Is this Experience in Life???

Today I thought to go out of office at lunch time. Main reason was that I wanted to buy a pair of Shoes and an office shirt. Yes Usually I go to Dilly, A’ World or Mondi when it comes to office wear, but as I was short of time I went to No Limit Nugegoda which is the last place I would shop for proper office cloths..,

If you have been there you know that Ladies office shirts are in the top floor of the complex. While I was loafing around the displayed items to check whether there is any good stuff., I heard they announced a car number and they requested the person who came in that car to take it out. One sales lady came and asked me whether its mine.. I said no.. I went three by a three Wheeler. (Low rate taxi) Not even 5 seconds fast one salesman screamed run run run.. I got shocked I asked why why whats the reason.. ( We all know there can be a bomb any where at any time with the country situation, even yesterday there was a bomb in the railway station – Dehiwala which killed 7 people and injured 71 civilians. ) then one salesman said don’t panic just run to the basement .. One sales girl held my hand and said come come lets run through the stair case don’t use the lift. I asked her whether there is a bomb scare.. she didn’t say anything.. I think there were about 6 -7 Customers in that floor including me .. there were few sales staff too..When we reached the next floor stairs, there were so many others joined us from that floor. So all of us were running faster as we could to reach the basement.. ( I must say that most the ladies including myself were in high heels – Imagine the situation J ) When we reached the ground floor We couldn’t run fast as we were running in the beginning as there were too many people trying to reach the basement now.

When we went to the basement there were many army officers and they opened the basement emergency door for us to get out of the building as soon as we can. So we came out of the door but they didn’t allow anybody to walk to the road. So we all were waiting in the cross road joining the shopping complex. Then one officer said that there is nothing to be scared, seems there is a bomb in the parcel counter and the bomb disposable unit has reached the place. (Mind you there was a bomb blast in the same parcel counter few months back which killed many innocent people including a school girl.)

So I was waiting there over 1 hour till the security officers’ finished bomb disposable work and allowed us to enter to the road. I really don’t know whether there was a real Bomb or not. I didn’t wait there to find all the information. As soon as we are allowed to go to the road I took a taxi and came back to office.

I just learned few things from this incident.

1. All the time I was wondering why people panic in situations like that .. I experienced it myself and found the answer. Don’t ask me what.. you need to live in that moment to find what it is.

2. I should never ever shop in places like this here after.. Its hard to think that an expensive place like Dillys or Mondi will ever have a bomb inside. So you can shop there with peace of mind..

3. High heels may not be the best type of shoes to ware when we are living in this sort of environment.. we never know what time we will have to run for life J

4. I must get out of this country and migrate somewhere soon . Though SL is a lovely country with its natural beauty., I don’t like to live in fear like this.

5. I must keep my mobile charged all the time… Oh god.. Even at this time my mobile was low battery and I couldn’t contact anybody. I shouldn’t be lazy to charge my mobile.

6. You never know when you will die. You must have your risk plan ready for your dependents

BTW hats off for the sales staff at No limits for handling such a panic situation so professionally.

They helped all the customers to get in to the safe area first and they didn’t scare people.. More than anything I noticed that they didn’t let any customers to take any clothes from the shop with them.. Im sure they are well trained after the previous incident.

'A Leader Should Know How to Manage Failure'

'A Leader Should Know How to Manage Failure'
(Former President of India APJ Abdul Kalam at Wharton India Economic forum , Philadelphia , March 22,2008 )
Question: Could you give an example, from your own experience, of how leaders should manage failure?
Kalam: Let me tell you about my experience. In 1973 I became the project director of India 's satellite launch vehicle program, commonly called the SLV-3. Our goal was to put India 's 'Rohini' satellite into orbit by 1980. I was given funds and human resources -- but was told clearly that by 1980 we had to launch the satellite into space. Thousands of people worked together in scientific and technical teams towards that goal.
By 1979 -- I think the month was August -- we thought we were ready. As the project director, I went to the control center for the launch. At four minutes before the satellite launch, the computer began to go through the checklist of items that needed to be checked. One minute later, the computer program put the launch on hold; the display showed that some control components were not in order. My experts -- I had four or five of them with me -- told me not to worry; they had done their calculations and there was enough reserve fuel. So I bypassed the computer, switched to manual mode, and launched the rocket. In the first stage, everything worked fine.. In the second stage, a problem developed. Instead of the satellite going into orbit, the whole rocket system plunged into the Bay of Bengal . It was a big failure.
That day, the chairman of the Indian Space Research Organization, Prof. Satish Dhawan, had called a press conference. The launch was at 7:00 am , and the press conference -- where journalists from around the world were present -- was at 7:45 am at ISRO's satellite launch range in Sriharikota [in Andhra Pradesh in southern India ]. Prof. Dhawan, the leader of the organization, conducted the press conference himself. He took responsibility for the failure -- he said that the team had worked very hard, but that it needed more technological support. He assured the media that in another year, the team would definitely succeed. Now, I was the project director, and it was my failure, but instead, he took responsibility for the failure as chairman of the organization.
The next year, in July 1980, we tried again to launch the satellite -- and this time we succeeded.. The whole nation was jubilant. Again, there was a press conference. Prof. Dhawan called me aside and told me, 'You conduct the press conference today.'
I learned a very important lesson that day. When failure occurred, the leader of the organization owned that failure. When success came, he gave it to his team.

The best management lesson I have learned did not come to me from reading a book; it came from that experience.

Programmer Competency Matrix

This is a great matrix which you can use to evaluate a development team member., It has taken all the related angles in to consideration., Thanks Pushpaka for sending this to me,

http://www.indiangeek.net/wp-content/uploads/Programmer%20competency%20matrix.htm

Project Managers Forum – PMI chapter Colombo

Oh yeah.. High time to collect some PDUS.. Seems everybody has realized it.. At last PMI chapter SL is trying to conduct some events for Project Managers. A very big “thank you” to them who initiated it.

The Chapter conducted its Forum meeting session on last Friday (14^th March) at Taj. The event was scheduled from 5.30 to 7.30.PM I reached there around 6PM and to my luck it has not been started at 5.30 may be due to heavy rain and bad weather.

I saw Madhu (most of us should be thankful to her for initiating PMI chapter in SL as well as all the good teaching she did when we were doing the 30 hour preparation classes) and I was very happy to see her after long time.. I saw only 2 friends who did PMP with me and seems most of the people either given up on PMP certification or they have already collected enough PDUs and didn’t care to attend to the forum meeting..

But still I can’t be too sure.. I heard that Colombo chapter has had 3 sessions before but this is the very 1^st invitation I have received.. May be they have missed the others... No idea...

Ok back to the session..

One director of the board conducted the starting session with some insight on how to collect PDUs from various Medias. I think that was a good eye opener for most of us who are too lazy to log in to the web site and claim for PDUs.. Now I have I added it to my priority tasks.. Thanks for that..

The main session was the Risk Management lecture conducted by the guest Speaker Mr. Ravi Shankar – CEO of VSNL Lanka (TATA indicom – SL ) . He seems very knowledgeable and experienced....But it was very hard for me to understand his heavy Indian accent.

I made all the effort to follow it seriously and I love the example he made of himself when explaining the fact that “Unawareness makes people more confident of taking risks” J.. He seems very right. However that doesn’t mean that we don’t take risks when we are aware of them.. but the awareness allow us to quantify the risks and have better fall back plans .. In professional life as well as in personal life..He explained it nicely.

He stressed the point that risk management is always an investment.. Which is absolutely important..But unfortunately most the companies (Specially the SME level Software companies) do not think that way.. that may be one reason why this type of companies always falling to hard times. If a company won’t take risk., that will drastically affect the growth of the company, and the company will not grow., but at the same time, if a company takes risky decisions without being well aware of risk situation and without having proper strategies to eliminate them, then again the companies will fall in to major disasters unless the owners have some “lucky starts”.. However he said loud and (clear?).. You should never be successful by chance.. You should be successful by strategy..

Most the other points which he discussed at the session are the normal risk management theories which helped to refresh our memory about what we have learned on Risk Management.

Any way thanks to the chapter for organizing the event.. I’m sure there will be much more participants and some useful discussions for the next sessions..

If any PMI member or any other project manager is interested, the next events are scheduled as follows;

22^nd May

21^st August

20^th November

Have you ever found difficult to manage yor Geeky team?

Here is the answer..

http://positivesharing.com/2006/03/how-not-to-lead-geeks/

What a great article !!!

Top 10 Worst Project Management Excuses..

I found this interesting blog post today..

I think he is spot on..

PMs .. Be aware of.....

Whats new :-)) ???

If you join a new employer to manage an already started project.. Be aware of this situation :-)

Happy 2008

Wish you a wonderful Year ahead with Lots of Happiness and Good health!!!

PM Tool

One of my friends wants to do an Application development project for his masters degree. So I asked him why not develop a proper Project Management tool for the industry with some fancy Project Dashboards etc while maintaining the proper flow of information capturing. So he agreed. This is the first part of the requirement definition which I prepared for him. I will keep on publishing the other parts as soon as I prepare them.

In today’s projectized organizations, managing projects successfully is the key of its financial Success. Middle management and the senior Management of such organizations face major challenges of managing such diversified multiple projects. To address this issue, there are many concepts introduced to the industry such as Project Management Office ( PMO) and Project Governance. The main objective of these concepts are to have proper control on all aspects of Project Management by a central place in order to make proper decisions abut projects on time before it becomes a failure.

Most Industries require Project Management tools, Process and skills. In a country Like Sri Lanka, Software industry finds the requirement very critical as software outsourcing is a key export market which generates significant amount of foreign income to the county.

Software industry has been matured over years and it has identified its own differences in nature of its projects. Mainly there are 2 types of software projects in the current context. Some projects are well defined and well planed from the beginning of the project while others evolved rapidly with major scope changes. Industry has introduced different methods for such Plan driven and agile type of projects over years.

Industry is rich with its Project Management tools such as well known MS Project tools. However most of the tools available cater only to planning and progress monitoring process and those tools does not cover the whole scope of Project Management process in terms of Project Office Perspective.

Industry has requirement for a efficient tool which can support PMO Process to control multiple projects while providing accurate information to all project stakeholders including Project Managers, Customers, Change control Panels, PMO staff , Project Sponsors and all the senior managers.

The Proposed tool should address the project from the time its initiated till the project is closed The Project Management process will flow through 5 main phases such as

Initiation

Planning

Execution
Controlling and Closing. ( Comply with PMI standards)

Each area has set of functionalities to cater to the process and will be interlinked with other phases.

PDU Market

Its just something funny.. I need to collect some PDUs to retain as a PMP for next 3 years. So as usual I turned to google for some help.

How many PMPs are there at the moment…..? I have no idea.. But what I can see is a major market for PDUs.. Is it like buying goodies from the market ? I just wonder..

I came up with many sites which gives some PM literature. There are so many online courses which give you PDUs .. Most sellers start from 5 and it goes up to 35 PDUs . When the enrollment fee is high, the number of PDUs you can claim is also high.. But to be honest.. This is an easy way to collect PDUs for people who wait till the last moment to collect them .. :-)

Win Free PMP Exam resources, Course Material

Here is a great opportunity for PMP candidates.. Project Management Prepcast is a podcast which helps PMP students to sit for the PMP exam with required knowledge and so much confidence .

This podcast has 77 episodes which you can listen to via your iPod/MP3 Player and it consists of 30 hours of training on the PMBOK® Guide and other relevant material.

So I would give my blog readers an amazing opportunity to get all these free. ( How’s that !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

:-))))

Its easy ….All you have to do is.. answer the following questions. The first person who answers all the questions right will get a free subscription to this PM podcast which has study material for PMP exam.

The contest is valid till 2 months starting from today. If no candidate could answer all the questions right.. the person who has the maximum right answers will win the contest !

Please use “comments” feature to answer the questions and you need to specify your name and a valid email address with your answers.

Here we go…

Q1. Whats the PMI definition of a “Project”

Q2. If the Optimistic estimate for a task is 6 days and pessimistic is 9 days, Whats the most likely estimate?

Q3. If the Optimistic estimate for a task is 6 days and pessimistic is 9 days, Whats the Standard Deviation of this task?

Q4. In the weekly status update meeting, your Project Manager says Project SV is – 500 What does that mean ?

Q5. Your Project status update records shows CV = - 500. What does that mean ?

Q6. Your Project BAC = 500 USD. Currently AC = 200USD. How much Balance you have in hand for this project to be completed.

Q7. Your current Project Earned Value is 350. Actual cost is 400. Planned value is 350. Whats the CV ?

Q8. If a project team consists of 5 stakeholders , how many communication channels do you need to manage in this project. ?

Q9. What is " Triple Constraints" in Project Management ?

Q10. What’s the Objective of issuing the “Project Charter”

Q 11. Project X has 4 critical paths.. if you are the Project manager of Project X , What is your idea about the project risk ?

Q12. The Estimate for a task is as follows;

O = 5 days, P = 7 days, M = 6 days. Whats the Standard deviation of this task ?

Q13. You are the project manager of Project Y. Name 3 most common causes of conflict on project Y.

Q14. Your Project SPI = .58 What do you think of your project progress compared to the project plan ?

Q15. What is “ Work Package” ?

If you are the Lucky winner .. See what you get.. Can you ask for more... ????

#	Number	Episode Title
--	00.00	Welcome
1	01.01	PMP Exam Overview
2	01.02	PMP Study Tips
3	01.03	The day of the exam
4	01.04	Introduction to Project Management
5	01.05	The PM Processes
6	01.06	The Project Life Cycle
7	01.07	The Role of the Project Manager
8	01.08	Overview of the Knowledge Areas
9	01.09	Code of Ethics & Professional Conduct
10	02.01	Interview with Arlene Trimble
11	02.02	Interview with Duncan McIntyre
12	03.01	Q&A 1
13	03.02	Q&A 2
14	04.00	Project Management Integration Overview
15	04.01	Develop Project Charter
16	04.02	Develop Preliminary Project Scope Statement
17	04.03	Develop Project Management Plan
18	04.04	Direct and Manage Project Execution
19	04.05	Monitor and Control Project Work
20	04.06	Integrated Change Control
21	04.07	Close Project
22	05.00	Project Scope Management Overview
23	05.01	Scope Planning
24	05.02	Scope Definition
25	05.03	Create WBS
26	05.04	Scope Verification
27	05.05	Scope Control
28	06.00	Project Time Management Overview
29	06.01	Activity Definition
30	06.02	Activity Sequencing
31	06.03	Activity Resources Estimating
32	06.04	Activity Duration Estimating
33	06.05	Schedule Development 1
34	06.06	Schedule Development 2
35	06.07	Schedule Control
36	07.00	Project Cost Management Overview
37	07.01	Cost Estimating Inputs
38	07.02	Cost Estimating Tools and Techniques
39	07.03	Cost Estimating Outputs
40	07.04	Cost Budgeting
41	07.05	Cost Control
42	07.06	Earned Value
43	07.07	A Bagful of Cost Terms
44	08.00	Project Quality Management Overview
45	08.01	Quality Planning
46	08.02	Perform Quality Assurance
47	08.03	Perform Quality Control Inputs and Outputs
48	08.04	Perform Quality Control Tools and Techniques
49	09.00	Project Human Resources Management Overview
50	09.01	Human Resource Planning Inputs
51	09.02	Human Resource Planning Tools and Techniques
52	09.03	Human Resource Planning Outputs
53	09.04	Acquire Project Team
54	09.05	Develop Project Team
55	09.06	Manage Project Team
56	09.07	HR Theory 1
57	09.08	HR Theory 2
58	10.00	Project Communications Management Overview
59	10.01	Communications Planning
60	10.02	Information Distribution
61	10.03	Performance Reporting
62	10.04	Manage Stakeholders
63	11.00	Project Risk Management Overview
64	11.01	Risk Management Planning
65	11.02	Risk Identification
66	11.03	Qualitative Risk Analysis
67	11.04	Quantitative Risk Analysis
68	11.05	Risk Response Planning
69	11.06	Risk Monitoring and Control
70	12.00	Project Procurement Management Overview
71	12.01	Plan Purchases and Acquisitions Inputs
72	12.02	Plan Purchases and Acquisitions Tools, Techniques and Outputs
73	12.03	Plan Contracting
74	12.04	Request Seller Responses
75	12.05	Select Sellers
76	12.06	Contract Administration
77	12.07	Contract Closure
--	99.00	Take our Final Exam
--	99.99	Goodbye

Very Easy Questions.. All the best !!

Leadership and gut calls

During last 2months I had most important personal priorities than messing up with corporate jargon so this blog was silent over 2 months. But I think once you get in to deep of any subject you cannot get out of it completely.. So I used my extra time for reading many good books and articles when ever I had a chance.. But unfortunately I couldn’t write any new articles neither blog posts. So Its time to catch-up some stuff now..

Last few days I read the book “ Winning” by Jack Welch. Which has so much valuable reading for any project manager. If you are a PM who needs to improve your leadership skills and soft skills and survive with office politics, that would be the book for you ..

Talking about leaders, the author discuss 8 basic rules of leadership. Out of that the highlighting one was “ Leaders have the courage to make unpopular decisions and gut calls."

As Project Managers , most of us face situations to make very unpleasant decisions. I have faced this many times with many teams and stakeholders.. But obviously we think twice.. and some times we have sleepless nights once we make such call due to simple fact that we don’t like to hurt anybody.. We don’t like to hurt anybody’s future.

“ By nature, some people are consensus builders. Some people long to be loved by everyone.

Those behaviors can really get you in the soup if you are a leader, Beacuase no matter where you work or what you do, there are times you have to make hard decisions – Let people go, cut funding to a project or close a project with no completion..”

After all It’s a tough life :-)

Coupling Prince 2 with RUP

Prince 2 is a well defined Project Management methodology while RUP ( Rational Unified Process) is used as a software development methodology over years . How to make best out of both while you use as Prince 2 for the PM methodology and RUP for the development methodology..

This is one of the best articles Ive came across..

Prison Break and Project Planning..

I watched Prison Break Season 1 and 2 .. I had to spend the whole weekend for that and couldn’t stop watching it till the end.,.

What a TV Series.. I have never seen contingency planning any better.,..

Im sure anybody will love to have a team leader like Michael Scofield

:-)

Good luck to the Cricket Team!

Sorry readers,. Again out of the topic.. But I think I should write few lines for them.. (though Im not a big cricket fan )

Its Amazing how Sri lankan team won 1996 World cup.. So much team work, great leadership of Arjuna and excellent guidelines by the coach.

This time , Again there is good performance shown by the team by being unbeaten so far and selecting to the Super 8 round. Though there is no much hopes for the Championship., our guys approach seems very strategic this time.. Sometimes.. good strategies is the key to success and it helps to overcome some of the team’s weak points ..

So… All the best Sri Lankan Team!!!! Hope you will do great team work this time.. and we all wish lots of courage for you to do your best.

The Schedule can be found at http://cricketworldcup.indya.com/scores/html/live/matchcast.htm

WOW .. Something nice.... Read this

From Gulf news 29-03-2007

Down-to-earth behaviour makes Sri Lankan cricketers popular.

By K.R. Nayar, Staff Reporter



Georgetown , Guyana : Humility and the Sri Lankan team always go together.
Despite being considered as world class performers, what impresses one and
all is their down-to-earth behaviour.

As soon as the players arrive at the stadium, all of them are seen lining
up to collect their kit bags from the bus. Right from Sanath Jayasuriya to
Chaminda Vaas to Muttiah Muralitharan, everyone is in the queue.

At the Providence stadium, Jayasuriya was seen dragging his kit and waving
at the crowd waiting to catch a glimpse of the blaster batsman.

While at Trinidad , I had requested Jayasuriya for a chat before net
practice. But he suggested that we meet after the nets. And promptly after
his practice, he came to the edge of nets and waved out to me asking me to
come in.

Had it been any other team, most likely I would have had to request the
cricketer again after the nets.

On Monday, it rained heavily and their skipper Mahela Jayawardene had to
wait till the rains subsided after the official press conference.

Caring approach

Without any hang-ups, Jayawardene came out and began talking to scribes
who were also waiting there. He enquired about our stay and wanted to know
what we thought about Guyana .

The best thing is that some of their seniors even remember what language
we speak. Russel Arnold and Muralitharan do not hesitate to talk to you in
Tamil. All of them sport a smile while talking to you with hardly any
airs.

There are teams with lesser cricketing experience, but arrogant enough to
walk around ignoring everyone around them. After all, for a fan, a smile
is all that they expect. In Trinidad as well as in Guyana , the Sri Lankans
have won the hearts of the people. In fact, many West Indians would like
to see Sri Lanka win the World Cup.

"They should win the World Cup for their behaviour. They may be the very
few gentlemen left in the sport," remarked Robert Rees, a volunteer at the
stadium.

All senior players in the team join in to help a youngster at the nets.

Jayasuriya was seen correcting Upul Tharanga's backlift. Moving around
like a family, their team spirit is clearly visible. Though the team is
not as strong as the 1996 squad that won the World Cup, they do possess
the spirit and willingness to work hard.

Win or lose, the Sri Lankans will leave this island winning more fans than
any other team