VCT 4670: Synthesis

One of the readings from this week addresses the subject of what to do when things go wrong.  A lot of people, including myself, sometimes get frustrated and just want to give up on the project (or whatever has gone wrong).  The author recommends “applying the rough guide,” which can help to handle difficult situations.

• Calm Down – “Nothing makes a situation worse than basing your actions on fear, anger or frustration.”  How true is this?!  Things always seem worse at first and it never helps to get angry before seeing if it can be fixed.  (I need to keep reminding myself of this!)  Your emotions will influence your thinking and behavior, sometimes causing you to do things you wouldn’t normally do.  Be patient, keep breathing, and pay attention!

•  Evaluate the problem in relation to the project – Make sure you frame the problem to the right emotional and intellectual scale.  Ask a lot of questions and get people to think instead of react.  Make sure you truly have an understanding of the problem and the impact it has.  Once you do this, then you should prioritize: emergency (now!), big concern (today), minor concern (this or next week), bogus (never).

• Calm down again – Now that you really know what the problem is and how it can/can’t be fixed, you’re probably going to get upset again!  Find a way to safely express your emotions.  You can do this by:  screaming at the top of your lungs, workout, or talk to a friend.  Once you’ve calmed down go ahead back to the problem and get it figured out!

• Get the right people in the room – Identify who all is most responsible, knowledgeable, and useful and get them to work together.  Let them know what the problem is and any other information you might have regarding the situation and then get out of their way so that they can get to work!

• Explore Alternatives – After you answer any questions and clarify the situation, next you can figure out what your options are.  This could involve having to do research – if there’s too much of it to do on your own then go ahead and delegate some to another person.

• Make the simplest plan – Weigh the options, pick the best choice, and make a simple plan.  Even if it’s not in your favor or what you want to do, you need to pick the best available choice.

• Execute – Plan and simple – make it happen!  If new problems arise then start over at step 1 and get it figured out.

• Debrief – Look over everything you have done and see what you did right and what you did wrong.  Ask yourself, “what can I do next time to avoid this?” Learn from your mistakes!

Hopefully this will help you when a difficult situation arises and that it will teach you how to easily get out of another difficult situation.

Have you ever received an email that was a waste of your time to read?  Or one that you couldn’t understand because you swear the sender was talking in a different language with all the acronyms being used?  Below are some good tips on what a good email should consist of.

• Be concise, simple, and direct – You want to consider:
– optimizing for communication efficiency
– who will be reading the email and how you would explain it if you were talking to them face to face.  Which details are important and which ones      aren’t.
– what concepts you can assume they know
Once you consider these things and have written the email, take a minute to do something else and then go back and reread it.  If it covers the above considerations than you’re good to send!

• Offer an action and a deadline – The best emails have a specific request that is clearly stated and offers a reasonable deadline.  Make it easy for the receiver to read and to figure out how they are impacted by the action and what they need to do.

• Prioritize – Make sure that it’s actually necessary to sent the email that you’re about to send.  The more you send, the more work the receiver will have to do to prioritize your requests.  How many requests that you’re making are important?  Know that some things are better handled with a phone call or face to face.

• Don’t assume people read anything – Not everyone reads every email they receive.  They may not have the time or maybe they just don’t care!  The more important the message is, the more energy you have to expend making sure that people are actively doing something about it.

• Avoid giving a play-by-play – Avoid writing emails that focus on the actions of every person/item involved.  Focus on the impact:  what happened, how this changes the world, and what’s going to be done about it.  If you want to include the little details, then list them below the critical points.  The first two lines of the email should make it easy for the receiver to know immediately if it’s important enough for them to keep reading.

Hopefully these tips will help you write better emails that are straightforward and easy to read.  Know that email isn’t the only form of communication and that most people still prefer face to face communication.

All projects, whether big or small, can benefit from a plan.  A plan can “provide an opportunity to review decisions, expose assumptions, and clarify agreements between people and organizations.”  To make a plan, you must answer two questions:

–       What do I need to do?

–       How will I do it?

The first question is called requirements gathering and the second question is called specifying.  From the requirements gathering you then create a requirement, which is “a carefully written description of a criterion that the work is expected to satisfy.”  A good requirement is easy for everyone involved with the project to interpret.  The specification is “a plan for building something that will satisfy the requirements.”
Different types of projects can effect the requirement and how it is completed.  There are 3 main types of projects:

–       Solo-Superman – Only one person is involved

–       Small Contract Team – A firm of 5-10 people and 1 manager

–       Big Staff Team – A team of 100 or more people

Once the team is created, there some basic questions that everyone should know the answers to:

– Who has requirements authority?  Someone has to define the requirements and get them approved.

– Who has design authority?  Someone has to define the design of the work itself.

– Who has technical authority?  Someone has to decide which technical approaches to use.

– Who has budget authority?  Someone has to have the ability to add or remove resources from the project.

– How often will requirements and designs be reviewed, and how will adjustments be decided?  The more parties involved in requirements, design and budgets, the more effort will need to be spent keeping everything in sync during the project.

There are 3 perspectives that need to be considered when approaching a plan; business, technology and customer.

– Business Perspective – This focuses on the items that impact the profit and loss accounting of an organization.  This includes sales, profit, expenses, competition and costs.

– Technology Perspective – This focuses on how things should be built.

– Customer Perspective – This is the most important of the three because the project is made to serve the customer.

The balance of power is helpful when deciding what perspective should be focused on more.  The ratio of power should be 1:1:1.  If the ratio is out of balance it could lead to more compensation from one area.

Putting all of this information together and applying it to your project should create a well thought out and informed plan.  These basics will guide you in the right direction to creating a plan and can help you get started on your project right away!

So far the readings from the preface and chapter 1 of the book, Making Things Happen, have made me think a lot about what a project manager is, what they do, and if I would ever wish to be one.  

Let’s start by defining the first two items (the easiest to define) from above – According to the author, Scott Berkun, a project manager refers to “whoever is involved in project leadership and management activity.”  Management activity would be activities such as “leading the team in figuring out what the project is (planning, scheduling, and requirements gathering), shepherding the project through design and development work (communication, decision making, and mid-game strategy), and driving the project through to completion (leadership, crisis management, and end-game strategy).”  

Now on to the last item – Would I ever wish to be a project manager?  As of right now, I feel that I would not be a good project manager.  I seem to allow others to take on the leadership position, while I am more comfortable following their demands.  Becoming a project manager would be a huge goal for me to have , as I would like to gain the confidence needed to take on a position like that.  In his book, Berkun lists the traits needed to be a great project manager and how they need to know when to do what in different situations.

– Ego vs. no-ego
– Autocrat vs. delegator
– Tolerate ambiguity vs. pursue perfection
– Oral vs. written
– Acknowledge complexity vs. champion simplicity
– Impatient vs. patient
– Courage vs. fear
– Believer vs. skeptic

I believe that I possess a lot of these traits but that I need to work on others and learn how become better at them.

 Another major item that Berkun talked about in this first reading was how companies seem to forget that they can learn from the past and use that knowledge to make a better product.  A line that stood out was “why would anyone willingly suffer through mistakes and disappointments if they could be avoided?”  If we could look back and see what mistakes were made then why wouldn’t we?  Is it because we’re all too lazy to do the research?  Do we lack the ability to do the research?  Do we just not care enough?  I think it’s mainly because we don’t have enough time – or at least we claim we don’t have enough time.  I think we’d all be more than willing to put the time and effort into the research if we were given the time in our normal work day and getting paid to do it.  Yes, it may seem wrong of us to only want to do the research if we’re getting something in return, but come on, times are tough right now and there are “more important” things to be working on.  Even though it may take important time away from other projects wouldn’t it benefit the company in the long run to set aside time for the research to get done?  I feel that many companies are only looking at the “right now success” when they should be looking at the future success and what it will do for their company.

Right now I’m also taking a management course and our readings are also about focusing on learning from the past but being careful as to not make the same mistakes that were made.  It stresses that we should take advantage of  learning from these past success and failures but to not re-create something that brought instant success but resulted in failure.   Say for example, if we do want the instant success than we should take the time to learn why it resulted in failure and change these factors to benefit us for the long run.

The main thing that stuck with me from the readings was that “there is always a new way to think, a new topic to learn and apply, or a new process that makes work more fun or more effective.”  If we want to continue to succeed and create bigger and better products than we need to make time to continue learning and growing in our field of work.