We are nowadays, more frequently hearing stories of disciplinary or other action being taken on individuals, or groups of individuals, by their employers because of comments or content posted on one of the many popular social media websites in use.

There was a story a few weeks ago about a young woman who was asked to leave her employment after posting derogatory comments about her boss onto the FaceBook site, forgetting that she had previously added him as a friend, meaning he would be able to see everything she had written. Then just this weeks, reports of a woman in Canada losing her sick-pay, being paid for depression, because she posted pictures of herself on the internet, again on FaceBook, looking happy. Her medical insurance company came to the conclusion that from looking at these pictures, she was no longer depressed. In a world where more and more people are fully aware of the technology available, and how we use it, it’s not very surprising that more and more people are being subjected to online vetting. It’s well known that when applying for a lot of jobs, HR departments will often perform an internet search to see just who you really are, delving into FaceBook, MySpace, and anywhere else you may have an online presence. These are both real world examples of just what an impact social networking can have on our professional identities.

I think there is another matter though, and it is all to do with workplace productivity. It’s something that I have thought about a couple of times before, but today witnessed something which really got the message across to me. I have been sat in a meeting room in a project planning brief. The room had about 40 people contained within it, all sat in groups of 2, 3, or 4 discussing different aspects of an upcoming project. The chance to have influential people from IT, people from Marketing, people from HR, all in the same room, on the same day has been a wonderful chance to really make some decent progress. However, every time I glanced up across the room, almost every screen I could see either had FaceBook, Twitter, YouTube, or another social networking site open. If we take it that there were 40 people in the room for 6 hours each, that’s a total of 240 total man hours. I would love to know just how many of these hours were spent off task, rather than devoted to work. I myself found it so strange, that I immediately opened up Twitter and began to give a running commentary of the events as they unfolded – from the cleaner bursting in, to the lunchtime menu.

At a first glance, this would seem like a very unprofessional attitude and using such sites during company time could even be considered time theft. However, I find myself much more productive if I can send off the odd tweet, or update my FaceBook status. Now I’m not saying I agree with people who sit all day on these sites – but it was a strange experience watching a room of professional people, working hard and making good progress, at the same time as being in contact with colleagues, friends, and family, all over the world. Technology is a wonderful thing, but we should be careful to prevent it from consuming our time.

The Office of Government Commerce (OGC) is an independent office of HM Treasury, established to help Government deliver best value from its spending.  The OGC works with central Government departments and other public sector organisations to ensure the achievement of six key goals:

• Delivery of value for money from third party spend
• Delivery of projects to time, quality and cost, realising benefits
• Getting the best from the Government’s £30bn estate
• Improving the sustainability of the Government estate and operations, including reducing carbon emissions by 12.5% by 2010-11, through stronger performance management and guidance
• Helping achieve delivery of further Government policy goals, including innovation, equality, and support for small and medium enterprises (SMEs)
• Driving forward the improvement of central Government capability in procurement, project and programme management, and estates management through the development of people skills, processes and tools.

Recently they’ve published the ‘lessons learnt’ from the (so-called) Senior Responsible Owner role. The SRO is ‘the individual responsible for ensuring that a project or programme of change meets its objectives and delivers the projected benefits’.

Lessons Learned – The SRO Role in Major Government Projects provides a number of recommendations on how the effectiveness of SROs can be improved and builds on existing OGC guidance for SROs. In summary, the SRO role can be made to work more effectively by addressing a number of factors including:

• Better understanding of the role;
• Selection of the right people to act as SROs;
• Giving SROs real accountability and business authority to resolve issues;
• Ensuring SROs have relevant delivery skills and experience, including commercial awareness;
• SROs dedicating sufficient time to the role;
• Improved continuity of the role through the project life-cycle;
• Improved tools, guidance and development opportunities for SROs;
• Provision of adequate supporting resources.

This is an illuminating example as the OGC themselves provide guidance on good project management practice, including capturing and disseminating lessons learnt.

It’s good that the observations are candid but at the same time it always amazes me how key problems can often be highly predictable. It often amounts to putting an inappropriate person in the job in the first place or else not giving them enough support or resources. I’ve seen this happen over and over again.

What will be interesting is to see how they plan to actually make these changes stick in a recession when support and resources will be even more stretched (although at the same time there are likely to be less projects). There never was a time when excellent project management including learning quickly from mistakes was more important!

More and more startups are working in distributed teams. Teams with people in different countries and time zones. Keeping the team up to date and aligned is key for success. 7 tools to make online collaboration easy, thanks to CrunchBase for the introductions:

AgileBuddy: agree on specs
AgileBuddy is next generation Scrum project management software that lets you easily Create, Estimate, Plan and Track your software projects. Leading edge software companies are all making the move to Agile methodologies like Scrum.

GitHub: share the source
Git is a distributed software management program created by Linus Torvalds. GitHub is a hosted Git repository. Github allows you to take part in collaboration by forking projects, sending and pulling requests, and monitoring development.

Yammer: keep the team posted
Yammer is a tool for making companies and organizations more productive through the exchange of short frequent answers to one simple question: “What are you working on?”
As employees answer that question, a feed is created in one central location enabling co-workers to discuss ideas, post news, ask questions, and share links and other information. Yammer also serves as a company directory in which every employee has a profile and as a knowledge base where past conversations can be easily accessed and referenced.
Anyone in a company can start their Yammer network and begin inviting colleagues. The privacy of each network is ensured by limiting access to those with a valid company email address. The basic Yammer service is free. Companies can pay to claim and administer their networks.

Skype: for the direct conversation
Skype is a peer-to-peer Internet telephony service that is free for Skype-to-Skype calls. The service also allows Skype users to call mobiles and landlines, and vice-versa. Skype has special charge plans for non-Skype-to-Skype calls. Skype is expanding from its traditional computer-based calls to mobile applications.

Notable: feedback, easy and simple
Quickly and easily give feedback on design, content, and code on any page of a website or application without leaving your browser. Notable is a page capture utility with powerful annotation features that let you pinpoint copy, design elements and even code that needs to be tweaked. It’s the most comprehensive feedback tool on the Web.
The tool works on PC, Mac, and iPhone.

Google Apps: e-mail, chat, calendar, but above all: docs
Google Apps, is a web-based office suite offering businesses email, document creation, and collaboration functionality. Google Docs is Google’s free web-based word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation application. The online app allows users to easily share documents and collaboratively work on them in real-time.

MindMeister: mind mapping to the max
MindMeister is a collaborative mind mapping tool built on the principles of Web 2.0 to allow people from around the world to work together on their mind maps with nothing else but a browser and an internet connection. MindMeister supports all the standard features of a classic mind mapping tool – only online, and with as many simultaneous users as you like!

Overall Purpose of Role:

The successful candidate will have full responsibility for managing and supporting the current online marketing operational functions of the business. They will be in charge of the successful delivery of our online marketing projects, chief of which is new website features, promotions and content. The candidate will be measured on centralising and monitoring current online marketing projects, effectively managing and improving the core marketing operational function. They will work directly with our Product Development team, scoping the online marketing requirements, creating the marketing brief, coordinating the delivery team which includes Copy, Graphics, Web Development and IT, and ultimately managing and owning the successful and timely delivery of the brief. This role requires a high level of business acumen and project monitoring and management capability combined with a genuine interest in the online poker/gaming industry. The successful applicant will have experience of marketing roles within large on-line tech companies. It is imperative that the successful candidate is able to work within a dynamic, fast paced and leading-edge technological environment where consistent delivery of results is paramount to business success. The role involves both operational and strategic marketing challenges within an emerging business sector where our company is recognised as a leading and the fastest growing organisation.

Responsibilities/Accountabilities:

• Own and manage the delivery of online marketing projects
• Manage the relationship with key internal stake holders, including business unit managers and the online marketing department, to ensure the smooth running of the online marketing operations
• Detail the functional requirements and specifications in a clear and concise manner to ensure efficiency and effectiveness of human and technical resources
• Maintain and monitor schedules and deliver projects on time and to budget
• Identify potential problems in advance and put plans in place to mitigate risks
• Monitor online marketing trends and ensure company is well placed to take advantage of all opportunities that arise
• Ensure we are using the best of breed online marketing technology in the most cost effective manner possible
• Develop existing processes to maximise efficiency, improve return on investment, increase use of technology and to continuously improve the services provided by the online marketing operations function to the business
• Consult with software development resources in understanding technical requirements and challenges faced

Skills/Experience Required:

• Bachelor’s degree in Marketing or business/technical field
• 5+ years of experience as a Marketing Operation/Project Management experience
• Must be currently working a global organisation where the key corporate sites are available in multiple languages
• Self-motivated with ability to work independently
• Ability to manage staff effectively and maintain positive working relationships with a diverse group of internal and external personnel
• Experience of working with web, graphics, copywriting, business analysis, and software development teams
• Strong communication, organisational and project implementation skills
• Strong general internet experience
• Understanding of the localisation process
• Knowledge and love of the game of Poker
• Understanding of the online poker industry
• Common sense and trustworthiness
• Ability to adapt to changing priorities and to thrive in a fast-paced work environment
• Ability to work with other highly talented individuals
• Fluency in the English language

Do you really want the lowest bidder? A question you must ask yourself, especially in situations like this one:

Here are my thoughts on the matter, for all PMs having to go through bidding processes, unless of course you are following the first rule of government spending…

As project managers, one of the legs of our triangle is “cost”, so, obviously, we would like that the lowest possible. Which brings us to the widely used and accepted bidding process – you generate a scope and/or bill of materials, bid it out, get the results and select the lowest bidder. (Ok, so I simplified it a bit – but usually, cost is that which rules all others).

My question here is – is choosing the lowest bidder really getting you the lowest cost?

I would like to challenge that.

I’m sure that if you’re reading this, you can come up with a few ways of how cheap can become expensive, probably (and sadly) based on your past experience… The lowest bidder didn’t fully understand the scope, planned to use lower grade materials, planned on using low-cost inexperienced labor, forgot to quote parts of the scope – or all of the above and other things not mentioned here.

Here is where I want to offer some suggestions to help you pick the RIGHT bidder for your project (It’s of course assumed your company policies and your country laws allow the use of these methods…):

1. Know your bidders – before adding bidders to your list, see their work, talk to their customers and see if they do quality work and have happy customers. if not – well…
2.  Know your project – is your bidder capable of performing the work fully? will he need to take additional subcontractors? do you want that? when trouble arises – will you be pointed to the sub sub sub contractor for solutions?
3.  Create a matrix – Evaluate and compare your bidders based on several factors, not just cost. The more sensitive the work, the more weight should be given to past experience, quality etc.
4.  Grow a “home” contractor, but always challenge him – Its’ great to have a contractor you always work with who’s quality you like and you know you can trust – but don’t stay complacent – make sure you challenge your home contractors to make sure they stay competitive.

Alex

I have mentioned the work being done by the CIOB (UK) to develop a practice standard for scheduling in a few posts. This valuable work is now at the public comment stage and has a number of really innovative ideas.

The concept of schedule density contained in the CIOB ‘guide’ is not dissimilar to rolling wave planning but has far more practical advice.

The concept is based on the idea that it is practically impossible to fully detail a schedule for a complex project at ‘day 1’ – too many factors are unknown or still to be developed. The CIOB advice is to plan the overall project at ‘low density’, expand the work for the next 9 months to ‘medium density’ and plan the next 3 months at ‘high density’.

Schedule Density Over Time

Low density activities may be several moths in duration. Medium density activities are no longer than 2 months and focused on one type of work in one specific location. High density activities are fully resourced, with a planned duration no longer than the schedule update period and with specific workers allocated.

Activites are expanded to increase density

As the ‘density’ of the schedule is increased, the plan takes into account the current status of the work, current production rates and what is required to achieve the overall objective of the project.

This approach has a range of advantages over more traditional ways of scheduling not the least of which is engaging the people who will be responsible for doing the work in the next 2 to 3 months in the detailed planning of ‘their work’.

More later.

A little Monday Morning surfing tip…

If you’ve wondered for a while what all this Agile/Scrum thing is about, there’s a great little tutorial ‘Scrum in under 10 minutes’ on YouTube. I really liked it – it’s presented in a great way and with some humor (like Scrum Master is just a more fancy word for a Project Manager . Enjoy!

There’s some more info in Hamid’s Blog, and of course tons of books and other online materials.

B.t.w. the more I read and hear about Agile, the more I believe this is really no rocket science, rather a different mindset and should be fun to apply. Any experiences folks?

Der Harvard Business Manager greift derzeit einige Themen von Peter Drucker (1909-2005) auf, u.a. acht Prinzipien effizienter Führung. Peter Drucker leitete seine Prinzipien von der Untersuchung effizienter Führungspersönlichkeiten in der Vergangenheit ab. Sie gelten aus meiner Sicht nicht nur für Manager, sondern insbesondere auch für Projektmanager:

1. Sie stellten sich die Frage, was getan werden muss.
2. Sie fragten sich, was gut und richtig für das Unternehmen ist.
3. Sie schmiedeten Aktionspläne.
4. Sie übernahmen Verantwortung für Entscheidungen.
5. Sie stellten sicher, dass die Kommunikation stimmt.
6. Sie konzentrierten sich mehr auf Chancen als auf Risiken.
7. Sie führten effektive Meetings durch.
8. Sie dachten und sprachen in der Wir-Form, nicht in der Ich-Form.

Der wichtigste Punkt ist jedoch:

Erst zuhören, dann sprechen.

Die meisten Manager, die ich kenne, halten die wenigsten dieser Prinzipien ein und ich selbst muss ich auch immer wieder an die eigene Nase fassen. Durch regelmäßige und konsequente Analyse des eigenen Handelns kann man seine Effektivität jedoch nachhaltig steigern.

Mehr über Peter Drucker finden Sie bei Wikipedia oder beim Drucker Institute.

Hinweis: Derzeit gibt es von mir keine Links auf die deutsche Wikipedia, da man sich dort gerade mit einer besonders gruseligen Öffentlichkeitsarbeit im Rahmen der Relevanzdiskussion befasst. Die Kommentare der Löschhistorien diverse wichtiger Artikel sind jedenfalls Grund für einige Lachkrämpfe meinerseits gewesen, unglaublich wer da so am Drücker sitzt. Wer die bissigen Kommentare von Felix von Leitner (fefe) mag, ist bei seinem Blog gut aufgehoben. Er ist einigen “Opfern” von Artikellöschungen verbunden und hat einige “best of”-Excerpte aus der Wikipedia aufgegriffen. Mal schauen wann bei Wikipedia wirksame Qualitätskriterien für die Moderatoren eingeführt werden.

UPDATE: Die aktuellen Probleme der Wikipedia hat heise gut zusammengefasst.

As I mention in my book post-mortems are a critical tool in enabling improved project performance over time. Determining areas of success and areas of weakness sow the seeds for improvements in subsequent projects. However, post-mortems are, by definition, only successful correcting mistakes after they happen. That is to say a mistake must happen (or be narrowly avoided) at least once in order for the organization to learn from it, and take whatever corrective action is necessary. Experience may be the best teacher, but that can also prove expensive. Pre-mortems offer a different solution, correcting problems in advance, and eliminating the risk in the first place.

A pre-mortem involves getting project stakeholders and participants into a room before a project starts, making the rather bleak assumption that the project was not successful and then determining the cause. By assuming that the project has already failed, it makes it much easier for everyone in the room to be creative in pointing to potential problems and shortcomings. Without the safety of a pre-mortem environment, participants may be unwilling to point out flaws due to hierarchical structures, or a lack of willingness to be viewed as pessimist. With a pre-mortem, failings can be addressed in advance, or if that isn’t possible, key areas of risk can be highlighted for appropriate mitigation and response strategies to be put in place.

I believe Gary Klein originally coined the term pre-mortem and that article is here, which builds on the work of Deborah J. Mitchell, Jay Russo and Nancy Pennington.

Have you heard a good joke lately? Or watched your favorite comedy? Didn’t it feel good to just laugh? The emotional release caused by a good laugh is therapeutic, given today’s stressful environments.  I believe wholeheartedly that Laughter is medicine for the soul. In my opinion, Laughter is also good medicine for your project. A good, clean laugh between project team members keeps the environment safe and light – people aren’t on eggshells and they can relax. Of course, a good pm recognizes that everything is not a laughing matter – just like you pick your battles, pick your laughs too. You may not be a jokester by nature, but if you keep a sincere smile on your face and find pleasure in what you do everyday, the pressures of the project won’t take you under…Go ahead, laugh!

Learn to laugh at yourself first! Hopefully your team won’t see the pattern of you laughing at them all of the time. If you make a mistake (and the world didn’t come to an end), laugh about it (and don’t repeat it)

Know the time and place for a good laugh! You don’t want to joke around if you have a crisis on your hands!

Make laughter a frequent part of your project. Relax, people will feel comfortable when you lighten up a bit!

This is the third part in the PMO series. It will concentrate on PMO measurements - indicators set which help the PMO staff to improve organization’s projects performance, improve the PMO performance and prove its value.

One of the basic rules of project management (and every other management role) is “You cannot manage what you do not measure“. Measurements and indicators help you to identify trends, recognize weak points and handle them. When all the information is in front of you (we will talk later how much is sufficient and how much is too much) you can reach the best decisions.

Many books and article were written about indicators, how to decide which is better, how to adjust targets and so. I decide to divide them to three categories:  

• Indicators for the PMO start-up
• Indicators for the ‘hard’  project data
• Indicators for the ’soft’ project data

Indicators for the PMO start-up

When developing the new PMO, you start with an assessment of the current project management statues in your organization, recognize the gaps, suggest solutions, ask for resources and in general, create the business case.

You create a plan  in order to close the gaps. For example:

• Train 80% of the PMs in the first half of the year. Achieve 100% train gaol at the end of the year.
• Reduce project cost overruns in 50% until the end of year. 

Now, in order to measure your success in implementing this plan, you track these numbers (% of trained PM in specific course for example) in short periods to find whether you are in the right way.

It is important to aligned start-up indicators with management. It can be done while presenting the business case. Focus of the major gaps and how you are going to measure them.

Now you should create another set of indicators to track the on going PMO operation. This indicators can be created during the start-up, but will also be valid during its regular operation:

Indicators for the ‘hard’  project data

These are the most common indicators. They mainly deal with basic projects data: cost, schedule, risks and so on. You can present them in various ways, the most known one is the green,yellow,red lights.

Here is an example of how you can score each project:

These indicators can be gathered to get the overall picture and create trends. You can see that in the grading table I put a subjective measurement of PM confidence. Although indicators are objective numbers, we think it important to insert the PM opinion. I know it is not the traditional way of creating it (we learned it from our IT department) but we think it present the actual statues of the project. 

This is just an example of handling with the ‘hard’ project data. No matter what you will do it will be much easier than the following section.

Indicators for the ’soft’  project data

These indicators are about all the ’soft’ data that the PMO should handle. I will just give few examples (and will post specific article about these indicators which create some challenge):

• Customer satisfaction
• PM professionalism
• portfolio health

Few things to remember

• Do not too exaggerate. Too many indicators will cover the real picture.
•  Update your targets regularly.
• Gathering data for indicators is boring task. If you will not use your indicators as a tool, you waste your time.

Indicators can fill several posts. This is just an opening for this subject. If you are interesting in something special, just let me know and I will deal with it.

Good luck!

Gilad

Jetzt wissen wir endlich warum die Neandertaler ausgestorben sind…da war wohl Prozessmanagement im Spiel:

What market boundaries are artificially set? Yes, artificially. Market boundaries are not concrete walls. It is just seen that way due to the way the industry lags behind what could be. Industry standards are just that…they are the common practices that all the participants have agreed to follow.

The first rule to effectively change your business strategy is to accept that boundaries are artificially set. It will not be easy. Exploring outside the accepted norm will bring the nay-sayers out in the open. “This is how we have always done it” is a red flag indicating how thick the perception of industry standard is in your company. Identify these individuals as you will need to address them (calm their fears) to be able to initiate the exploration of these boundaries. 

Artificial boundaries are implemented within the corporation by organizational structures and their associated IT systems. The tighter the systems are to the organizational structures and the more the data/information is tied to the detailed process will increase the pressure not to change.

Be prepared for these roadblocks. Acknowledge you are challenging the current boundaries. Acknowledge the risk. Acknowledge the challenges inherint in the current organizational structure and the supporting systems. Then, explain how where you want to explore can leverage what you already have in place. Address these risks in your research before you explain the opportunity to the masses.

The maintenance of a Business Continuity Management (BCM) program and keeping everything current is one of the hardest things for an organization to accomplish.  Many may be involved and support the initial projects – such as Risk Analysis, Business Impact Analysis (BIA), department Business Continuity Plans (BCP) and other components – but once these are completed it becomes difficult to maintain the original momentum and ensure that things are continuously reviewed and updated on a regular basis.  Often, department leads will move on to other more important issues and believe that the BCM program is in good shape because they got it developed.  However, it’s only as good as it supported and maintained. What was good last year – when components were originally completed and the enthusiasm was high – won’t be sufficient for the organization any longer because the BCM program hasn’t amended to reflect changes in the organization.  As an example, it could be that technology documentation doesn’t incorporate new servers or other technology components, whether updated, replaced or reconfigured items.  Or BCP plans that don’t account for new services and processes performed by various departments or how the new services and processes aren’t incorporated and updated in BIAs.

Are there any tricks to keeping some – if not all – of this documentation updated and current?  Yes, there are a couple of unique twists that can be incorporated into a BCM program to help it keep current and up to date.  Here are just three (3) possibilities to help keep various program components and related documentation up to date.

1. First, utilize an organizations IT Change Management process.  Let’s face it, change is constant so what better way to stay consistent and current that having a working partnership with the company Change Manager?  Now let’s make one thing clear, this works for the components for Technology Recovery Plan (TRP) only and doesn’t work (not very well) for Crisis Communications or Media/PR Spokesperson components.  As someone who has been a Change Manager, I’ve seen many Request For Changes (RFC) submitted that announce new servers being installed or reconfigured for an existing service or a new service. So when this occurs, make note of the new server (name etc) and incorporate the information into the TRP plan.  Depending on how your plan is developed and set up, will determine what information you need and how best to do it.  Still, if the BCM practitioner is part of the Change meeting other IT professionals are telling the BCM practitioner (in a roundabout way) what they should be taking note of it; what’s changing by way of the TRP (whether they know it or not).  It makes no sense to go back a year later (or longer) and ask IT professionals for this information when in reality, they sat in front of BCM and told them what was happening.  It’s up to BCM to make note of this and capture what they can and include it into the TRP plans (in the appropriate spots).  It’s rare that others may think of passing this information on, as they are going to have their own set of activities to worry about.  It may not be completely what you’re looking for but it moves you a step closer to keeping the plans current and the entire TRP moving forward reflecting the organization, as it moves forward.
2. Second, utilize the Project Management Office.  Now, this can be IT specific or organizational wide.  Some companies have more than one office related to project management; meaning one could be part of the Finance department and another could be part of the Technology department.  So be aware, you may need to approach more than one Project Manager (or Director of Project Management) to get things coordinated.  How?  Well, each project usually requires some level of documentation; either technical in nature or business process in nature.  If the project relates to an existing services (processes, server configurations, services) then instead of creating new TRP documentation, the existing documentation developed only needs to be amended to reflect the changes the project has on the configurations/set-up.  That way, new documents don’t need to be created and it allows for IT resources to better utilize their time because – and this is so true – many IT professionals don’t have the luxury of time to document.  In this way, the projects are keeping the technology BCM documentation up to date – they are the drivers.  This also works for non-technology projects.  When a new service is being introduced there are new processes and procedures required to ensure the service can be delivered.  Before I go to far, yes, this will include technical documentation but that’s covered in the example earlier in this section.  Still, if a new processes is introduced, which involved either one department or multiple departments, the department BIAs and BCPs both need to be updated to incorporate the new service – and related processes.  The introduction of the new service may even require updates to “Disaster Teams” and their roles and responsibilities (depending on what the new service is and does of course).  It may introduce new external partners and vendors for which contingency strategies will need to be investigated and addresses, especially if there are Service Level Agreements (SLA) in place – on either side. 
3. Lastly, develop an overall maintenance schedule.  It may sound simple but this is to be completed every year – and agreed to – before the following New Year begins.  You can use either the business fiscal year as a base or the calendar year as the base.  To make things easier on myself, I use the calendar year.  If you have a steering committee that helps oversee the BCM Program – its development, maintenance, exercising and testing and other aspects – meet with them and discuss a workable timetable as to when specific components of the program will be reviewed and updated or exercised.  This helps everyone involved with these initiatives understand when their resources – either their own or their direct reports – will be needed to participate in these projects.  Knowing ahead of time helps everyone schedule accordingly and because the steering committee developed and agreed to the time frames, they are more in line to ensure it is completed.  This also allows senior management to know that their investment is well-placed, as departments are ensuring their plans and processes are kept current.  What would be on this schedule?  There will need to be a timeframe for when BIAs are reviewed; BCPs reviewed and updated; TRP plans to be amended to reflect changes that were identified in the BIAs; exercise and test schedule time frames (with sufficient pre- and post- execution activities included).  As well as the steering committee meeting schedule and when updates are provided to the senior executive.  You can also include any special projects (BCM of course) that need to be completed over the coming year as well as reviewing Crisis Management processes and anything else you might need to review to ensure the program stays current. An added bonus is that you can add timeframes or blocks of time, that simply can’t be utilized due to some resource restrictions. For example, no one will be working on any BCM initiatives during June because of the implementation of a massive corporate-wide project that will utilize a majority of resources.  So in this case, the BCM practitioner can do some internal (internal to him or her) projects or items related to BCM that don’t require additional resources.    

This is by no means a complete and consolidated list; there are many other instances, which over time will probably make it into a blog in one form or another.  Still, these areas are vastly under-utilized and can greatly assist with keeping various components of the BCM program relevant and current.  It might take some time to settle into these areas and I don’t suggest trying to do all three (3) of them at the same time.  As one slowly comes into line and people begin to see the benefits of one, they will eventually come to see the benefits of others and be more willing to assist in maintaining the BCM program.

Talk to anyone now a days. If the person is from corporate world and if he is in some distinguishable ranks of management, best practices as a term will come up within 30 min of conversation. Everyone seem to be in a rush to make a profound sounding statement such as ‘best practices are foundations of a robust organization’. So, what are these best practices.

Following would be rattle off, if you ask someone the question ‘Can you define best practices?’

• Proven way of accomplishing something like following
• A means to save time on a process which is already established and proven in the industry
• Analyzed and adopted set of practices, which really work
• Processes which minimize the risks and enable organization for success
• Ensured way of operational and tactical efficiencies

 Going by these points, every organization, every company should be

• operating efficiently
• would not be making mistakes
• would be leveraging learnings established by other companies from the past

Because almost all companies are following and/or adopting one or other set of best practices in all departments or functions they have.

So, why it is that we find inefficiencies (of all kind) so common place in majority of the organization. No one can comment conclusively, but here is an opinion. The following words are not a complete answer and definitely not a ‘best practice’ for ‘best practice’. These are just some random thoughts.

Best practices are usually based on rationalization of predictive ability (of an organization). They are founded on a simple premise of ‘planned output’ of a set of activities. The reality of life in organizations if very different. Output of an activity mostly does not matter, its impact does. So, if there is a best practice, its genesis should be impact of an activity not the output of an activity.

Mostly placing the conditional boundaries around a set of activities (and their outcomes) is simple, so organization and consultants come up with ‘best practices’. Thinking of impacts of a set of activity and walking backwards to output and activities is inherently difficult. So mostly everyone seem to retire to comfort of defining set of constraints (call them processes) around a set of activities and their desired outcomes. And bang you go, ‘best practices’.

There are no cookie cutter available in the world. A set of best practices are best definable by one world. And that is a template.

For free assistance overcoming what is preventing you email courses@cyberlearning.org.

Well I have just got out of a meeting with a few different people that are involved with different aspects of my new role, a meet and greet occasion if you will. I have come to the conclusion that with yesterday’s conclusions, I have hit the nail on the head. It would seem that the client wants to develop themselves both technically, and professionally. It would also seem that they want taking to the cutting edge of everything, without having to spend any money or put any effort in. The more time I spend thinking about this; the more it begins to look like a big tick-box exercise.

It is all too common for clients to want wonderful things doing on a shoestring budget – this is something that anybody working IT & Project Management unfortunately must get used to. However, this time, they seem completely unwilling to help their own progression whatsoever. For a while it would seem they have drifted along, fire fighting some issues, ignoring others all together, and not planning or developing anything. This is not acceptable and is something I must make every effort to change, once I have figured out a way to do it quietly – after all if I just let them know that they may have to start working for a living, I’m sure I would have a revolt to deal with!

After a very quick drink last night, I began to outline, for my own benefit, exactly the areas that I think need the most attention. As I did this, I became glad that I am not working on this project to make friends. This I feel would be uneventful. Here is what I came up with:

- Procurement: The current procurement procedures (and I use the term procedures very lightly you understand), are a complete mess. Nobody seems to know who is responsible for what, how things should be correctly ordered, audited, or integrated into the existing system. Speaking only on behalf of the IT Systems, this has led to a very fragmented network, with no standardisation or automated management ability.

- Staffing Structure: Again, the current state of the staffing hierarchy is a complete mess. I made this point very clear this morning and nobody could think of e decent argument – so I think I got my point across. When something new has been bought in without consideration or consultation (due to the lack of procurement procedure), a new job role is normally created along with it. People are bought in on the cheap with the hope that they may have the beginnings of a clue what it is they are doing. Nobody, again, is aware of who is exactly responsible for what, or even who. I can see about a 30% overhead on staffing that could be eliminated immediately. This is going to be a harder point to put across. The meeting his morning was a prime example of both unorganised structure and organisation, there were at least 3 people present who had no need to be there other than to get out of doing something productive themselves. Ironically enough, I did note that these three were the only ones with any real input (albeit irrelevant).

- SLA’s: There is little or no sign of any service level agreements (SLAs) that may greatly benefit the department and company as a whole. I have worked closely with several companies forming and implementing SLA’s (including for educational establishments with the FITS Framework), so this is a key area where I feel I will be able to improve upon.

As I mentioned earlier, I am so very glad that I am not here to make friends, and although now only working through my second day, know that hard times are ahead in the not so distant future. I have another meeting this afternoon with a few advertising specialists. Quite what this has to do with my role and how much use it is going to be to me I will wait and see.

Well it’s day one of my new contract, and I have been presented with a Dell Inspiron 1750. This is used, not as an example of the amazing technology I get to have experience with, but one of exactly how much of a challenge I believe I will soon be facing. The laptop is reflective of the current procurement procedures and management, and hence, exactly why I have been bought in to advise the IT Services department on their decisions, management, and operational procedures.

Let’s start with a quick overview of the laptop, before we get into the business trivialities it presents. It is the first laptop with a 17” screen that I have ever spent any real time with, and as predicted, it is far too big. It’s perfect for home use and if you never plan to take it anywhere further than to the other side of your desk. For corporate use, the benefit of the extra screen size is far outweighed by increased size, weight, and decreased battery life and portability. I can see this machine either staying at my desk in London, or at home. I plan to continue traveling with either my 15” MacBook Pro, or even my smaller 12.1” Sony Vaio.

Now down to the heart of the matter. The Inspiron is a strange choice to have made for a large scale corporate network, regardless of how big the screen is. Dell does a fantastic line in business machines (with the less aesthetically pleasing, but fantastic to use Precision and Latitude range). This would be where my money would have gone if buying a Dell laptop for a business environment. The strange purchasing decisions evidently did not stop here either, with the lower end of the range being bought (coming pre-installed with Windows Vista Home Edition). Not only did whoever put the order in, pay extra to have Windows Vista installed, rather than Windows 7, but having the Home Edition of an operating system will all but stop the laptop interacting with the company network correctly. The first thing I did was make my life easier, by installing my copy of Windows 7, and joining the company domain.

The exact thinking that must have gone into this purchase mystified and intrigued me, so I did a little bit of investigation. The results of my investigations were not quite what I was expecting them to be. The company is currently running with a Windows Server 2003 based infrastructure. I knew this part already, as one of the things I am here to oversee and project manage is the transition to a Windows Server 2008 based system.  However, some of the IT Management have been arguing that because 2003 cannot properly support Windows 7 as a member of a domain (which it can; but that’s another matter), there was no point in bringing any of the new mobile equipment onto the network. For a start, even if this was to be correct, why pay extra for an antiquated operating system? And secondly, a network incapable of properly supporting Windows 7, will usually be in a similar state for Vista as well.

I can see that the next 18 months is going to be a very interesting and time consuming experience. I’m sure that I am going to deeply upset a few people very quickly indeed – things need sorting, and soon.