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

Project Management Resource

Project Management Learning Center..

A very nice resource bank of Project Management related resources. From newbies to Project management consultants.. its useful for everybody..

Further you can see lots of reputed PM professionals in the industry here ( Except me J) and they share quite lot of knowledge here at one place…

2007 PMO of the Year Award

The CBP presents this award annually in recognition of PMOs that have demonstrated vision and business acumen in implementing new ideas, methods, or processes that led to measurable improvements in project management. The closing date for entries is March 23, 2007.

What You Win .....
# All-expense paid trip to CBP Summit in Scottsdale, Arizona
# Free admission to CBP Summit for your PMO team
# Trophy presentation at gala Summit Award Reception
# Recognition by presenting your award-winning essay
# Renown through extensive industry press coverage


You can get more details from http://www.cbponline.com/

( Thanks to Cornelious who forwarded this information)

How to relax...

I think this is very important for all of us .. which I took from the site : http://www.buddhistchannel.tv/index.php?id=6,3688,0,0,1,0

With so much of talk about everyone being busy, Ajahn Brahm insisted that meditation is ideal for busy people. “Even if you are a busy person, it is more important to be able to spend some time being peaceful. If you don't learn how to be peaceful, you soon get very, very tired.”

To explain how meditation helps you, he used a simple exercise lifting the half-filled glass of water he had in front of him. "Say I am lifting up this glass of water and you ask me how heavy it is. If I keep holding the glass of water for five minutes, it appears quite heavy. If I continue to hold the glass for half an hour, I will be in quite a lot of pain. If I keep on holding it for two hours, I would be a stupid monk. When it starts to get heavy, what should I do? Put it down — let it go. I don't need to throw the glass of water away — I just put it down for, may be for 20 seconds. When I pick it up again, it feels lighter because I have rested.

“The problem of stress in our modern world is not because we do too much — it's because we don't know how to put our burdens, our responsibilities down for a few minutes and rest and relax. All we need to do is to rest for 15 or 20 minutes in meditation and afterwards we find ourselves so relaxed, we can carry the burdens of life without so much stress. That is what meditation is — learning how to relax so that you can do more with less stress,” he said.

Pointing out that meditation is the heart of Buddhist tradition, he said the Buddha became enlightened when He was meditating and that it was part of Buddhist heritage. “Learn the basics from a monk or a lay teacher and you will find it wouldn't harm the quality of your life. You will be a happier person. A Harvard professor last year published a paper after following meditation for seven years and found that your brain increases in size in meditation. You become more intelligent when you meditate. Find a place and just learn how to relax the mind. Bring some peace into your mind and increase your intelligence - for no charge!" he advised.

IQ , EQ and BQ

“According to the language of physics, a person who strains without success to pull a rock out of the ground has done no work”

What ever it is.. Unfortunately in Today’s business world., what’s appreciated is not your try or hard work.. What appreciated is success of what you do. So its very important to assure the success of all the work we do as a Project Manager..

How does our IQ and EQ help us when achieving success ?

I found a good definition for IQ and EQ from some article. ( Im very sorry that I couldn’t get the reference to the following quote)

“IQ - a number used to express the apparent relative intelligence of a person that is the ratio multiplied by 100 of the mental age as reported on a standardized test to the chronological age. IQ is the measure of cognitive abilities, such as the ability to learn or understand or to deal with new situations; the skilled use of reason; the ability to apply knowledge to manipulate one's environment or to think abstractly as measured by objective criteria (as tests); mental acuteness; logic and analytical skills. “

“EQ - is a measure of your emotional intelligence, or your ability to use both your emotions and cognitive skills in your life. Emotional intelligence competencies include but are not limited to empathy, intuition, creativity, flexibility, resilience, coping, stress management, leadership, integrity, authenticity, and interpersonal skills.

If the driving force of intelligence in the twentieth-century business has been IQ, then-in accordance to growing evidence - in the twenty-first century it will be EQ, and related and practical forms of practical and creative intelligence. This "new" intelligence is the heart-level engine that drives human capital and produces the exceptional, creative work required for any company to lead the field amidst the turbulence and confusion of global market changes. "

So what’s more important to us as a Project Manager.. ?? During my career in IT I have worked with many professionals from different countries, whose IQ level is unbelievably high. I would say “ they are brilliant people” .. But do you ever believe.. Any of these projects handled by these brilliant people never became a success… Either they were
miscommunicated, not accept by customers, didn’t deliver on time.. Most projects had more than one failure.. But when you talk to them .. you will think they are the most brilliant people on the earth.. they had great academic records too..So why .. Whats the reason….???

Its always due to lack of EQ by these people. They were not successful when they were put on reality to work with different people .. Coming from different backgrounds.. They had very little idea on how to work with situational issues related to people.. so they found it very difficult to do team work in corporate culture. I don’t say that you don’t need any level of IQ.. As a project manager.. definitely you have to have a high level of IQ. But in the same time your EQ level is much more important when managing projects.

I have come across with another type of PMS too.. They are theory driven PMs. If you ask them what’s scrum or PMBOK or Prins 2 – they will teach you for you to write a book.. If you ask them to submit the reports.. you will never see any perfect reports other than that. Every step of the methodology is practiced in their projects.. But still if they don’t have EQ, they don’t have any chance of success.

I ve seen some simple EQ test on the web and this is one of it …

http://www.blogthings.com/whatsyoureqquiz/

But I don’t think you can really measure your EQ level using this type of a test.

So then .. Whats BQ? One of my colleagues sent me an article yesterday and it says BQ ( Business Intelligence) is the most important than EQ and IQ if you want to be the maestros of the entrepreneurial world .

Good Lesson !!! :-)

One of my colleagues sent this to me today.. Though we cant stick to the rule... Its a good lesson I should say :-))

If you want to look out for opportunities to work in a PMO

Its nice to hear there are many good and established companies looking for Head of Project Managers and concept of Project Management offices in order to get their multiple projects on track.

Last Sunday Observer there was an add from a reputed Software company for a Head of Project Managers and Im sure its going to be a quite challenging and interesting Opportunity. Other than that lately I got many requests from some reputed Tele communication companies for the position of Project Management Officer ( They called it ) ..

Quite Nice to see that organizations are getting more focused on Project Management .. instead of that stupid attitude of remote controlling project managers like toys by some functional managers or top management who has no idea what Project Management is ..(these guys love Project failiures.. and they deserve it.. You cant help that.....). But I hope these comapnies will set up real PMOs which really deliver results instead of just name sake PMOs

Any Idea of Project Governance? Any body knows any Sri Lankan Company who has implemented that ? I have few friends in US and Canada who worked for such projects ( Very large scale projects for Governments and Banks)and seems its quite interesting…

Apprentice and Project Management....

Quite a lot to write about though I don’t have time right now..:-) I’m really enjoying the show… Sri Lankans can watch it through STAR channel at 9.PM

One inch away from Project Management

Once you finish the project and complete the project closure you are very happy.. Specially when its marked as a successful project.. You are on Budget .. Within the time.. Quality standards are met and great teamwork.. Everybody talks about you.. WOW What a Project Manager…..!!! You celebrate with your team.. Awards from the management and customers.. Big launch to go live … Its like Christmas…

Your duty is over.. But the system should run.. everyday.. it needs care.. So who is going to do that? It’s the poor “maintenance team”… After going through many large scale projects.. Over and over its proven to me that this maintenance of a delivered project is a critical problem.. When you don’t do proper maintenance there can be amny frustrating issues in the system and the users loose faith on the system.. so they decide to kill it and install a new system and the cycle continues…

I have observed many reasons which causes these maintenance problems..

1. Huge knowledge gap between Development team and Maintenance team
2. Customers are reluctant to spend much on maintenance and they think when the system is delivered that’s it. Most of them see the maintenance fee is as a waste till there is a real problem
3. Allocating less time for user training than required due to budgetary issues.
4. Loosing trained people in the long run. The new people have no idea about certain “Underhand” techniques and assumptions done by previous guys
5. Loosing Management interest
6. Software companies always hire low caliber , cheaper resources for maintenance teams than the resources they hire for development teams
7. Lack of Project office involvement at Maintenance phase
8. Some times customers decide that they will maintain the system by themselves without getting support from the vendor. But in the long run they realize that its impossible for them to do and at that time the whole system is in a mess.
9. Incomplete documentation of the system.
10. Assumptions made in the initial stage are no more valid and forgotten by all the parties.
11. Politics ( if the New IT manager joins , sometimes he will stress the senior management even about minor issues of the current system and he will try to initiate a new project under his full control.
12. Remote support – Some times when you have support teams remotely, the time to solve takes quite longer times. And it needs more time to communicate the problems clearly and simulate the problems in another location. Then apply them in the live version is another hectic task.
13. No proper management and methodologies practiced during System maintenance.
14. Lack of Local support and support is always needed from overseas parties.
15. Misunderstandings between support parties and customers

These are few of the points which I have seen occurring in many systems time to time.. This is a serious issue to think about.. Once you complete the project and wrap up, your job is finished as PM.. But then…….

Some Experience…

Time to time something happens to me to deviate from my topic Project Management. Today I experienced something which I have never experienced in my life before..

There is a sub power plant 4-5 houses away from my home. Around 2AM today morning there was a huge noise of a blast and our house vibrated for a moment and electricity went off. I couldn’t realize what was happening. But I have experienced bomb blasts before and I thought it must be one.. But never faced it this closer before.. I was wondering where it could be... …And then one of our neighbor friends called and said his house ceiling is damaged due to vibration and definitely it should be a bomb. So there was no power till the morning. No TV No news to check what it was..

Early morning I heard from our caretaker that the blast has taken place in the power plant closer to home. He has got to know from somebody around the area. Any way I had to get in to the office on time due to a meeting scheduled with an important customer.. But when I came out of the house only I realized that the road is closed and I had to take a different route to the main road. How ever due to my delay I couldn’t make it to the meeting

Till Morning they didn’t confirm it’s a LTTE terrorist attack and investigations were going on. But I saw in a web site just now., that its confirmed as a LTTE attack.

Its very sad that these incidence happen frequently which really disturb civilians lives. Lately there were bombs in 2 buses and lots of innocent civilians died.

So no matter from which part of the world they are.. Terrorism is bad.. Stop Funding Terrorism.. Directly or indirectly….Because tomorrow they can take your loved ones away from you…

If you have been falsely accused ????

Yeah it’s really a bad feeling..You will ask yourself 1000 time.. have I done something wrong… ? I was accused by somebody for using his site feed for projectized.org blogrol saying Im using his content for commercial use with no permission. so far Projectized.org is not used for any commercial use., and I do not even have one single advertisement there.. its mainly a free Project Management blogrol with so much more nice plans..

I never ever thought somebody will go against it .. as it gives so much benefits to the contributors .. It definitely bring more readers to those blogs. Intact The person who accused me for using his blog for commercial purpose has attached his site license policy in his email. That clearly says ,

“ You are free:

• to Share -- to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work
• to Remix -- to make derivative works

Under the following conditions:

· Noncommercial. You may not use this work for commercial purposes. “

I can think why he thought that this is a commercial site.. I had a problem with the blogroll to display only a part of the post in the blogroll. I’m using wordpress and I had some technical problems with Summary Option. So the whole post is displayed some times.. In Dina’s Controlling Chaos blog, she has put the PM Prepcast advertisement in the body of her content.. so that comes automatically to projectized.org. (Im just trying to fix this problem ASAP.)That’s the only explanation which I can think as the base for this complain. Any way very big thank to other contributors who decided to stay with projectized.org without getting mislead by some false comments..

Free Scrum tool - Great

This is really a great tool for Scrum. I just went through the features and its quite good. Thanks to my colleague who sent me this link.

http://danube.com/sw_flash/SWB_Demo.html

But ….remember. Tools will not manage your projects.. Its you who should manage the project.. These are just “ Tools” and that’s why they are called “ Tools” when all the methodologies and tools are failed.. its you who make the project a success…

I have come across with many project managers who just spend their whole time to manage the tool instead of the project. Having the best hammer in the world doesn’t make you a good carpenter or having the best cricket bat in the world doesn’t make you a good cricketer. Coz they are tools to help you to perform your tasks. That’s you who make it happen…

Google Project Managers Search.

I have created a Google Project Management Search. I will be linking it to this blog and many other Project Management sites in the future so that readers of this blog ( Ofcouse Project Managers and Potential Project Managers ) can get more targeted /specific results instead wasting time to go through hundreds of unrelated sites.

If you have a blog or Project Management site, or any other related resource, Please send them to me.( thush.ksnz@gmail.com), It will help for me to build the Searcher better and your site will be listed in my Google “Project Managers Search”.

Check this cool thing at http://search.projectized.org

Following sites are already fed in to the searcher..

agilemanagement.net

controllingchaos.com

pmbits.blogspot.com

projectnumbers.com

projectmanagementblog.com

projectized.blogspot.com

reformingprojectmanagement.com

thepmpodcast.com

aboutpmos.blogspot.com

Im sure you will contribute to this.. Its really helpful for all of us.

Help !

Lately I noticed that my blog has been taken out from Kottu blog roll.( It’s a Sri Lankan Blog roll.. the most happening one I should say…. ) The reason has been that my blog is too technical for the audience.. But upon my request, Indi was kind enough to add it again.. So Im writing this none technical post to be fair for them…

(I love to make excuses….)

To be very frank, I couldn’t find time to write anything new.. So busy at work with projects and busy at home with my research work. I found another very helpful person for my research. He has gathered lots of research data already for his research in Software Implementation problems in Sri Lanka… Somebody very helpful ( I have always been lucky with helpful people.. I don’t know why .. ) he went out of his way to introduce my research to his doctor too..

So why not me helping others.. today one of my colleagues said that he wants to follow the same path as me. He wants to do a Mphil and then he wants to convert his research to a PHD. That’s nothing about Project management. his research interest is "High performance content oriented middleware for gaming and multimedia". Im sure he will register for Mphil with no much problem as he has an IT degree with a first class.. So I just asked my doctor at UCSC for some help for him.. Im sure he will help him too…

Think.. its all about helping each other. When you see an opportunity
to help somebody,,, don’t ever think twice….
Do it..  That’s the real path to be a successful person. 

Do we really practice what we preach?

Yes Project Management is all about better communication and being aware of what’s happening in your project and what’s happening around you.. If you dont... you will face the consequences badly...

There is very unfortunate incident happened with one of my colleagues who is going to sit for the PMP exam this time. No offence please.. Whole objective of this post is to pass this message to other people who will be sitting for PMP, Organizing PMP or any other exams in the future.

In Sri Lanka , we don’t have online PMP exams yet. So its paper based exam. We don’t even have exams every year. So its very important to get your registration process right for the exam you are preparing for,. If you miss that, you will have to wait a long time period for another exam or go to another country to sit for online exam.

Ok…. coming back to this incident. My colleague went for preparation classes held at Singapore Informatics. Upon completion, he submitted his application for the upcoming November exam. According to him, he was advised from the chapter that the closing date is on 20^th Oct. So he has submitted the application on 18^th Oct.

PMI has accepted his application form and informed him to pay online., As its paper based exam he had to enter the “ Testing Group No” which is issued by PMI., When he entered the number, he found out that the Number is invalid and he is too late in his application submission;

This has happened to many students who have been in this batch. It’s very sad that they have no chance to sit for the exam though they have submitted the application before 20^th.

I just called PMI customer care behalf of my colleague, whom we sent for the course though our project office;

The support executive’s answer was;

1. We have clearly instructed your Local chapter to inform students that they need the payments to be processed before 20^th. ( Not the application Submission )
2. The Student guide book clearly says the instructions.. ( I just checked the student guide book and it only says it takes 5 days to process the payment . It doesn’t talk about the application submission date and deadlines.)

Then I called the SL exam coordinator in the local chapter and his answer was that he has informed all the students by email that the application submission (???) should be completed before 20^th. (Unfortunately many people have not got that email)

So isn’t this all about effective communication?

May be Im wrong.. But what I think is that,

1. As the exam coordinator, If I knew the 20^th deadline is for processing payment and not for the application submission., , I could have informed the students that the deadline for application submission is on Oct 14^{th .} .. or so., So I’m sure that they will do the submission on time .. Even if they do it on last date, still they have time to process the payment before PMI deadline.

2. When you define a deadline., it should clearly specify whether the deadline is for application submission or payment processing. ( for PMP the payment can be made only after the institute approve your application)

3. As the certified institute. Singapore Informatics should also take part of the responsibility. They should have created a student contact base at the time of registration and should provide it to the chapter or exam coordinator for communication.

4. Students should be more participative.. ( Comm…ooo…n you guys are Project Managers… ) They should have the responsibility to confirm what they hear and double confirm it… (Won’t we do that all the time as PMs ??? )

So I think now it’s the part of Damage Control .. If PMI SL chapter can appeal PMI to consider this as an exception and allow the people (who have submitted the application forms before 20^th ) to do the exam.. I think that’s the best…

When I sat for my PMP exam.. 5 students didn’t have admission including myself. But My lecturer who was the former chapter CEO ( Ms. Madhu Fernando ) and the former course director ( Chandana) did everything what they could do for us to sit for the exam. Finally they managed to get permission for us to sit for the exam…Still Im so thankful to them for going that extra mile for us... I’m sure the current board will also do their best for these students….

End of Story.. It proves how important it is to communicate effectively, accurately and efficiently..

Preparing for PMP?

I hear that SL is going to have another PMP exam very soon.. Today I got to know about this POSDCAST which helps PMP candidates to prepare themselves for the exam..

There is something what I always keep in my mind…
“When the exam is closer , 1 minute is 1 mark for you….
This keeps me focused on my subject matters and studies.. Im afraid to waste time when the exam is closer.. As much as I waste time without studying.. I will be loosing marks…

So isn’t this very cool.. Now you can be prepared for the PMP exam while traveling to office or home.. Or when you are at the Gym.. or where ever you carry your iPod.. Isnt that cool…???