Who owns float?

If you had been a student of mine, you would have been taught that float has real value to a project.

If float has value, then who owns the float in a project schedule.

Recently in one of my classes we have been engaged in that discussion. Lots of folks seem to think the PM owns float, by right. Others felt the issue of using float should be resolved in the Project Charter. One, less than hopeful, student pointed out that his boss always stole float by delaying his decisions until the last possible moment.

My position is that whomever uses the float owns it, unless there is some negative ramification against the float thief, she takes it she owns it.

Dr. Rogers’ Rule1 If you can’t measure it you can’t manage it!  If float has value that you can measure you can manage it. If float has no measurable value then it can’t be managed.

My suggestion is that the team or PM place a cash value on each day of float and let those who need it, or use it, buy it. or the float thief could pay it back in-kind.

The take away. Float has value, charge for it!

The “meaning” of work

Did you ever wonder if all your hard work is meaningless? Its ok to ask this fundamental work life question. Hey! if we wonder about the meaning of life in general, why not about the meaning of work?

I don’t claim to know the answer to the meaning of life question, but I do have an answer for the meaning of work question.

You work to earn a living. (i.e. feed, clothe and shelter yourself and maybe your family) and if you are very, very lucky you work to have fun.

I count myself among the lucky ones. I rarely worked a day in my adult life when I wasn’t earning well and having fun. Having fun  by learning something new each day (I am by nature curious) and interacting in a positive way with those around me. (Was I perfect, no but I think I was at least a 90% er, 90% useful and positive)

If you want to decide on a career change. Ask yourself two questions.

1. Do I satisfy my physical needs through this work? If the answer is yes then you best analyze any “need” to change careers (or employers)
2. If you answered yes and are having fun each day, why worry? If you answered yes to the first question ad no to having fun, just chalk that up to bad luck and put your head down and get back to work.

The take away, in today's economic reality,  a job is a gift and should be considered as much, as the present conditions continue. (I don’t subscribe to the latest industry views on limited or no employer obligations to workers and worker loyalty, but that is another posting). If you are having fun, count yourself very lucky indeed.

You don’t need to be loved just respected.

I have been reading a lot of PM discussion boards, blogs, comments and individual recommendations lately, and it seems to me that lots of individuals want to love and admire their managers and leaders. I guess they expect a perfect work world. Maybe that’s a need to replace our messy social, personal and community lives with one of perfect order. Lots of these commenter's were looking for a perfect “holy’ person to look up to. A manager who they would follow to the death.

Sorry folks! you should expect an imperfect human for a manager, and if you are lucky, he or she will act as professionally as possible for the greater part of their working lives. They will make mistakes, and they will sometimes make you angry or upset. If you are lucky you will get a 90% plus perfect manager.

It is difficult for us to set aside the bad things and look at the positive. We want to live and work in a perfect world, and when we have time on our hands we often focus on bad rather than positive. We expect positive, so bad sticks out.

I never wanted to be loved as a manager, just respected. Respected for what I was able to accomplish not who I was. Who I am, is for my personal life. I had employees for ten years of more who didn’t believe I was married when then finally met my spouse. I gave 110% to my job, but I never gave my wife to my job.

I suspect that I was at least a 90% er. I made some whopping errors in judgment, and had character lapses (I still do) over my career and I am sure that I made individual employees, vendors and even clients uncomfortable at times, but I am certain that I tried hard and mostly acted in a positive manner.

The take away:

Don’t expect your boss to be perfect, look for the over arching trend.

Don’t expect to be perfect yourself,try and be at least a 90% er.

Begin with an error of an inch and end by being a thousand miles off the mark!

A federal government study found that after 15% of the project duration and the project is in a ditch, there is very little if any possibility of bringing it back. You might get it in on time, but not on budget, or you might get it to budget, but not on time. The quality might be degraded, or the scope reduced. Something has to give.

To avoid having to call Project 911, do the right things in planning a project. Before you take any actions on a project, ensure that the measurable deliverables are agreed to by stakeholders and build a detailed plan, especially for the start of the project.

In the development and construction world, where I spent most of my career, things rarely went south when we were painting the walls, or moving in the furniture. Bad projects, went south during the buying of the sub-vendors or digging the hole to start. I  am sure that in bad IT projects there is an analogous southward trip.

Projects go bad at the start, and we have evidence if they are not corrected early they rarely recover.

The time to call Project 911 is early, before the 15% deadline, but put them on hold.

I always used the strategy of significantly engaging clients early in the project. They were there when things were turning and they could see for themselves where they could help. (I did have had a couple of rare occasions where the client did not want the project to succeed.)

If its early and the client can be engaged in the rescue, don’t be embarrassed to ask for their help. You  might loose the client in the future, but it sure will be a little less stressful, than having a bad project and loosing the client anyway.

On two occasions, for significant international clients, I was called by the client to help the team recover the project. I was not the designer or the builder, nor even selling consulting services at the time. The client saw the project going south and brought help to for the team, my task: set realistic deliverables and help the team begin to  meet them.  Take direction from this ancient Chinese proverb, and always spend largest effort in the front end of a project.

Begin with an error of an inch and end by being a thousand miles off the mark

Look around your office, if you have one.

I got an email from my wife the other day with a list of things that are disappearing form our daily lives.  Younger folks don’t miss them, they are already irrelevant to their lives.

As a good way to predict what your work life will be in a few years, look around your office (if you still have one) and try and think of the work as it was, or must have been like just three decades ago. (When the old grey haired guy down the hall started work here, or some simulation of what he or she might look like had they survived.)

The 1980 PM office

• Single line telephones with no speakerphones or wireless.
• No fax machines (They are already going extinct after only 25 years or so)
• Black chalk boards (if one at all) Maybe a cork tack board.
• A Rolodex (some of you won’t even know what that is)
• Carbon copies (then carbonless copies)
• Adding machines pretending to be “computers”
• Coat hooks.
• Book cases, with books.
• File cabinets with files rather than obsolete computing  junk.
• Real wood desks.
• Uncomfortable desk chairs.
• Pink phone message pads.
• Sticky pads (invented by 3M in the mid 1970’s)
• A real live receptionist.
• A typing pool.
• A hard square briefcase (not a messenger or laptop bag)
• A light table to overlay drawings and tracings.
• Green accountants tablets. (for writing not medicating).
• A mainframe computer that was slower than a pencil.
• Yellow pencils and erasers.
• Liquid-paper, white out in the white bottle with the black label.
• Copy machines almost as they are today, and I don’t know why?
• Maybe even a mimeograph machine.

Write down everything you see in and around your office, and try and figure out when and how it will become obsolete. Then invest in the replacement product companies.

My bets:

• Assigned offices, hell why even have a headquarters building.
• Desk top PC’s will be gone within 5 years replaced by netbooks, ipads, and/or thin client servers.
• Mice and keyboards of any kind.
• Remote controls, garage door openers and keys replaced by iphone type devices.
• The desk top telephone as you see it now. Why we have them is a mystery to me already!
• Paper, but we though that it would be gone a generation ago, but we make more now than ever. Paper must be in our souls.

This might be a good team building exercise next time you start a meeting!

Fearlessness

You might think that I have dropped off the face of the earth, and with all the really ugly things happening in the economy, politics (Arizona citizen) and in nature (BP, oil spills, earthquakes, tornados), you might be right, but you aren’t.

Over the past several weeks I have done lots of optimistic things because I am FEARLESS.

I just posted to a discussion about what makes a great project manager and I included the seven predictable, but lame, items I use to teach PM 101.

My motto: Indolese  Rapio, so those ideas are pretty much stolen from Stephen Covey, who stole them from Peter Drucker, who stole them from someone else before him.

However, I added the one that I think really propelled my career in Project Management:

FEARLESSNESS

That doesn’t mean I am foolish, ignorant, or un-thoughtful. It means that once I have analyzed the risks (and I do worry a lot) and rewards of a venture, I move forward without trepidation or concern for the outcome.

I know I will survive and be better off than before I started. It has always worked for me.

So here are the FEARLESS  things I have initiated this spring:

• Signed up to develop curriculum and launch a new academic program with a fellow colleague at the university.
• Agreed to take on a volunteer development opportunity in Indian Country.
• Put in an experimental garden in March and built the deer fences for the permanent garden, as well as purchased the materials for the raised beds.
• Hired an architect to design an addition to my home in Arizona, even though we are probably at a small net negative worth. (slightly underwater)
• Arranged to refinance that home with a view to be able to stay in it for at least ten years.
• Opened a new LLC venture and landed my first paying client. (not sure how much profit there will be, but hey its a shot).
• Let my wife buy an expensive piece of art that she has wanted for a long time, without a clue as to how I would pay for it. (Not too expensive)
• Offering six graduate courses on-line this summer. A new personal record.
• Determined to blog post more often. (Blogging has really helped my writing, even if you don’t notice it)

So here is the take away: See an opportunity, analyze the risks and rewards. If you go for it, go without fear. No matter the outcome you will be better for taking the effort.

PS. When I was thirty-five years old, I was given an opportunity to work with a small group in a company turn around. The company had 15,000 employees worldwide. I was given the six western states with $400M in work. We busted our butts, and took our lumps for eight months and had the company turned around when we were slapped with RICO suit by the DOJ, we folded three days later. 

What I got: a Vice Presidency on my resume, ten years of business experience gained in less than a year, a reputation for a can do fearless manager, and a six month vacation at the beach before I joined my next start up venture.

All face to face meetings to disseminate information are a complete waste and should be banned in modern practice.

All meetings and/or portions of meetings that are to transmit information should be banned from modern project management practice.

All meetings that do not fully engage all attendees for the full meeting should be banned from project management practice, or the unengaged should be dismissed form the useless portions of the meeting.

All meetings that do not have a specific desired outcome of some solved or partially solved problem, should be banned from modern project management practice. (Well organized planning meetings and team building exercises qualify as outcome desired meetings.)

Corollary: All meetings should be working meetings.

In the old days, when we had one telephone and it was connected by two wires and no speaker , we used regularly scheduled meetings to transmit information, and get commitments and occasionally solve some pressing problems. We also used the meetings as a record to prove someone other than “me” was responsible for delays and cost overruns.

That was then and this is now.

Having a meeting solely to transmit information, assumes the attendees are either illiterate and/or have no e-information skills. That’s great for team morale (not) and to imply that you think your client is rather dull. Both are great business productivity improvement schemas. I once worked for a college dean who would bring all the memos and notes he had received that week and read them to us. What a waste of everyones time.

With modern communication tools and portable scheduling devices, top managers should easily be able to schedule meetings so that individuals can come and go  when they need to be engaged min the business of the meetings. If they are not engaged, let them drop out to the lobby (or better provide a “green room”). The reality is that busy and smart folks are already texting or reading email when they are not engaged in any meeting they are forced to attend. We have great electronic communication tools to organize, plan, organize, run and  follow through meetings.

This week I attended a meeting by a teleconference call while I attended a webinar. I would watch the webinar and tune in when I needed to be in the meeting and I did the same for the meeting following the agenda to trigger my engagement. The meeting was held 250 miles away, and the webinar was sent from an adjacent building. I was also supervising a staff worker in my office and monitoring my email and voice mail. (my voice mail is available on my laptop.) I did all this with one rather plain notebook PC.

Meetigns for meeting sake are often just ego support for the sponsor and many times for the attendees. In my last organizational management role (academic chair) we were required by the institution to hold regular faculty meetings. I would walk around to the faculty and “call a meeting”, the meeting would last the semester while I walked around from office to office. We adjourned the meeting on graduation day with a social lunch. Many of the faculty just couldn’t get it. They argued for meetings and more meetings. I refused, as these meetings were exercises in futility, where the smartest among them just wanted to prove how dumb I was, and how they knew everything. It took then ten years to oust me (on my schedule) for not providing them with a regular outlet for their anger and frustration. There is a reason things take forever to change in education. However the day is coming for change, the failed economy, on-line education and robust teaching and learning technology and productivity measures will deliver the necessary impetus for education change.

Caveat: in our ever remote lives, we need social contact. I readily admit that fact. I mostly work at home and do not need an office, except to keep my public persona memorabilia and very occasionally meet someone. I go to “work” for social engagement and to gage the sense of the organization. That's for fun and easier to triangulate what’s going on. As I only have one part time tele-worker to supervise, we rarely get together, but we both make sure we do that at least a few times a year.

The take away: Think about how much you are wasting of your own and others time when you schedule and plan meetings. is their some other more effective and efficient way to get the job done. If there isn’t a better way than meetings, invent one!