Is your multitasking gypping you and your employer?

In Cognitive Control in Media Multitaskers, by Eyal Ophira, Clifford Nass and Anthony D. Wagner—claim that their findings show  heavy media multi-taskers performing worse on a test of task-switching ability than those who multitasked lightly.

Heavy multi-taskers were worse over time in filtering irrelevant stimuli.

Heavy multi-taskers were deficient in managing memory (cognitive abilities impaired)

Heavy multi-taskers were slower in the ability to switch tasks.

The study  described that multitasking hinders small business owners in working ability.

Well here comes the plug: Please refer to Dr. Rogers' 8 Rules for Project Managers.

Dr. Rogers' Rule No. 3 Focus on product over process.

if the prescribed process at your work is media multi-tasking, change the process, the one you are using probably demonstrates that you are doing lots of work but not getting much production.

Instead of getting lots of irrelevant things done poorly. (Rule 4 Effective and Efficient Work) Try focusing on essential things and work them till they are done.

Turn off your phone and close the e-mail window. That ring tone telling you there is an email might just be a piece of irrelevant junk that diverts you from relevant work. Turn off the ringer on your phone for significant periods of time (maybe even fifteen minutes to start) I did, my phone no longer rings in my house, they go to voice mail without an annoying ring or musical serenade. My phone at work also goes to voicemail for most of the day.

My anecdotal evidence is that i am getting lots more valuable work done in less time.

So try Rule No. 6 If it hasn't been done before, that's reason enough to consider trying it. Turn off the phone, turn off your email dinger, pull one computer application up at a time and finish the task at hand. My guess is you will have a less harried and more productive day.

Let me know how you fare.

GAPPS Global Aliance for Project Performance Standards

The purpose of the GAPPS - Global Alliance for Project Performance Standards initiative is to develop agreed frameworks as a basis for review, development, and recognition of local standards that will facilitate mutual recognition and transferability of project management qualifications. It is intended that the framework and associated standards be freely available for use by businesses, academic institutions, professional associations, and government standards and qualifications bodies globally.

As project management has become a more widely used management approach, both public and private sector entities have become interested in standards that describe levels of acceptable workplace performance. Many of these entities operate across national boundaries and are thus interested in standards and qualifications that are transferable. Governments, concerned with ensuring an internationally competitive workforce, and individuals, desiring greater mobility, are also interested in the mutual recognition and transferability of qualifications.

Those of you who follow my 8 Rules, will know that most of my concentration is a combination of hard rules and soft delivery.Those of you have studied with me, know that my teaching is about the real world techniques and methods for delivering the outcomes of the PMIBOK.

By this posting, I invite you to check out GAPPS.



GAPPS is a kind of "opensource". The individuals who founded GAPPS felt it necessary for a global standard that is independent of any proprietary standards. Proprietary in this context means standards that cost to use and support a non-volunteer organization. This posting is in no way meant to diminish the hard work and outstanding results that the proprietary organizations have achieved corporately and individually.



This a different paradigm for Project Standardization, and by combining ISO and GAPPS one starts to get their individual arms around what the global PM community is about. A view that is not filtered by the prism of proprietary vision.

GAPPS (along with ISO) believes that the setting of standards and the creation of certifications represent a conflict of interest. Although ISO will accept an arms-length relationship, GAPPS prefers to collaborate with rather than compete with the various credentialing bodies. In fact, most of the major credentialing organisations are GAPPS members.

Performance based competency standards are also called occupational competency standards, and are widely used throughout the world. PBCS have been developed within the context of government endorsed standards and qualifications frameworks

I hope you will take a few minutes to make the globalpmstandards.org project manager standards one of your favorite sites on your web browser.



Take a few minutes to download and read the standards.



Take a chance to study and understand CIFTER.



In my humble opinion, knowing the GAPPS system of standards and comparing your skills, knowledge and experiences against the standards you might see some real room for growth in the global PM community..

Dr. Rogers Rule No. 1

Dr. Rogers Rules for Project Management Rule No. 1 If you can't measure it, you can't manage it.

This is a fundamental axiom of my professional life.

Every time I tried to manage something without a concrete measurement system in place, the project became a action of personal sacrifice and agony,and unnecessary personal hard work

A lifetime ago I was called on to manage the architectural and engineering design for a $100M plus high tech manufacturing facility . The first item on my agenda was to build some kind of budget estimate for the engineering. At the time I picked up the project, engineering was working on a reimbursed basis. The client was expecting the engineering and construction to be converted to a lump sum or a guaranteed maximum price. Getting a handle on $5 million of base priced engineering was essential for project success.

I approached the lead piping engineer, who was also the lead engineer for the entire project and asked if he had some measurements for project progress. His answer: we design until we get it right and don't worry about costs, and "by the way you can't measure engineering design output".

I rolled my eyes and moved on asking him what the output of engineering design was for a piping system. Right off the top of his head he said "these are the outputs I check to see if we are meeting the design schedule.:

1. Pipe system calculations.
2. Pipe system sketch (pre-cadd days)
3. Client check and approval
4. Draftsman completes formal drawing
5. Engineer markups drawing
6. Draftsman corrects drawing
7. Design specification draft
8. Design specification review and approval
9. Engineer approved drawings
10. Architectural coordination drawing check.
11. Construction plans ans specifications
12. A couple of meetings.

My response: looks like some measurable outputs, and oh by the way we can add engineer hour budgets to these items and have a cost/schedule plan. Pretty simple.

The engineer completes the system calculation and she earns 8 hours as per the budget for the work.

This particular design engineer became a believer in Rule No.1 over night with just a little coaching.
At another period of my career I had the opportunity to manage a group of artists doing a significant public exhibition project. There was a budget and a schedule.

Again the lead artist, we just work until we are done, run out of paint or run out of time and then you get what you get.

Solution: We measured paint consumption versus a linear map of the installation against the artist labor budget and came in ahead of schedule, under budget and what the artist thought was a superior product.

The fundamental take away for the project manager is:

You get to decide what to measure and how to measure it.

In a future post I will report on Earned Value Management, pros and cons and pitfalls, but that's all for this week.





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Focussed Thinking

A just read a blog article by Kimberly Weifling (the author of Scrappy Project Management) about Muddy Thinking on Project Connections.

This is the quote that stuck out.

People work on low priority items while urgent issues languish.

Sounds like Dr. Rogers Rule 3 Focus on product over process and Rule 4 Effective work is doing the right thing. Efficient work is doing the right things well.

In my career, nothing made me crazier than team members focusing on the easy things, or the things they liked to do and doing them extremely well, when what was needed was a focus on issues that effected the project outcomes.

Perfectionism is great when it comes to brain and heart surgery and maybe watch making, but getting a program up and running ready for debugging or a construction project completed rarely requires perfection. What is required is a quality product (defined as what the customers needs). If you have seen the word perfection in any quality manual, let me know where to find it.

I remember a project where the color of the brick was discussed for over a year. The project was heading into the unrecoverable zone, the client said "add 5% more Iron Oxide and make the brick", I don't want to see any more samples until its installed. That's a focused decision. Good enough and necessary now.

Perfection is rarely required in Project Management and even if you subscribe to Six Sigma you know that the [product acceptance rate is not perfection its: Is the product within the acceptable bandwidth. In fact in some industries better than the bandwidth is harmful.

I had an up and coming assistant manager once. He had all the tools: Young, handsome, articulate, a degree from a prestigious university. However he had one "fatal" flaw. he was a perfectionist. We were hardly ever able to get any work product out of him until, the last minute or later. If we needed a piece of his work to check across team boundaries he would never give it up. It was always "not good enough, not ready". We couldn't rely on him in a crunch situation he would hold out for perfection when we needed "good enough" to make a decision or change direction.

Same project, another outstanding young lad would present me with a list of everything he had accomplished on the project, when all I asked for (or needed) was a list of the missing pieces. He hated to have executives ask what he was doing, he only wanted to focus on what he had already done. He actually did his work well, he just wasn't forthcoming with it without some prying (high maintenance person) Does this sound familiar.

Rule 3 Focus on product over process.

I can't make this stuff up: I worked for a company (now out of business) that focused on process over product. The result was that their projects were never done on time or within budget, but they were always able to prove that it wasn't their fault because the processes were flawless.

That's when I added this rule to my tool box. It has always kept me thinking about where we were going, not necessarily worried about how we would get there. Sometime the ride was bumpy but I rarely went into a ditch or off a cliff.

Rule 4 Effective work is doing the right thing. Efficient work is doing the right things well.

As human beings we all have a tendency to want to do things that are both easy and that we do well. Without control this is the kiss of death of a project. Everyone is doing things well and they think they are so efficient. But efficiency requires doing the right things.

Juran's Pareto's Principle tells us that 80% of our actions get 20% of the needed results. Conversely 20% of our actions get 80% of the required results. My Rule 4 makes me focus on the 20% first.

In construction, at the end of the project a list of uncompleted items is compiled by the owner, architect and contractors. This is called the punchlist. I was taught that the most effective way to complete the punchlist was to tackle the most difficult and puzzling issues first and pick up the easy stuff as you went along. Our human tendency would be to start with the easy stuff and put off the hard stuff. For a while we think we are being very effective and efficient., until all the easy stuff is done and we have burnt a lot of daylight.

One of the roles of a good project manager is to be able to get the individual team members to focus on effective activities and efficient work. This is easier said than done and it is usually why PM's with high Emotional Quotient EQ do better than those with high IQ only.

My succinct advice: Always focus on the project activities that are critical to successful completion and don't sweat the small stuff. (and its all small stuff anyway).

If you want to know what middle managers would sound like if they were creatures from a video game. Watch this on You Tube Eat Your Brain.

DR ROGERS' 8 RULES OF PROJECT MANAGEMENT

I freely admit that I have taken these ideas from others; notably Dr. Covey (who "adapted" from Peter Drucker and maybe a little from Dr. Deming). There are others from whom I have lifted my ideas but I suspect they, in-turn, received their ideas from others.

Flatterers imitate. Indolese rapio (Genius steals) is my motto.

My purpose of writing "MY Rules" was for MY career. Continually referring (and yes changing my rules) kept me focused on success. I can look back upon a mostly successful career, and enjoy a continuance of a very amazing life. (Amazing to me and my wife. That's what counts.)

The purpose of this blog is just to list here my rules. Remember they are "my" rules not your rules. I suggest that every person who wants a successful career to physically write (paper and pen, no computer stuff unless disabled of course) a short list of rules to work by. having fun might not be one of your rules but it was surely one of mine.

So read these for the first time (or once more for fun).

In future blogs I will be expanding on each rule individually and hope you take the time to comment and maybe post up your own rules.

Dr. Rogers Rules for Project Management

Rule No. 1 If you can't measure it, you can't manage it.

Rule No. 2 Failure to plan, is a plan for failure.

Rule No. 3 Focus on product over process.

Rule No. 4 Effective Work is doing the right things. Efficient Work is doing the right things well.

Rule No. 5 Project Communication is an active, two-way process, not a one way street.

Rule No. 6 If it hasn't been done before, that's reason enough to consider trying it.

Rule No. 7 When all else fails, read the directions.

Rule No. 8 Have fun!