If it might be a little quiet here for the next 2 weeks, I will be overseas (I am already) until the 19th of November, how ever, will look into whats happening in the Project Management Space in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia and beyond. Do not break anything and I will see you shortly.

If you would like to reach me while I am in Germany and may be want to catch up in Frankfurt or surrounding area, send me an email to torsten.koerting at gmail.com or call me on +49 173 3082185. Until then, enjoy some great music (just whistled by my little daughter):

As the market is softening significantly and market rates are dropping, there might be room to learn.

Just talked about ‘Tips on Feedback’ based on email by Dominc Siow, the author is providing a 2 day seminar in Brisbane about Leadership and Career Development for Office Professionals.

Leadership and career development for office professionals is a 2-day professional Master Class
designed specifically for office professionals who are eager to excel in their current work and
develop leadership qualities to make a successful transition to more strategic, senior roles in an
organization. It will help you firstly decide if senior management is for you and if it is, help you
create a roadmap, learn the tools and strategies to effectively make the transition to being the
most successful manager and leader you can be.

Dominic will talk about

• How to assess your effectiveness as an office professional?
• Getting clear about your career direction, how that supports your organization and how to put together an action plan to move towards this
• How to work and think like leaders – excel in whatever you do.
• What it takes to make a successful transition to management and leadership
  How to identify and proactively be able to create even more value for your management and other stakeholders
• How to stay on top of multiple demands placed on you by different stakeholders
• How to effectively manage work-life balance and continue to thrive in your career
• How to communicate assertively and effectively to achieve the maximum impact
• How to identify and work effectively with stakeholders with different agendas
• How to influence effectively in the absence of authority, both upwards and downwards
• Understanding what your manager and other stakeholders want, managing expectations and driving to the most effective outcomes
• How to improve your communications and working relationships with your peers, managers and other stakeholders

As I am very much aware about Dominic’s presentation and facilitation techniques and capabilities it sounds like a great seminar. To book go to LearningNetworks.

Just received an interesting email from Dominic Siow one of the great presenters in the Australian Project Land. He also run’s the website www.avantgardelife.com.au. In his email he is providing tips on how to provide and give and receive ‘feedback’.

Dominic mentions that …

… feedback is “the breakfast of champions”. Indeed it is one of the most powerful tools you can use to influence and reinforce change. This can apply to an employee, project stakeholder, child or even a friend!

The key tips are summarized and paraphrased by Dominic out of the Book ‘Top Performance’ by ‘Zig Ziglar’:

TIP #1: Be observant and on the constant look-out for the good in others. Reinforce positive behaviour and changes, however small, immediately. Feedback is most effective when it’s timely.

TIP #2: Offer feedback that is specific and sincere.

TIP #3: Use the “feedback sandwich”.

TIP #4: Criticize the performance, praise the performer.

TIP #5: The most important measure of the effectiveness of your feedback piece is - what emotional state have you left the recipient?

Read Dominic’s weekly distributed tips here.

After ‘Groups’ now ‘Applications’ have arrived at LinkedIn. Offered by other Social Networks like Facebook, LinkedIn has started its own integrated application option. First Steps in that area are integrated applications like Slideshare, Wordpress and Amazon. The focus of these baby steps are articulated in the promotion email:

… it’s a new way to create projects and collaborate, share information, customize your profile, or gain key insights …

First impression looking into these options could be expressed as a very basic but useful integration. Lots of us do publish slides on slideshare.net and the only way to show these to your target audiences is to integrated them in your blog (if you have one) or sending them a link to your slideshare profile or to link to your profile out of LinkedIn. Now there is a more visible option available. Just activate the Slideshare application (full guidance on that could be found here) and link to your slideshare profile. After you have done that your last three slides presentations published on slideshare do show up in your LinkedIn Profile.

The same applies to the Wordpress application. As it would be great to integrate your posts from your blog in LinkedIn and publish your posts there (at least the teasers) and make them aware to your LinkedIn profile visitors. After activating this application the result looks like this.

Finally applications arrived at LinkedIn. In the european market leader they havent arrived yet, but I am sure that the guys at XING.com are waorking on it. How ever, there are more than 5000 applications on Facebook (the innovator in that field) so the offerings to date are just a starting point and it will be fun to watch what is coming up. For now its an optimiyed way to publish your assets (presentations, blog entries etc.) in an easy into your LinkedIn profile and attract your visitors even more.

Never give up, a maxim and principle that applies for Project Management the same way then it applies to Triathlon. Never stop swimming, Never stop pushing on the bike and Never start walking during the run vs. Never stop communicating, Never stop managing, Never stop controlling, Never stop encouraging and motivating your team, Never stop learning from your lessons … and you go on almost forever.

Therefore I had to go through that challenge again, attending and finishing a Triathlon, like I did 12 years ago with the last one I attended. Go through all the training and preparation prior to the event, feel the pain during the event, and go through the emotions after you cross the finish line.

And all this happened yesterday, Noosa Triathlon, an event I have trained for the last 3 month with some ambitious targets to meet.

Rob, a mate of mine that I was training and sharing the same sportive ideals and myself arrived on Saturday with the families, register, rack the bike in the transition zone and spend some time with the family.

Sunday morning at 04:45 the alarm went of and it was just another 2 1/2 hours to the start (07:11am for me and 08:03 for Rob). Getting the gear ready, leaving the house in time, getting into the transition zone, preparing the bike and shoes and other gear that is important to successfully transition from swim to bike to run. The start was getting closer and closer and the focus became stronger and stronger.

Rob’s Wave started around an hour later than mine did so he had to waste some time in between. What he did? I do not know.

06:30am - Start of the Elite team, best Males and Females (two waves)

06:30am to 07:06am - many other waves / starts (different age groups)

07:11am-  TJ, deep water start, the horn went off and the field of about 150 people started full steam towards the first red buoy and around an island, up the canal and back. Fortunately we did a rehearsal on Saturday, one day before the main event, with Dan’s Squad Team, therefore I knew what was ahead of us. Lots of salt water and current towards the end. Had some respect prior to that discipline but felt quite comfortable. Swallowed some water along the way, swam over some pink caps (wave started before us) and struggled to find the way swimming against the sun. The landmark came in sight and I swam until my arms touched the ground (great advice by Dan) and ran out of the water.  27min and 28sec.

07:38am - Finding the bike in the transition zone became a challenge, but it was well marked and the athletes have been guided very well along the way. Another advantage is that my bike is probably one of the tallest and with the Syntace Gripshift bars one of the ones that is quite visible. Found it, sunnies on, helmet on before touching the bike (otherwise you get disqualified), get into the shoes, sucking down a liqid gel for some additional energy and off you run towards the exit. For me it took around a minute, for the elite’s its probably less than 10 seconds.

07:40am - on the bike track, 40 Kilometres through undulating terrain, facing a 3 kilometre hill after 10. I was able to push (for my perception) right from the beginning. However, you get passed by really fast ones, doing 40ks and more by average with their bike. My target was like more than 30k’s per average for the whole distance. After 10Ks I approached the hill, a 14 turn steady wind up through a forest. Not too steep and therefore I was able to overtake a couple of others and maintain 20Ks on average. 14 turns, well marked, because it’s a race track, and another 500 meters until you reach the top (great advice by somebody out of Dan’s Team. Thanks) and from there it’s almost flat with a major downhill area where I made more than 80Ks by average. After 20Ks I sucked another liquid gell and try to push hard against the wind. The transition zone was coming closer as you could hear the commentators. 01hour 18min and 47 sec.

08:57am - back into the transition zone, the challenge I was facing to dismount from the bike quickly by opening the shoes well in advance and hope of the bike after the yellow signs. I did almost fell as I couldn’t get my leg over the saddle. Running into the transition zone barefoot again everybody had to face the challenge to find the spot again, just by the towel everybody puts on the floor to place the gear. Found it, helmet off, get into the shoes, sucked another Gel, drink a drink and off you again facing the 10Ks running.

09:02am- 1K into the run I head one of the commentators say “These are going to be long 10Ks, because yadee yadee yadee” and I thought to myself that these 10Ks will be as long as any other 10Ks. 10Ks are 10Ks are 10Ks if they haven’t changed the metric system overnight. How ever, they could feel far longer and you might need more time. 3 Ks into the run 7Ks to go, I realised that I was able to maintain my pace but it was still hard to get into the rhythm as your heart rate was much higher than usual as I was in the game for than 2 hours already. Luckily they had Kilometre markers on the side and you could measure how you were doing. I had a lot of water and try to stay cool by pouring water over me every K or so. The finish line came closer and closer. However, the last Kilometer was longer for whatever reason. I was running as hard as I could to get below the finish time from Rob last year 02:37:something.

09:47am - going over the finish line was one of the best feelings I had in sportive events for years. The emotions just took over. After all the effort I put in over the last 3 month to finish this event without giving up, without breaststrokes during the swim, by pushing the whole bike track, and not walking during the run. And there I was, 10 Meters behind the finish line. The happiest man. The last Triathlon I did was 12 years ago and I never thought I would do it again. Thanks Rob, for that experience and for talking me into that. 49min and 47sec.

Final Results

TJ, 903 out of 2301 that finished, 39.24%
(Ageclass 35-39),  166 out of 336 that finished, 49.04%

Swim - 27:28 - 746 out of 2301

Bike - 1:18:47 - 1169 out of 2301

Run - 49:47 - 885 out of 2301

Rob, 852 out of 2301 that finished (well done), 37.03%
Ageclass 45 - 49, 64 out of 183 that finished, 34.97%

Swim - 27:39 - 782 out of 2301

Bike - 1:17:11 - 1007 out of 2301

Run - 50:13 - 942 out of 2301

Another VB colleque attended, James Johnson, and he smashed both of us.
Swim: 25:51 - Bike: 01:17:35 - Run: 50:00 - Finish: 02:33:36 (Well Done, James)

Download the final results in CSV format or as PDF format.

Yesterday I had the paid pleasure to attend a Training Course, facilitated by Mosaic Projects by Pat Weaver, talking about “How to develop an effective schedule“.

A one day course from 09am to 04ish with 2 hours of break in between for good networking opportunities, using the facilities from AIM (Australian Institute of Project Management) with a great and addictive Bookstore in the House open to the public.

Pat has contributed to the Practice Standard for Scheduling (Chapter 3 has been written half by him),  issued by the Project Management Institute and as a certified PMP and PMP-SP is a very knowledgeable person in that field.

Pat divides the topic in 5 important steps

• Step 1 - Planning the Planning
• Step 2 - Developing the Baseline Schedule
• Step 3 - Setting Reasonable Objectives
• Step 4 - Maintaining the Plan
• Step 5 - Reviewing & Validating the Schedule

Beside explaining the topic Pat was always referring to valuable content on his website that contributes to the topic explained. More examples are described and shown there and are open to the public.

So we have got exposed to a powerful process, understood that stakeholder management is important throughout the whole lifecycle of the plan, received a copy of “The Practice Standard for Scheduling”, got known to other peers and had the opportunity to shop in the bookstore which many of us took advantage from.

Some more practical examples and case studies (how to facilitate a Planning Workshop, good working examples of good schedules in various formats etc.) that teach you how to apply the process learned about, less basic and fundamentals, less powerpoint but more explanation and highlighting how the process need to be adapted and can be applied in organisations that are less mature would be needed.

As we were just talking about how to present a risk, just found another way how to play around with your risks.

A tool to drag and drop your risks after you have created it within the 4 stages (unassigned, low, medium, high). But that was it. All the other items you would associate with a risk are missing plus what you associate it two. Every Project Management software has this capability today (may be not with the draging feature). Nice try but useless.

via ITprojectGuide

It has been a while back that we looked into the series how to present a risk profile to an audience.

The last time we discussed and looked at the standard way of presenting by the two axes likelihood and consequence. This time its about the “Heat Map“, an approach we have learned from Liam Wallace at the IQPC Project Risk Management Conference.

He uses the following picture to express a risk profile.

Its especially capable to show the level of risk in specific areas (eg. Human Resources, Financials etc.). As the two dimensions are “project” and “area” it can be used if you are managing a Programme of Work or a Portfolio or you are Manager of a PMO.

The key benefits are that you are able to identify areas of common risk in most of the projects.  For Example you have a financial risk in amber or red in most of your projects and all other areas are more or less green. That would clearly show that you have a common problem in the financial area.

You are also able to do the same on a project level. If one project has higher risks in most of the areas and all other projects show more or less green then there might be something wrong with that particular project.

The People attending the conference had very positive feedback on that chart as it is very powerful because of the reasons mentioned above.

Cornelius, just returned from Denver from the PMI Global Congress 2008, is rolling again. He has just released Podcast 106 where he explains how to deal with jerks in your project team (who hasnt had this kind of people in their team and had to call them “your greatest teacher”) and now he is coming back from Denver with a great new episode.

Cornelius Fichter interviewed Brantlee Underhill, she heads up the PMI’s Virtual Communities Project.

In a nutshell, this project aims at creating a unified and centralized infrastructure for all SIG activities. The bold step that the PMI is taking in creating this centralized approach is that the independent SIGs will be dissolved and reintegrated into the PMI itself.

As you can imagine, there are many viewpoints on such a move depending on which side of the fence you are on. Some think it’s a good idea and some don’t.

So, lets hear what Brantlee has to say about this new approach.

How ever, working in an organisation like PMI, whether its the Board or a special interest group, and a web that becomes more and more dominated by cloud computing and colaboration, the way how the chapters and SIGs have to work in nower days (at least here in Australia) could be called the stone age. I just have look into how we have to maintain our Queensland Chapter Website ….

Enjoy the talk and listen to it here or go to the PM Podcast website directly.

Update: Part 2 with a different opinion has just been released by Cornelius with Derry Simmel, who is the PMO SIG’s Vice Chair Membership. Listen to this episode here.

For everybody, like myself, who haven’ t been able to attend the PMI Global Congress in Denver, Hal Macomber who is running the Blog Reforming Project Management and Josh Nankivel running the Blog PM Student, and both members of PMI’s New Media Council are providing their view on the congress.

Hall talks in his post  about the prominent keynote speaker, Colin Powell 

Colin Powell was the keynote speaker on Sunday afternoon for a crowd of 3,000. That followed his Obama endorsement on Meet the Press Sunday morning. The general was there to speak about leadership. He challenged project managers to bring leadership to every project team. He kept our attention with one story after another and his great humor. I counted 4 standing ovations.

Josh touches on the highlights at the congress, for example meeting with Gregory Balestrero, the CEO of PMI

Greg discussed PMI’s strategy going forward and we were able to ask some questions and give some feedback.  I suggested PMI work with thought leaders of new methodologies such as Critical Chain, Lean, SCRUM and other Agile methods, etc.  It sounds like they will be doing some of this with the Virtual Communities (at least with Agile).

From what I am reading on the web and in all various blog articles, it was a great event and shame I couldn’t go. Wouldhave been a long journey from Brisbane to Denver anyway. I might join the one in Kuala Lumpur next year and facilitating a workshop. Will see.