Great news – Project Pain Reliever is available on Amazon!
I am still waiting for my copy to arrive. So, I’m not listed on the cover. I’m one of over 30 contributing authors; there wouldn’t be room for the title if we were all listed there. I have not seen the final print, but I should have four chapters in the book, unless cuts were made during the final edits. Finally, after months of delays, the book is out on Amazon and I should get my copy any day now.
I just submitted an article to the PMI Knowledge Shelf, this morning. I’ll tell you more about it if it is accepted and published. There are a couple of other sites I will look into submitting it to if PMI does not accept it.
One of my coworkers is what I guess you could call my counterpart for the local chapter of the IIBA – the VP of Education. She has given me an interesting opportunity – speaking at their January luncheon on Tips and Tricks for the crossover BA/PM. Hopefully it will be an equally interesting opportunity for the attendees! I don’t really think of myself as funny or interesting, when it comes to public speaking, so hopefully this will go well. On the plus side, project management and business analysis are among the few topics that I can hold a conversation about. How sad is that?
We (the family) escaped to Moab a few weeks ago. We had a lot of fun hiking, and some drama, but no permanent damage. It was definitely an adventure. We rented out a two story house owned by a hostel and split it with one of my wife’s sisters and two of her brothers, and lots of kids. It was fun, even if it was a little chaotic at times. I need to put in a plug for the Moab Brewery: awesome calamari and onion rings! The best rings in Utah, as far as I am concerned. Of course I had to have some.
I’m a little jealous of my wife. Not a lot, but a little. She went skydiving. Did I go? No, but it wasn’t because I didn’t want to. Apparently, I weigh too much to skydive in Utah, according to the instructor. If we were at sea level, it would be a different story… I just found the one disadvantage to being tall and not toothpick skinny. Here’s another plug – Skydive Moab!
I need to get my pictures together. I took a lot of pictures at Arches National Park, while in Moab (on my iPad), and now need to combine them in to a composite few. I also played with a panoramic picture app on my phone. I need to make some time and get all of the pictures put together and posted here. Maybe next weekend… Today I need to finish getting ready for the no holds barred pinewood derby. It won’t really be a race; more of just a bunch of grown “men” launching rocket cars in the parking lot. Mine is not pretty – I am NOT a craftsman – but hopefully it will cross the parking lot. I’ll have to post a picture of my creation, as well.
Circling back to food… I received my birthday card from Tucanos and made good use of it. I must have eaten almost 2 lbs of shrimp, on top of the garlic sirloin, pork loin, and pineapple. This would be the other reason I am too heavy for skydiving in Utah – but I like food more than skydiving.
Work has had me busy, but some of that is my own fault. I am on several SAP projects. Being new to SAP, I have invested in a couple of books, which have been helpful, but their focus has been on implementing SAP from the ground up, not about leveraging existing SAP tools for new markets. Since I have not been able to find material on the matter, I am working with several of the managers to create an SAP blueprint. Not every project is the same, but there are always certain things that Finance does, and Supply Chain, and Sales, and certain things have to be done in a certain order. By creating a blueprint, I won’t feel like it is a discovery process every time I start a new SAP project. I don’t have to create a blueprint. Eventually, the knowledge will be in my head and will be second nature, but that won’t help the rest of the team.
Baby steps. I’m writing, getting published, speaking at local venues. It’s a good start. Maybe a little slow, but I have a family I want to spend time with. There will be time for the rest.
Today’s blog is coming to you courtesy of it.toolbox.com.
I have no problem plugging them because I won an iPad for participating in one of their surveys. I am proof that people do win these things.
Friends and family have expressed that they want to win an iPad. My unspoken response is that the only way to win is to participate. I have taken this approach in other areas, and it is paying off.
I started a new job at the end of January. It wasn’t easy to leave my last job – it involved meaningful work with great people to work with – but it is what was best for my family, and it has been a good move professionally, as well. Shortly after starting, I had the opportunity to get involved in helping to plan the IT Manager’s conference; a weeklong event in April consisting of conference sessions and evening activities with participants coming from around the world. My major role was to put together the conference handbook. This gave me the opportunity to work closely with several people in other parts of the organization that I might not have had the chance to, otherwise. At least, not so soon after starting with the company. It also brought me into closer contact with the IT managers from the other countries. I’d like to think that I have started new relationships that I can build on when I work with the different IT managers on future projects.
There were a lot of informational and entertaining presentations during the conference. Mine wasn’t one of them, but as part of the PMO I was able to take a few minutes and talk about process and project management. Fortunately for everyone else, my part was brief.
I really enjoyed our CIO’s presentation. Among the things he talked about was TLC (Trust, Loyalty, & Commitment) and the critical role they play in every relationship, whether at work or outside the office. Between you and me (and the rest of the web), even though I enjoyed the conference sessions and networking over lunches, I enjoyed the team building activities the most. The last day of the conference was spent in a half-day amazing race event and my first time snow-mobiling. Both were a blast!
My volunteering with PMI has also resulted in several opportunities for growth. I was able to attend the Region 1 conference in Seattle, as well as Seattle’s PDD, in May. It was good to get some more information about how to run a chapter and network with other chapter leaders. While there were some similarities in how Seattle runs their PDD compared to ours, there were some differences worth noting as well as some potential speakers that I was able to make contact with for future events in our chapter.
The PMINUC PDD took an interesting turn this year. We had fewer, longer sessions which allowed for more depth of content during the presentations. In addition to great networking opportunities, both in-state and out-of-state, and ideas for the next PDD, I enjoyed the Project 2010 classes at both PDDs. We just started using Project 2010 at work, and I was able to pick up some new tricks that did not exist in previous versions of Project. My favorite features are the timeline and being able to switch between manual and automatic scheduled tasks. Manual tasks can be a great way to start building your WBS without having to worry about dependencies and dates, but I’m not sure if it will be worth it to have to switch them to automatic tasks when I am ready to create a schedule. I’ll just have to figure it out as I use it.
Even though I still have non-family activities taking place outside of work, I am glad to finally have things like school and other major time commitments out of the way so that I can be more involved with my family and less stressed about everything that needs to get done. I feel it is important to be involved in work-related activities, profession-related activities, and personal interests, and hold to the opinion that sometimes putting family first means going to work. Family places a lot of demands on time and money that can’t be met without working (or wealthy relatives, which I don’t have), but there are also times when putting family first means spending time with family, even if that means getting up at 5am to watch 23 hot air balloons get inflated and launched (pictures below, taken with my iPad). Actually, it was more fun than I expected. We got there early and set out our blanket, then watched as the different crews cold-filled their balloons. Before long we were surrounded by inflating balloons and had to move to avoid getting squashed. Then they all started going up. I was surprised at how detailed the Darth Vader balloon was. I’ve been told I can’t post the family pics; candids do tend to be embarassing, but that is what makes them fun.
As I watch my family grow, I realize how much family time I have missed do to work and other commitments. While there are things I would like to rewind and do differently, I have to wonder if I would be in the position I am today; one where I am starting to be able to give my family more time and do the types of activities that they want to do.
Closing thoughts: whether work, family, or personal/professional interest, if you want to “win” you need to participate.
I need to take a more organized approach to my blog; I could easily post once a week if I took a few moments each week to plan. Fortunately, I manage projects better than I manage my blog.
Last month’s luncheon was interesting, to me at least. We partnered with the local chapter of the International Institute of Business Analysis (IIBA) and brought in one of their members to speak. His presentation was similar in concept to my article, The Requirements Delivery Plan. The other reason I found it interesting is that I was involved with IIBA in Sacramento and joined when I moved to Utah. I would have kept up my membership, but the local chapter was having trouble getting started and I wasn’t able to help at the time. It’s exciting to see them growing.
It looks like I’m going to miss the luncheon this week. Next week is a big conference at work, all week, and there is still a lot to do to get ready. The conference should give me plenty to blog about, so hopefully it won’t be another month before I am at it again.
I’ll be going to the Region One leadership conference, in Seattle, next month. I haven’t been to one before, and I am looking forward to it. This should also present multiple opportunities for blogging.
The real prompt for me writing tonight, and for my title-choice, goes back to an experience I had just a couple of days ago. I’m involved in a couple of forums on Project Management and Exam Prep, as well as working with local chapter members to figure out what they need to do in order to prepare for the exam. In one of the forums, on it.toolbox.com, there are regular questions about the best ways to prepare and whether or not someone is qualified. I’ve gotten in the habit of referring people to PMI’s website – if you want to know if you are qualified to apply for the PMP exam, read the PMP application and handbook. It’s all right there. I thought that was all I needed to know.
I was working with a potential chapter member, talking about her qualifications and experience, when she told me she only needed 3,000 hours of experience to apply for the PMP exam.
What?
I thought maybe she was confused, but it turns out I must have missed an announcement from PMI, or something. I looked over the material she gave me explaining it. It gave a link to the Global Accreditation Center for Project Management Education Programs. Lo and behold, if candidates have completed one of the programs recognized by the GAC, they earn 1,500 hours of experience toward their application requirements.
Out of curiousity, I looked up my alma mater, Capella University. In 2006 I completed their BS in IT specializing in Project Management. It was there. It was almost painful to learn that I could have documented 1,500 less hours… except that the program was not certified until November of 2008 and by then I had achieved my MBA and had the exam scheduled.
I think its time to do a little more research before giving too much more advice on preparing for the exam. The advice I have given has been sound, but apparently missing an important detail. I also think that this sounds like an article in the next chapter newsletter. As my title suggests, if you don’t pay attention, you might not know what you are missing.
Before you take offense that I am getting too personal, keep in mind that this is a project management blog, and Agile in project management and software development has a whole different meaning than what you might be thinking. And so we’re clear, if you’re not offended and have an answer that’s not related to project management or software development, I really don’t want to know.
Let me start with some non-Agile information. The four week PMP Prep class just wrapped up. There were a few minor hiccups, but overall I think it went well. We’ll be following up with the participants, soon, to get their feedback, and I need to finish my volunteer requirements and get them to the board’s volunteer coordinator. I would really like a volunteer to keep in touch with everyone who has taken the prep class, and represent the board in maintaining contact and offering encouragement until they pass the PMP exam.
If you hadn’t heard, PMI recently announced their new Agile certification. The Northern Utah Chapter won’t be offering any prep classes for the Agile certification in the near future, but another volunteer position I want to fill (and need to write up requirements for) is a director of “other” (not PMP) certifications. This new certification could be a good thing… I have wanted to do more in the chapter with Agile, but the chapter probably shouldn’t offer certification classes for non-PMI certifications. I need to work more with the certification course providers in the area – there may be a way to connect with them on an Agile certification class without commiting board resources.
Our last speaker was Mark Marrott from Platinum Edge. It was an excellent presentation on Agile, and seemed to be well received by the chapter. Our next speaker is from the local chapter of the International Institute for Business Analysis (IIBA). I was involved with them when I lived in Sacramento; it is a good organization and I picked up some things that were very helpful in my role as PM/BA. At one presentation, one of the VPs from Canada ( I forget his name – it was a few years ago) gave a presentation on Eight Things Every BA Should Know. I apologize in advance for the sales pitch at the end, but it is a good document.
Back to Agile. I’m scheduled to give a presentation Agile to my team in a few months. It might be too late by then, though. We are currently implementing a couple of software packages for tracking projects – both waterfall and Agile. At this point we will be using the Agile module primarily for release management and not true Agile development, but that is not a big deal. It’s not that big a change to put production release management in an Agile wrapper. It’s not true Agile, but that only seems to be a challenge for the vendor working with us on the implementation.
I just renewed my CSM status. It would have been up next month. It’s almost hard to believe that I have been a CSM for almost four years, and still don’t have enough experience with Agile to become a CSP. Almost. In 2007, when I first certified, I don’t think the company I was working for had even heard of it, yet. They started playing with it in 2008, but all they really did was add iterative development to a waterfall project and call it Agile. It was a start.
Where I am now, we’re getting closer. There have been some trial runs, and I hear there is another one coming. Personally, I couldn’t say whether we should or shouldn’t. It depends on the project and the parties involved. Use the right tool for the job. Anybody have any experience with Agile and SAP? I think one of the pieces we may be missing is Agile training for the entire team that is participating in the Agile projects. Just having a CSM is not enough. A CSC would be nice, too. Actually, I look forward to more apportunities to act as ScrumMaster. I would love to eventually be able to become a CSP. I wouldn’t mind sitting in the Product Owner training, either. The CSM training talks about the Product Owner role, but we don’t have any CSPOs, and if we do Agile, the Product Owner will probably need a little help with the role.
That’s enough rambling for the night. More important than adhering to an Agile framework or Waterfall methodology is understanding what the right tool for the job is, and using it effectively.
Have you ever noticed that your own advice can be the hardest to take? Sometimes, it is not the advice that is difficult to follow, but the results of the advice, even if the results are good.
I have a few examples in mind.
The first two examples are advice I give to anyone when talking about job hunting: always keep your resume and your interview skills current. Keeping your resume current is pretty easy, but it is also ‘maintenance,’ which means it is usually the last thing you do, especially if you have a job. Then, when an opportunity comes, you scramble to get it ready. The only way to keep your interview skills current is to … interview. In order to do this, you have to keep your resume current, and apply for interesting positions when you hear about them.
One of the dilemmas here is that your employer might not look favorably on what appears to be you looking for a new job. The other dilemma is, what do you do if you really aren’t looking to change jobs and you get a really good job offer from a good company with a great team?
It was not an easy decision to make. I was working with great people, doing meaningful work. A friend told me about an opening at his company. I submitted my resume. The hiring manager decided to bring me in for an interview. The interview went well. Even if I hadn’t been offered the position, I would have considered it a good experience. Telling a boss that I liked that I was leaving a job that I enjoyed and found intellectually interesting and challenging was emotionally draining, but it was the right thing to do for me and my family.
Now, it is time to act contrary to my advice. I’ll keep my resume up to date, but no more interviews for a while. That can give the wrong impression when starting a new job, and I have no desire to change jobs for more years than it will take me to become fluent in another language.
You are already familiar with my third example, if you’ve read my ‘Tips for Job Seekers.’ In my tips I advocate learning a new language. Not only can this help in your career, there are studies about the cognitive benefits of learning a new language (that I am not going to go into here). My new job (still in Project Management) puts me in the position of having opportunities to work on projects being run in other countries. I have been thinking about studying Spanish; a language that will benefit me both at work and in my daily life. But, looking ahead, I might be able to be part of a project, in about two years, where I would benefit from being able to speak Japanese. The way I see it, if I start now, I might actually be able to understand a few words by then and not embarass myself by asking for the wrong thing. I’m looking ahead because, if one of my first projects was in a different country, the project could be over by the time I was able to communicate directly with the project stakeholders in their native tongue. Since I have not studied any foreign languages since High School, I figure I will need a little time. And, I have to admit, I do have a small interest in some aspects of Japanese culture.
Some people operate under the assumption that a job is just a job. They would be wrong.
Our (UHIN’s) development partner, Axolotl, submitted a press release about the work we are doing with the VHA in Moab, UT.
Press Release
The VA should be sending out their own press release, soon. I should ask my boss why we didn’t send out our own.
Regardless, it is exciting. I went down to Moab with one of my co-workers, Jeremy, where we met with our VLER contact and involved parties from Allen Memorial Hospital. While not a long meeting, it was a great opportunity to network with the AMH staff and work out the schedule for exchanging data with the VA on the NHIN.
Dinner, the night before the meeting, was at the Moab Brewery – best onion rings I have found in Utah! On the way home, after the meeting, we had lunch in Price at a place called Groggs/Pinnacle Brewing Company. I normally would not say a cheeseburger is awesome, but their bacon cheeseburger is awesome! Thick, crispy bacon with lots of flavor and not a lot of grease, 1/2 lb of fresh beef (I only ate half and took the rest home), with greens (not iceberg lettuce) and an aioli sauce instead of the normal ketchup and mustard. Their baked seasoned fries are good too. If I were really craving a good burger, it would be worth the hour drive.
This week has been busy; mostly little things and a work Christmas party. But the highlight, for me, was facilitating two all-day functional planning sessions with our Administrative and Clinical teams. This is the second year I have done this, and it is slowly evolving into what I really want it to be. One step at a time.
Both days followed the same basic schedule, which was focused around an activity our management team went through – See, Think, Draw, which was basically Current State, Desired State, bridging the gap between them, and setting SMART goals to accomplish the desired objectives. I had made a list of personal and professional goals of the participants, in advance, and we started by everyone trying to figure out whose goal was who’s. It wasn’t quite “goal” bingo, but that might make an interesting twist with the next group.
The reason for the focus on goals is that I wanted the activity to relate to our purpose for the day. We spent the first part of the morning discussing our current vision of what UHIN is, our customers desires, and our competition, followed by a SWOT analysis. The second part of the morning was identifying where we (and our community/board) want UHIN to be and how opportunities from the SWOT analysis might come into play. Since this was a functional planning session, we did not go much beyond 2011, but we focused mainly on end-states – how we would get to the end states was in the afternoon.
The afternoon was intense, both days. Bridging the gaps between what we identified for See & Think and then going through our Weaknesses and Threats and identifying strategies to deal with them (Draw) was a long but gratifying process. We were able to identify milestones and high-level objectives for the items that we are looking at for 2011. We weren’t able to finish establishing SMART goals for all of them, though. Once I organize everything we will be able to finish of the SMART goals relatively quickly. Then comes tracking them and settign up projects. There are way too many projects for me, the lone project manager at UHIN, to manage all of their projects. But we have a solid team, and they are good at what they do. I still have a little work to do in helping them develop some of the skills they will need to manage their own projects, but they are already good at managing their own work, so it is not a big stretch.
The most important part of the functional planning we have done is NOT what we have done. It’s what we will do. What we have done would be a waste of time if it all stopped when we left the hotel conference room. Now is when the real work begins; monitoring, scheduling, change, deliverables, work. And this may sound like normal stuff for project managers, it’s the end result that is exciting. We have the chance to lower the cost and improve the quality of healthcare in Utah. I’ll spend some time writing about this later. While nothing lasts forever, leaving UHIN would be a very difficult decision to make. Even though it is just a job, it’s meaningful and exciting to be part of something big. How often do you get to say that?
So, I have taken my own advice and prioritized the several activities I had on my plate. Since it will be March, at the earliest, before DeVry will have a class for me to teach, I put my training classes on hold. I like the concepts covered in their training, but two full time classes on top of full time-plus career/commute and family weren’t mixing well with my other activities. Since I can’t really put my family on hold or take 3 weeks off of work for training…
This brought me a few moments to catch my breath and finish my writing. My fourth chapter for “Project Pain Reliever” has been submitted. If I understood correctly, the book will be ready to publish in January.
YAY! The timing for this is great for PDU’s, too. The recent Professional Development Day (PDD) for PMI Northern Utah Chapter (more about that in a bit) put me over 60 PDUs with just over a year to go.
PDUs from the book will occur in the third year of my renewal cycle and will roll over to the next cycle. No complaints. I didn’t participate in the book for PDUs, but if I can get them there is no reason not to.
My article for the Requirements Networking Group (RQNG) is not only submitted, it is scheduled to be published November 11th. YAY again! I’ll tell you more about it, and include an abstract and a link once it is published.
PDD was great! I can’t say getting there at 6:30 was “great” but I made that choice when I ran for a seat on the board. I really enjoyed the classes, interacting/networking with peers, and the keynote speakers.
I am waiting for the slides to be posted on the chapter website. Most of the presenters (whose classes I attended) said they would make them available. The first class I went to was on establishing a PMO. It didn’t go into issues involved with changing company culture or the different flavors of PMOs, but we only had about an hour. What the instructor did well was provide a basic structure for a PMO with steps to implement it. I’ll post a link to the slides, once they are up, so that you can see the steps.
Even if I hadn’t found the speaker for the second class, I would have gone to it. The speaker was a project director from a company that my employer has a working relationship with. The topic was Healthcare IT challenges. The class was not as full as the PMO class, but the participants were more involved. According to one of the participants, Coventry Health is getting ready to do a lot of hiring. If you are interested
The last two classes I went to focused on more of the nuts and bolts of project management. It was interesting to hear how one of the departments at Nu Skin manages its projects – they are more of an operations team and do not fall under the PMO. Their approach has an agile flavor, which sparked a little debate about overhead and pros/cons of agile.
I am trying to figure out what the deal is with the extremists between waterfall and agile. A quick search will produce results proclaiming the virtues of one and the horrors of the other, when the reality is that both have their place. Some projects run better as agile, others as waterfall. In my experience, if you’ve been on a project that was a nightmare, it wasn’t the methodology’s fault. It might have been how someone implemented a methodology, but even that is oversimplifying.
For the networking and lunch portion of the day I sat with a couple of volunteers and some members who were just there enjoying the day. I was hoping to find out more about what the others do in their jobs, but one of the PMs was interested in what we do at UHIN and had a lot of questions. I was glad to answer; the potential for Health Information Exchange to reform healthcare quality and costs is exciting.
There were three keynote speakers – one at the beginning, one at lunch, one at the end of the day. All three were interesting. The first was Davy Ratchford from REAL Salt Lake (soccer). He works in marketing and had a lot of fun experiences to share. Mark Marrott’s presentation was the most enjoyable. He is a professional hand-trike racer and motivational speaker. I spoke with him briefly, afterward. I would have enjoyed spending more time talking with him, but we both had other business to take care of. The final speaker was Carmen Swanwick from UDOT. Construction is something that you think would mainly appeal to young boys, but the presentation was cool. Carmen shared a lot of pictures of bridge construction and bridge farms while she explained the different means of constructing overpasses and bridges.
One of the bridges she told us about was across a gorge. The bridge was only 200 feet long, but they could not move the crane out onto the existing structure to upgrade the bridge. They ended up getting a crane with an arm over 300 feet long that required a counterweight of over oen million pounds. I don’t care who you are, that’s impressive!
Next year it is my turn to be in charge of the PDD, so I am looking forward to the lessons learned meeting and to start planning for next year.
Before I go, just a quick update on what I am doing to encourage participation in the PMINUC. We do a quarterly newsletter and have luncheons, but it seems like we don’t get a lot of turnout at activities if there are not PDUs involved. The future PMPs and job seekers seem hungry to participate, but established PMPs don’t seem to have as much of a presence, even though over half of our chapter members are PMPs. To try and encourage members to get engaged, I have started a Twibe – a Twitter group. On the Twibe site, I am posting upcoming free webinars from PMI Registered Education Providers (REPs) that are typically worth 1 PDU, and am encouraging those who join to contribute any they find out about. I just started it, and the announcement in the newsletter has not gone out, yet, so I am still the only member, but that will change. Before I forget, International Institute of Learning is holding a series of webinars, among other things, for International Project Management Day, starting November 4th. Its worth up to 11 PDUs, and free.
Time to figure out a new article to write. I am debating between Business Analysis, Project Management, EHNAC Certification, and Health Information Exchange. I don’t have to decide tonight. Contrary to the title of this post, my current position does not require me to “publish or perish,” although my goals do require me to publish or dwindle in obscurity. Wish me luck!
I also need to figure out my next certification. Do I want to get my Project Orange Belt:
http://www.iil.com/msproject/projectbelt.asp
…and then get my MCTS in Microsoft Project or SharePoint? If I do that, I will be qualified to become a Microsoft Certified Trainer. Tempting. It might also be worthwhile to go after the CPHIMS – Certified Professional in Healthcare Information and Management Systems.
http://www.himss.org/ASP/certification_cphims.asp
Just preparing for the exam would help me at work. If you think project management has a lot of acronyms, you should see Healthcare!
Time for another deep breath. Now that I am done with my last bunch of priorities, I have a whole new list to prioritize.
No, I said PM”I”S. Project Management Information System.
It’s taken a while to get to this point, but I’m finally working in SharePoint, again, and will soon have my PMIS up and running. We were looking at WSS 3.0 (the free foundation for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007), but there were conflicts between it an another app on the server we were looking at. Now I get SharePoint Foundation (SPF), the free version of SharePoint Server 2010. My inner geek is excited!
It wasn’t easy. We don’t have new servers in the budget, and there seems to be a little bit of anti-Microsoft sentiment. I keep hearing that there are better tools than SharePoint, and for certain functions there probably are, but I have yet to find a more effective tool that is relatively free that works as a PMIS. There are a lot of collaboration tools out there, and plenty of content management systems that are all good at what they do, but they don’t provide the list management or MS Office integration the same way that SPF does, and it’s the free version. SharePoint Server (SPS) does even more.
Improvements to the new version of SharePoint Designer (also a free tool) make customizing SharePoint sites even easier than before. There is very little about it that is reminiscent of FrontPage – a very good thing! I just wish that I didn’t have to have SharePoint installed on my computer (which isn’t going to happen) to be able to use Visual Studio to create web parts. There is some customization I want to do, but can’t without having SharePoint and Visual Studio on the same machine. But I still have plenty to do.
Enough drooling. Our engineer set up the initial site and turned it over to me. Right now I am branding the site with company colors and logos and working on templates for workspaces. The first template I need to finish is a custom project workspace. The project task list is a good start, but needs a little work. I’ve created a column for WBS codes and changed the predecessor column to link to the WBS code instead of the task “Title.” I’ll be changing that column name, next.
There is a built in Issues list, which is easily copied and converted to a Risk list. A change log will be a simple matter. I’ve created a calendar view of the project tasks and put it on the front page of the site, so one of the first things you see on the site is a calendar of project activities. Announcements, resources, reports… Once the template is done, I can save it with a couple clicks and then the template is available any time I need to create a workspace for a new project.
One of the downsides is that SPF does not have reporting built into it. I think that I can get some reporting working with SQL Server Reporting Services, once it is enabled, but that is more long-term. Part of me wishes we had the budget for SPS. SPS has “Access Services” which allow you to publish and work with components of MS Access on SharePoint – you don’t have to link back to the database, you just publish the database online. With Access Services, if you need a chart or graph, you create it in Access and display it on SharePoint.
PowerPoint Services is another feature that would be nice. It allows you to publish a presentation on SharePoint and then go through it with remote participants like you would on LiveMeeting or GoToMeeting, as long as they have access to the SharePoint site. And the Visio integration would be awesome! But wait, theres more…
I still need to finalize the site layout. The top level site will be the company portal which I will use to keep the company mission and vision out in front of everyone. Below that will be either one site or multiple sites for the company’s strategic objectives. The project workspaces will roll up to the specific strategic objective that they support. There will be team sites, as well, and potentially meeting workspaces for board and committee meetings, as well as project meetings.
I’m also creating a template library for Business Analysis and Project Management templates I either have or am creating. I also want to include a library for our business process documentation. We have bits and pieces of enterprise analysis and enterprise architecture documentation, but I want to finish detailing them out and have them posted for everyone to be able to access when needed. It represents plenty of work, but having this information compiled will make requirements and contracting a lot easier.
There are two reasons I want this to succeed. The first is that the company really needs a PMIS; a way to keep track of everything that is going on without having to use multiple tools and do a lot of digging to find the information. The second reason is more selfish. I want to prove that SharePoint does what I need and that it has value for the company. There is a person who will be quick to point to other tools should this not go as well as I hope. If it doesn’t go well, it could look bad for me; another reason to be glad we are using the free version.
You could argue that I don’t need a tool like SPF to provide the functions of a PMIS. SPF, for the most part, is just a way to store and present the information. But it is one tool that fulfills the critical functions that I need, on the condition that everyone else is willing to use it.
Time to put on the “salesman” hat.
I’m going to put a plug in for another vendor, here. In January purchased training from LearnDevNow.com so that I don’t lose what little programming skill I have left. I get access to their entire library, including SharePoint 2010 for Developers. It is proving very useful.
Now, I think I need some chocolate.
We do it to ourselves. We take on more and more without finishing enough in the process. Some of it is important, some of it is fun. If we’re lucky, we get both.
I’m sitting here blogging when I have an article to write for a professional organization I am a member of, a chapter to write for Project Pain Reliever, planning to do for my strategic objectives for PMINUC as well as figuring out the volunteers I will need to run my programs as VP of Education, and I just found out that I have made it through most of the hiring process to be an adjunct with DeVry’s Keller Graduate School of Management – training starts on Sunday. I have a lot to do before Sunday, I have a full-time + job with over 2 hours of commuting a day, and my weekend is going to be full of meetings. I also need to go make some Thai Coleslaw for a work party, tomorrow.
And I chose all of it.
Everything on my list is something I chose to do, and something I enjoy, so what do I do next? Work and meetings are scheduled, and beyond my control, but aren’t scheduled for tonight. Same with the training. How do I prioritize the article, PMI stuff, chapter, and coleslaw? I need to get the article done by this weekend. I should get the chapter done by the weekend. I should have finished the PMI stuff already. I have to have the coleslaw for tomorrow, but I can do that at work, if needed. Do I tackle the hardest job first, or get the easiest job out of the way so I can focus on the harder jobs?
Prioritizing can be challenging, especially when it comes to projects. I’ve known too many people who don’t prioritize, at least not effectively. They just try to accomplish everything, and always feel like they are never getting anything done. When you try to explain to them that they should prioritize their work and focus on the items that are important and urgent first, then the important items that are just important, and to consider not doing the items that are not important or urgent (or are just urgent), they look at you like, “I can’t NOT do something.” It’s a foreign concept, and yet one that keeps them from getting important things done by not following it.
I forget the name and website of an article I was reading, but it was discussing how Time Management is a skill that is needed more than ever, but considered unimportant by most. Its just rush rush to do everything. I used to frustrate a prior boss when I would tell her that, “When everything is a priority, NOTHING is a priority.”
I had a coworker with some Time Management issues. He had projects that were struggling and he didn’t know where his time went or how he was going to get all of them under control, let alone done. I suggested that he take a week and track everything he did at work, then after the week review where and how he spends his time to gain some insight into how to get some time back. His reaction was, “I don’t have time for that.”
I decided I would do it. I was curious about where my time went, and wanted to set an example. It wasn’t easy. Every meeting. Every conversation in the hall between meetings. Every phone call. Every personal planning session where I prioritized my work. Every break. Every emergency meeting because something was blowing up or somebody’s hair was on fire.
It amazed me how much of my time was spent in meetings.
My example didn’t change anything for my coworker, but it helped me use my time more effectively.
But it is getting late, and I really should make a decision about what to do next from my list of things to do. This time, I will choose “None of the above.” There is a beautiful woman waiting for me to come to bed, and NOT disappointing her is a higher priority than all the other stuff. Good night!