Mit diesem Titel, Reif für die Insel, wurde ich im Juni diesen Jahres von der Universität Graz auf eine Podiumsdiskussion eingeladen.
Eine spannende Zusammensetzung der Diskussionsteilnehmer ließ einen tollen Abend erwarten.

• Bestseller-Autorin Corinne Hofmann, einem Millionenpublikum als „Die weiße Massai“ bekannt,
• Uni-Psychologe Paul Jimenez,
• Erfolgsschriftsteller und Weltenbummler FRANZOBEL,
• Albert Holzknecht, Studierendenseelsorger der KHG Graz,
• Der Outdoor- und Projekt Management Enthusiast Torsten J. Koerting (ja, das bin ich)

und durch den Abend führte

• Moderatorin Bettina Zajac-Thelen vom ORF Steiermark.

Angehalten war ich nun eine 10-15 minütige Einstimmung auf den Abend und das Thema zu geben.
Das Video und die verwandten Slides weiter unten.
Wollte ich es nicht missen meiner Tochter wie versprochen eine Freude zu machen und alle Besucher dazu zu bewegen in die Kamera zu winken.
Was mir auch gelang.

Der Raum, professionell gestaltet, war gut gefüllt und um so mehr Freude machte es die einstimmenden Worte zu sprechen. Aber seht selbst:

Und hier die Slides:

Spass hat’s gemacht und danke für die Einladung.

Eine Rückbetrachtung und einige Bilder findet ihr hier.

A colleague of mine just presented at the next 2011 conference held in Berlin in May 2011, hosted by SinnerSchrader.
Jochen Adler, a Business Analyst, and a passionate speaker is talking about the challenges and options for global players to use Social Media internally.
By looking at Deutsche Bank AG, one of the biggest advisory banks in the world, he is first of all asking the question, why is it so hard and difficult to engage and what are the roadblocks to make micro blogging a success.

First of all, teamwork cant be done as it has been done in the past due to vitality and being a global organisation.

It’s hard to raise awareness and get connected with the co workers especially in global line organisations or large size projects.

Micro blogging can solve this issues, by raising the question “What are you working on ?” instead of Twitter asking “Whats happening ?”

So what are the current stats of Deutsche Bank’s micro blogging service ‘The Wire’ as of may 2011.
There are 7.713 Users on the platform, 4.324 of those have posted at least one update and by average around 750 posts are published on a business day.

A special hashtag (#Wirewin) has evolved to recognise a good answer to a specific question.

So what are the roadblocks to make micro blogging a success in a global organisation.

1) casual vs. work: There is professional reputation to loose.
2) US vs. Germany: Cultural differences between countries and various levels of adoption.
3) Bosses Blogging: Employees are checking whether their bosses are blogging and are looking for guidance whether blogging can be perceived as a time waster. If the boss blogs, employees will blog too.
4) Regulation: information provisioning is regulated and the sender has the responsibility to decide.

What are the possibilities and for the future.
Micro blogging has a great potential to change the way we work as it becomes the memory of the organisation.
And if all of your platforms  are able to tweet as you work with them (bug fixed -> tweet; document uploaded -> tweet; answer a question -> tweet aso.)

Bottom Line:
Its hard to establish a micro blogging service, how ever, it can be done, and if you are successful a better sharing and communication culture can be established with great possibilities to generate.

What experiences did you make in your organisation?

It has been now 7 seven days since I returned from this Years PM Forum 2010 hosted and organized by the GPM (Gesellschaft fuer Projekt Management).

There have been some views shared on the internet already:

• Andreas Heilwagen shared his view and gives advice how to prepare for a conference (I liked his red hat)
• Susanne Bartel shared her view on the conference and reflecting on my presentation (Thanks Susanne)

Looking back its has been a great experience where not much can be enhanced. So here is my view

1) Great Keynotes

Just to give you a view examples

• Matthias Horx - Trend und Zukunftsforscher
  Key message: There is a better future after a crisis
• Volker Doekel - Project Manager for the A380 Project at Lufthansa
  Key message: More communication, less tools
• Friedrich Fuehr - Founder of the DESERTEC Foundation
  Key Message: Have a vision and be the change you want to see
• Tom De Marco (definitely another highlight) - author of “Der Termin” - “The Deadline”
  Key Message: Systems became to complex to handle
• Christian Gansch - Vom Solo zur Sinfonie
  Key message: Everybody plays an important part in a project

Just these keynotes have been worth coming to this event

2) Good exibition

Many companies have participated and have been exposed to around 900 visitors.

Definitely a great side activity and creating a creative environment for all the participants.

The food was served close to the exibition and therefore may people hang around there.

3) The speaches and presentations

It’s like with every conference. There are very good speakers, there are good speakers and there are average speakers. At this years PM Forum 2010 there was a good balance. If you were lucky picking the right presentation you could have seen quite some good presentations.

The ones I was impressed by, were the following:

• Wolfram Mueller - Great speech about his well known approach about Critical Chain Projekt Management. Based on a buffer he is adding to the project he is able to manage the portfolio and resources effectively.
• Thomas Roellecke - Talking about opportunities, threats and risks in international projects with international teams. The slides also worked like an abstract. So if you want to read through the 18 items addressed, check out the slides on the PM Forum page (as a participant your able to download them)
• Dr. Lorenz Schneider - Great presentation about the challenges by being responsible building the Shanghai Formula 1 Circuit. Freat pictures, and damm, this guy got experience. Make sure you read his abstract in the conference book.
• Tabita Armbrecht and Monika Ulmer - they gave a great insight in Project Management career development at a large health insurance company in Germany. Great stuff to develop the talent from the inside.

4) Overall

Great event, definitely worthwhile attending

The only thing from my side that was missing.

Please record the presentations and publish them as video podcasts on itunes and on your website. Would have been a great value add. (Spend less money on food and more on recording and documenting.

Next year I will be there.

One day in Berlin just to visit the Entrepreneurship Summit 2010.

A special event which took place in 2009 already, as an initiative by the Stfitung Entrepreneurship. The Key member of that foundation is Prof. Dr. Faltin, the author of the book “Kopf schlaegt Kapital“. One of the bestellers at amazon for the last years. He is fostering the idea to work on a business model which is designed by using components that you as the entrepreneur do not have to build but put them together in a way that they work from start to finish. Almost none of the activites relevant to deliver a product to the customer is being performed by you or your company but suppliers delivering specific parts of the supply chain. The benefit of that method is, that you as the founder are focusing on the horizon and the market to be able to adapt your business accordingly. A very interesting approach that has been proven by many entrepreneurs already. The examples often used are Teekampagne (delivering a world-class tee, darjeeling, to customers in bigger packages) and Ratiodrink (delivering juice concentrate to customers in bigger packages) and eBuero (delivering secretary and buero services to companies that are to small to engage them on their own).

After reading his book I was fascinated about that idea, I would have paid 1.000 Euros to attend a workshop just on that topic. How ever, looking at his website I saw the invite for this years summit for 35 Euros for early birds. So I caught the worm and with a friend of mine we travelled to Berlin to the Freie Universitaet with about 1.000 others and got inspired.

Some key presentations have been held. The best one probably from Alex Osterwald, the author of the Book “Business Model Generation”, not another generation beside ‘Generation Y’ but a way to create and change business modells. A fantastic presentation (presentation zen style) and 100 slides he had to squeeze into 20 minutes. Well done Alex. and a great way to explain your way of thinking. Thanks.

The biggest surprise to me was ‘Nena’, speaking about her private school she founded with her husband and two more friends about 3 years ago.

To summarize: Great event, great crowds, creative environment and great impulses by the presentations and workshops. Go for it, and spread the word. And if just 10 ideas make it successful to the market it was worthwhile (out of 100 ideas, 99 fail = 1.000 participants = 10 ideas that will be successful).

During the summit i recorded some pictures and video and during my idle time on the train I created a Video with iMovie on my iPhone4. Its impressive what can be done on a phone within 30 to 60 minutes. Unbelievable. So check it out.

Have a look at the model, the presentation and the slides used. Beside that the book is on sale at amazon for an outstanding 14.90 Euro.

The presentation on Slideshare:

In a project sometimes it might feel that your are flying with almost max G-Force and you are getting dizzy because of whatever situation and reason:
Close to go live the momentum accelerates and everybody is spinning like hell to make it.
or
In the middle of a project you have to go back from red and find mitigation measures and trying to juggle everything.
or
The team building exercises are so successful that you team feels like an unorganized ants hill
and there are many more situations you might feel dizzy
like when you forgot to drink throughout the day because you are so busy.
So here is a simulator (G-Force Trainer) to make sure you are prepared for those kind of situation and fit enough to not pass out. This simulator can be tested at Sky Club Austria in Austria close to Schladming.

Thanks Walter, for pointing this out to me and make it happen.

We have just introduced a project symnbol for the project I am working on. Several releases following another, a software project based on the water fall and SDLC (Software Development Life Cycle) principal.

To show the complexity we are dealing with in our release and what the following releases have to deal with, we have chosen the Rubik’s Cube. But not the 3×3x3 Rubik’s but the 2×2x2, which is a pretty simple one, representing the functionality we have to put in place. The following releases have to build upon of us and are embedding more complex datamodels and functionality that has to integrate with various subsystems. So the following phases each get a layer more. As the most complex cube is the 7×7x7 and we have more releases than that, we had to go for even more complex models up to the 12 sided 5×5x5 Gigamix which is currently the most complex one we found.

How ever, you could argue that a Rubik’s Cube is not complex just complicated, it is a great symbol to raise awareness to team about the beast we are dealing with.

As there are various options and variations of the Rubik’s Cube approach (see the picture below, thanks to Gerwin Sturm from Scarygami) it has great potential for many releases to come.

What kind of project symbols are you using in your projects?

After being accepted for the PMforum conference (organized by GPM) later this year in Berlin (26th to 27th of October) I got asked by the organizers whether I would be willing to participate in a video to talk 10 minutes about my presentation. After accepting that, Andreas Heilwagen (Projekt Management Beratung) , one of the visible  Project Managers throughout Germany and beyond, contacted me to discuss the details.

After providing the details to him and some prior chats we had a one hour session recording the talk on skype. See the outcome below or on PM 10 Minutes.

What is the Polygon:

• A model to identify and visualize complexity of process projects
• A model to inherit the risk resulting out of the complexity
• A model to identify active mitigation measures to minimize the risk

All the details please find in the video as well as in the new book on that topic to be released soon.

… or to any other telephone conference you are facilitating.

What a hullarious video. A situation I face every day. What I do…. I just ignore the late arrivals. Why should the early ones suffer from the late ones. And sometimes I welcome them with the words. “Thanks for joining” or “Thanks for making it”. A little irony is allowed and usually they get the message. Of course to be allowed to do it, you should provide a good example and be on time your self.

Enjoy:

Another great example of a situation we always face, especially here in Germany. It’s so true. To formulate it in the way of a Chinese saying:”Each should sweep the snow from before his own door and not worry about the frost on his neighbour’s roof.”

In a project there sometimes are more managers than operational workers not just looking but working on certain deliverables and everybodies wonders why nothing is getting done or least not in the required time frame.

This picture tells the story

But read the story yourself.

We are all sitting in the same Boat / Wir sitzen alle in einem Boot

Vor einiger Zeit verabredete eine deutsche Firma ein jährliches Wettrudern gegen eine japanische Firma, das mit einem Achter auf dem Rhein ausgetragen werden sollte.

Beide Mannschaften trainierten lange und hart, um ihre höchste Leistungsstufe zu erreichen. Als der große Tag kam, waren beide Mannschaften topfit, doch die Japaner gewannen mit einem Vorsprung von einem Kilometer. Nach dieser Niederlage war das deutsche Team sehr betroffen, und die Moral war auf dem Tiefpunkt. Das obere Management entschied, daß der Grund für diese vernichtende Niederlage unbedingt herausgefunden werden mußte.  Ein Projekt-Team wurde eingesetzt, um das Problem zu untersuchen und um geeignete Abhilfemaßnahmen zu empfehlen. Nach langen Untersuchungen fand man heraus, daß bei den Japanern sieben Leute ruderten und ein Mann steuerte, während im deutschen Team ein Mann ruderte und sieben steuerten.

Das obere Management engagierte sofort eine Beraterfirma, die eine Studie über die Struktur des deutschen Teams anfertigen sollte. Nach einigen Monaten und beträchtlichen Kosten kamen die Berater zu dem Schluß, daß zu viele Leute steuerten und zu wenige ruderten. Um einer weiteren Niederlage gegen die Japaner vorzubeugen, wurde die Teamstruktur geändert. Es gab jetzt vier Steuerleute, zwei Obersteuerleute, einen Steuerdirektor und einen Ruderer.

Außerdem wurde ein Leistungsbewertungssystem eingeführt, um dem Ruderer mehr Ansporn zu geben. “Wir müssen seinen Aufgabenbereich erweitern und ihm mehr Verantwortung geben”. Im nächsten Jahr gewannen die Japaner mit einem Vorsprung von zwei Kilometern.

Das Management entließ den Ruderer wegen schlechter Leistungen, verkaufte die Ruder und stoppte alle Investitionen für ein neues Boot. Der Beratungsfirma wurde ein Lob ausgesprochen und das eingesparte Geld wurde dem oberen Management ausgezahlt.

So what’s the moral of that story. Always look after your team structure and make sure you have the right amount of people to do the work. :-)