out of complacency into action.

If resolutions seem too overwhelming…

• Commit to try out one best practice this month.
• Read a Project Management book this month
• Take a course this month

The daily grind can wear you down and force you to focus on treading water.

Don’t let it keep you there.

Change your focus and your attitude by asking periodically: What are you Pursuing?

My name is Joelle Godfrey and I am going to be periodically kicking myself in the tookus in 2012 by asking this question. Leave a comment or send me a tweet, my id is jgodfrey.

What we think we know, versus what is, can result in some of our biggest problems.

We make assumptions and decisions without understanding the larger picture.

Given that weakness, tools that help us break up false assumptions are essential to asking better questions and making better decisions.

Secrets to Mastering the WBS in Real World Projects, by Liliana Buchtik, PMP, is a book that brushes off the misunderstandings and misuses of the Work Breakdown Structure and sheds new light on how to use the tool to reveal what we don’t see.

Before she can do that, however, she needs to tackle the misconception some Project Managers have about the WBS. The author uses the first chapter to counter the idea she’s encountered among PMs that the WBS is the:

• Schedule
• List of activities
• Organizational Breakdown Structure
• Resource Breakdown Structure

Instead, she explains that it is:

• The What not the How
• Nouns not Verbs

In short, it is the outputs, or project deliverables that make up your project

The rest of the book is a series of chapters on the 20 Benefits of using the WBS and how you can use it to improve your Risk, Scope, and Cost management by integrating it with the rest of your tools to understand project health. As I read through the benefits, I had flashbacks from previous projects where I could have saved myself time and grief.

A few of the benefits are:

• Understand Work at Early Stages
• Visualize Project Boundaries and Manage Complexities
• Achieve a Common Understanding of the Work
• Integrate Scope with Time and Cost

Her explanation on how to tie risk management to the WBS will be a useful and interesting read for Risk Management junkies.  Others will find it useful for the depth of knowledge about the Work Breakdown Structure.  Secrets to Mastering the WBS in Real-World Projects is a book to read and then buy for its reference value.

Do you have any books you want to recommend on this topic?  Leave a comment or send me a tweet, my id is jgodfrey.

I am back from Japan, recovering from Jet Lag and trying to get back into the swing of things.

This week happens to be the third week in September, so I’ve put together a linklist of what I’ve come across over the past month.  It’s good to be back in the States, but I miss Japan and its quirkiness.

As usual, this week’s links are Project Management, Personal Effectiveness and Fun.

Project Management

• Stakeholder Adventure Maps
• The Yellow Brick Road: What do your stakeholders expect?
• Top Five Communication Skills for Project Managers
• Great Project Managers: Part 4 Disciplined Thoughts

Personal Effectiveness

• Corporate Conscience
• 10 Ways to Earn the Respect of Others
• How To Eat The Elephant (Problem Solving Tips)
• Leading a Balanced Life

Fun

• Contact Lenses to make your eyes look like Anime Characters
• The 6502 Microprocessor Turns 35
• Twitter and Osama Bin Laden
• Jupiter Making It’s Closest Orbit to the Earth since 1963
• Password Advice From the Father of the Firewall

That’s all I have for this month.  Leave me a comment, send me a tweet.  My id is jgodfrey.

Buried under your action item list?

Wondering why you ever became a project manager?

That’s when you need to look beyond your situation and read about other people’s problems.

Fortunately, there are plenty of PMs out there that on a weekly, sometimes daily basis whine and rant about their problems.  A few of them even rave about their successes and best practices.

Clicking through other people’s problems can help you see a number of things:

1. You get to see why other people love the profession
   I’m guessing that when you became a project manager, there was something that drew you to the role.  With all of the stress, you’ve temporarily lost sight of the original fire that drove you. Reading other PMs blogs can help unearth your own forgotten love of PMBOK, All Things Process and the charge you get out of completing a project.
2. You get to see that other people have the same problems
   There is nothing new under the sun. Ecclesiastes said it before and said it better, but really, there is nothing new. A problem that you are banging your head against is very likely the same problem someone else has crashed and burned on. Someone else may have triumphed over it. Their experiences are yours to pick over for gold.
3. Blogs are a great source of insight, wisdom and solutions to your problems
   No one at work will know that you ripped a solution from someone else’s blog unless they read the same blog. They’ll think you made a marvelous decision.

After reading through a couple of posts you might feel like the sea of negativity you’ve been swimming in is receding.  Read a few more and you’ll realize that you’re not alone.  If you’re lucky, you’ll read a few posts that will make you laugh and revitalize your love of project management.  Check out a few of the links on the sidebar or go out and search for PMs under #pmot on Twitter.  There’s a lot of whining going on and some of it is bound to cheer you up.

Leave a comment, send me a tweet, my id is jgodfrey.

Was your week like mine?

• Competing deadlines
• Multiple projects using the same resources
• Too many action items
• Too many unanswered questions
• Process that could be better
• Tools that have you pulling your hair

Throughout the blur of phone calls and back to back meetings, I was reminded of the power of three lessons learned when I started managing projects.  The following lessons are not in the PMBOK, but everyone who’s been doing this for a while has probably learned them the hard way.

• The Power of Follow-up
  Despite how important a task or deliverable seems to us, we need to remember that we are not the center of the world for another person.  They are spinning in their own galaxy. They may be a little preoccupied with the stuff that other people (not you!) have piled on their plate.  Following up to see how things are going, as long as it’s used judiciously, can be helpful.  You might be able to help them eliminate an obstacle or roadblock. It may also prevent you from being shocked later when you discover that your stuff fell behind in priority on the list and was deferred. How could they forget my request?  Easily.
  
• The Power of Wei Wu Wei – “Effortless Doing” or Going with the Flow
  There is a time and a place for everything.  Fighting for a better world is great when it comes to real life. There are times when a Project Manager is expected to introduce change.  Other times, your job is just to get things done. Don’t let your ability to get things done be hindered by your refusal to follow the process.  Save yourself time and energy.  It helps to keep in mind that someone in the organization’s history screwed up so royally that they thought this process was the only way to prevent it from happening again. When someone says – you need to jump through this hoop and run around the building – Just Do It.
• The Power of a Milestone chart
  Communication is a tricky thing. You may think that you have been communicating progress and urgency, but the receiver of your information disagrees. The milestone chart is a very handy thing to help improve that perception. The best milestone charts identify the deliverable or action, the owner, the expected delivery date, status (open or closed) and another column to report pending action. Keep your chart updated and send it out to the receiver(s) based on how frequently they want to see status. You don’t have to come up with wordy status statements and they instantly understand whether you’ve made progress.

I’m sure everyone has lessons they learned early on as a project manager.  Care to share them with me? Leave me a comment, send me a tweet.  My id is jgodfrey.

If you’re new here, the third week of every month, I pull together all the links that I’ve run into since last month that made me think or laugh.

August has been a busy month for me…I have been focusing too much on the serious side and not enough on finding fun links.  Next month, I’ll do better.

This month’s Bug on Windshield links are related to: Personal Effectiveness, Project Management, and Fun

Personal Effectiveness

• Do Your Goals Improve The Present
• Our Success Depends on This…
• The Problem is Likely Not the Person Pointing Out the Problem
• The Ultimate Project Management Tool

Project Management

• The Kanban Story
• Women in Agile Interviews
• And the site on Diversity in Agile
• Put Yourself in My Shoes

Fun

• Cat Fashion Show: I feel sorry for these cats…
• Wii Scythe
• Japanese Poetry Video Podcast
• I love Insects – Great Photos here
• Kewpie Doll Art

That’s all I have for this month.  Leave me a comment, send me a tweet.  My id is jgodfrey.

When trying to make a change in your life:

Are you flooring the gas….

with your foot on the brake?

If this describes you, then this is probably not the first time you’ve tried to change.

Whether this is the second or the umpteenth time you’ve tried to change a habit or behavior, Immunity to Change might provide some insight.

The authors of Immunity to Change, Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey, suggest that in critical areas of change, we tend to sabotage ourselves. Instead of assuming that changing ourselves is impossible, they suggest that we take a closer look at our motivations.

At first, this seems no different from other change books. Who hasn’t heard this?

What’s Different?

What sets this book apart is their understanding of our internal battle against change.  They say that our “immunity to change” is a three part rope that consists of:

• A Change-prevention system that thwarts challenging aspirations
• A Feeling system that helps us manage our anxieties and
• A Knowing system through which we organize our reality

In order to make a permanent change in our lives, they believe that we need to address all three strands of the rope.  From there, the authors take us through a 4-step process that helps you identify the change you want to implement, the behaviors that are examples of the problem, flag the hidden commitments that are sabotaging your intention to change and understand the assumptions you are making that support those commitments.

I recommend this book for PMs because after a certain point in our growth, some of our change goals are warmed over re-attempts. This book provides

• A great explanation of the problems people face when trying to address change in their lives
  Instead of being incapable of change, the authors explain that we’re just trying to keep a conflicting commitment that is helping us organize our reality.
• A Tool to help us uncover our internal roadblocks
  After explaining that the obstacle in our change process is “us”, the authors give us a tool to work through the discovery of the hidden commitments and assumptions that protect the status quo.
• Examples from the lives of others who used the process and tool to overcome their own immunity to change
  As we learn about each step in the process, the authors provide examples of people and organizations that have stepped through the process and achieved permanent change.

Immunity to Change is available as a Kindle download, so while it won’t be on my bookshelf, it is on my IPhone and I recommend it for yours as well. Have a book to recommend?  Leave a comment or send a tweet, my id is jgodfrey.

Portable

Flexible

Useful in various fields

I’ve heard all of these phrases used about Project Management skills.  The proposition is that if a seasoned Project Manager parachutes into a construction site for a project then is shuttled to a web design firm for her next project, she would be able to use the same foundational skillset to deliver on customer requirements in both places.

Hrmm

I agree with the general idea, but I’ve always wondered whether it was really possible for a PM to change industries.  I know that some of you feel the same, otherwise the question wouldn’t continue to be asked. Can it really be done?

Well…it depends.

I think it is possible, as long as you keep the following in mind:

1. The PM has to be clear about the value they bring to the table. And I don’t mean clear with the team, I mean with themselves. You need to understand that you are not an expert in anything other than Project Management.  Share your experience on how to pull together a plan, communicate status, identify risk, but let the experts be the experts.  Where your familiarity with your former industry helped you, now any assumptions you bring to this new environment could hurt you. Step back and make no quick assumptions.
2. The PM needs to work at building on their industry knowledge. Ask questions, pick up magazines, check out web sites. I’m probably exaggerating here, but I would bet that there are at least 50 magazines or on-line journals and blogs for every industry except possibly pig farming. On a weekly basis, nearly all of them trouble millions of electrons to send out junk email. Join their mailing list and learn about your industry. During calls that seem filled with jargon, pick out words and look them up. At all times and especially when the stakes are high, don’t be afraid to ask dumb questions.

I throw these caveats out there because the simple assumption that PM skills can be easily transferred ignore a couple of basic facts:

1. Project Lifecycles can vary a little or a lot based on…
   - The Environment: Company culture, Industry, etc
   - The Tools: Not just the Project Management Information Software, but the tools they use to  communicate status, change requests, and price.
   - The Teams: God created an infinite variety of personalities.  The genes may be the same, but they are grouped in a myriad of combinations.  And each of these unique combinations through life choices and chance end up in different industries.  And each of these unique combinations are mixed even further on teams. In short, there are no interchangeable team members. This is good news for Project Managers who thrive on change and differences. The skills you use to adapt to project change will serve you well here.
2. Role-specific knowledge can add a lot to your effectiveness
   What you don’t know can hurt you. While it may be hard to accept, understanding or having experience in a field can help you see potential risks in what seems like a simple plan. Previous experience can also give you credibility when you question a plan. Role-specific knowledge makes the learning curve of becoming familiar with a new organization much easier to climb.

I know there are a lot of people with opinions on both sides of this question. Care to share them with me?  Leave me a comment or send me a tweet.  My id is jgodfrey.