In projects we often to conclusions, by unconsciously making incorrect inferences based on the facts given. Making implicit information given to explicit facts.

Especially when it comes to Business Analysis and Testing this skill is essential. For these roles you need people that are making the correct inferences without any implicit assumptions that are not explicitly been given.

What I do, during the selection process I give them a little test. The test is called ‘The Uncritical Inference Test’ and was invented by William V. Haney (if I am informed correctly).

This test tries to show how we jump to conclusions, by unconsciously making incorrect inferences
based on the facts given. It will also test the ability to evaluate accurately.

The test follows these steps:

1. You read a story in which you should treat all the information in the story as true and
   accurate.
2. You need to read the statements and work out whether you find them: True, False or unsure.
   True = A definitely True statement about the information given in the story.
   False = A definitely False statement about the information given in the story.
   Unsure =  A statement that could be true or false but based on the information in the story, you
   cannot tell which, for certain. So you are unsure to some degree.
3. Once you have answered a question, please do not go back and change the answer once you see
   later questions.
4. Note: There is no time limit on this test and you may refer back to the story as often as you like.

Here is a sample test (you can find many more on the internet) to get the idea:

Story:

A white van parked in the drive of 70 Higg’s Road has “Ruddenklau Electrical Nelson Ltd” painted on the side of it in large red letters.

Statements

1. The colour of the van parked in the drive of 70 Higg’s Road is white.
2. There are no red letters painted on the side of this van.
3. An electrical appliance has broken down at 70 Higg’s Road
4. The van belongs to Mr Ruddenklau.

This test its pretty simple, but as I said, on the internet you find many more and far more complex story and statement combinations.

In assessment centre for the above mentioned roles, we used this concept a couple of times and it was great to see the difference between the applicants. The ones you found not to bad during the interview failed big time in that test and others that went through the interview quite OK have been outstanding during that test. Of course its no the only criteria you should make your selection on, but its one important item by finding the right people for the job.

What kind of tests or methods do you use to prove the inference capability?

About one and a half years back I managed a project in Australia for Virgin Blue. A vendor selection had to be undertaken and a tender process was kicked off. The objective of that project was to identify the vendor who delivers the best fit for purpose software system to replace the 8 year old legacy system managing most of the operations of that airline.

The project was staffed, executed and delivered its objective and a vendor was chosen at the end. How ever, about 50 people have been involved in that selection process and a team got formed like in any other project. A great team that went through tough times and a great experience overall.

So what I was always thinking in my career, to build a board game after the project got delivered, where all the funny moments, challenges and great achievements are incorporated. Situations like:

• The project manager misses his status meeting again. The stakeholders are upset - Go 2 steps back.
• Your team worked the whole night to meet the milestone - Go 3 steps forward.
  

So I thought about using the ‘Snake and Ladder’ Game and enhanced it with actions cards. Built a theme around it with the companies identity, poshed it up to make it look nice, thought about action cards and the rules of the game and put all this in powerpoint to print it on A3 and as PDF. A process that took me weeks at that time. So her is the result, which you can download by clicking here (PDF) or on the picture (PDF):

Virgin Blue Board Game

I think its a great way to create something that will remembered by every team member. We still play this game today and can’t stop laughing about the situations we went through.

I sent this game via email to my team mates, it got leaked to the press, the intention misinterpreted  and my name was all over the place in Australia. But that’s a different story.

So my final advice: Make sure that the companies culture is ready for it and your bud is not being kicked.

Currently I am preparing a presentation for this years interPM conference in Glashuetten (small little town close to Frankfurt). The topic is something about Risk / Complexity and how to identify, measure, manage and communicate it.

How ever, as I perceive, Germany is still a little behind using real time social media as part of their events like conferences. You do not see many people in the audience with a Laptop, iPhone or other devices to real time blog or tweet (using twitter) about the presentation or event. There are some geeks out there doing this. Thomas Witt (@thomas_witt, blog at www.thomas-witt.com) is one of them as he recently tweeted from the TEDx event in Berlin (#TEDxBerlin).

So I am thinking of making twitter in integral part of my presentation and my slides. What I am thinking of is using that kind of approach and functionality for …

• Receive feedback from the audience based on a predefined hashtag
• Real time voting and polls
• Auto Twitter the slide and notes you are currently presenting on

All this of course is dependent on three things …

• Public WiFi or LAN in the room and Laptop connected to it
• Critical Number of people in the room with a mobile device like Laptop, iPhone, RIM and others
• and of course the Plug-ins for Powerpoint

I can’t really influence the first two. Hope is my only method :-) How ever, the last bullet I am able to influence and therefore I was looking for tools and plug-ins to be able to make that functionality part of my presentation. So I stumbled upon the plug-ins from Timo Elliot, an evangelist for SAP. He has developed some pretty neat tools and Shockwave Plug-Ins for Powerpoint that allow you to exactly to do what I was looking for.

1) Receive feedback from the audience based on a predefined hashtag

The plug-in provides the capability to provide real time tweets based on hash tags (#) and usernames (@), you can configure the format (bubbles or boxes), the refresh rate in seconds, special custom feeds (great for search terms outside the average hash tag approach and you can manual refresh the page.

So if you introduce a specific hash tag at the beginning of your presentation (eg. #TKOinterPM, make sure you make it shorter than I just did) and let people tweet during your presentation you can show the audience what the audience has tweeted about your presentation.

That’s how the page could look like (used the #pmot hashtag for ‘Project Managers on Twitter’)

2) Real time voting and polls

You can ask specific questions and have people vote for one or the other answer. If you really want to have your ass kicked ask how the audience liked your presentation. It could go from ‘lame’ via ‘average’ to ‘autostanding’ or whatever you choose. Here is how it works:

Choose a hashtag for the voting like #voteTJKinterPM and than ask the audience to put a number up in front their tweet representing the vote. Like ‘1 i really like your presentation #voteTJKinterPM’ or ‘1 #voteTJKinterPM’. Wait a couple of seconds depending on the internet speed and show up the slides with the results.

Here is how the result could look like:

3) Auto Twitter the slide and notes you are currently presenting on

If you want to tweet life updates of your presentation, you just need to put <twitter> and </twitter> in your notes page before and after the text you want to be tweeted on twitter. This should be either a small summary of your page or the key facts. You can configure that functionality by connecting to your twitter account and provide the hash tag you want to be connected with your tweets. That allows you to use different hash tags for different presentations with the same slides.

Here is how the configuration screen looks like:

Summary

What a fantastic way to interact with your audience and use the real time social media functionality that changed our world of communication and interaction with others in the recent past. What i explained in this post is one way how YOU could enhance this ‘Game Changer’ to enhance your way of communicating with your audience. Go ahead and try.

Downloads and further information (Thanks to Timo Elliot):

• More detailed Instructions you can find here.
• The Powerpoint Plug-in can be downloaded here.

What do you think? How will these options enhance your way of communication and interaction with your audience? Please comment !

Merry Christmas to everyone.
And to all of you out there a fantastic picture by my daughter.

Have a healthy and successful year 2010. Looking forward to inspiring conversations.
Keep it up and thanks for what has been 2009 - so far.

What a great idea I have seen today on the web!

Geof Lory explains in his blog post how he used Lego Blocks to build a GANTT Chart to represent in a different way the interdependencies of his project.

GANTT Chart built with Lego

Here are the steps he used to get to the result:

1. Idea was born
2. Quick trip to Legoland
3. Spent 100$
4. Everybody told to use the tools provided and start building
5. Go experimenting
6. No limitations (just restrictions set by the tools provided)

Here are the guidelines / rules used to build the GANTT Chart

1. Bottom Layer (yellow): Time line, every block is a week and date is written on the block
2. Red Layer: Incremental iterations / sprints
3. Green Layer: new functionality being added to production (Release)
4. Other colours: Activities (Design, Development, Testing etc.) are represented
5. People: Different User groups adding to the functionality

What a fantastic way to represent your time line, pieces of work and activities leading to it. And another tool to build a team as everybody is involved to build and maintain it. And beside that, you will build momentum and recognition as you might be the first on using it in your environment.

So go and find a sponsor for the blocks and start building on top of that idea.

I don’t now how upset you have been over the last year, seeing LinkedIn adding more and more functionality, trying to keep up with social media (adding status updates) and real time web (syncing twitter with LinkedIn) and its competitors (adding pictures to profiles). And by doing this, the User Interface got more and more disorganized and ended up to be a clutter.

I used LinkedIn less and less because I couldn’t get use to all the different navigation bars and different ways to navigate around. All the new functionality that had been added ended up somewhere in that huge black hole.

It was time for a redesign. Kevin Bury, the ‘Principal User Experience Designer at LinkedIn, explains in his blog post the reason behind the change

We began the redesign effort several months ago by analysing how people use LinkedIn.  We looked at what features people use the most and pored over several years of data from usability research on the site. Armed with this information we began doing design explorations of how to better organize LinkedIn features, and make them more convenient to find and use.

We factored into this effort additional features we knew were coming. We narrowed down the designs to a few candidates we felt were strong contenders. We then prototyped these designs and had users perform tasks with the prototypes in the usability lab. We went through numerous iterations until we arrived at a design we felt worked the best.  One of the key features of the new design is that it allows much more space for page content – information about you and your professional network.

and the new design elements

A global navigation bar at the top of the page that provides convenient access to all LinkedIn services.

Simplified local navigation within each of the LinkedIn areas (Profile, Contacts, Groups, etc.).

More room available for page content. Less scrolling.

cleaner, less-cluttered look.

The new User Interface is live and I must say after the first look and feel, it ROCKS!. Far easier to navigate through the site and the elements used are more common to what is out there on the web. More room and more space to breath. Thanks

After our new book ‘Kompendium fuer ITIL V3 Projekte‘ has been listed 2 weeks ago and is now available for purchase we already have received a great review, that I would like to share with you on my blog.

Its fantastic to see that our new book (basically its the 2nd edition or 2nd version of our book published in September 2006) already receives great reviews and high marks.

Mark Oliver Stromberg, the one reviewed our book, says ‘Sehr gutes Überblickswerk und ein MUSS für jeden der sich mit der Einführung eines ITSM beschäftigt‘:

Das Kompendium für ITIL V3 Projekte bietet dem Leser einen sehr schnellen und guten Einblick in die Umsetzung von ITIL-Projekten in Unternehmen. Es beinhaltet sehr informative Beschreibungen der einzelnen ITSM-Prozesse und der jeweiligen Projektphasen, die auch “Nicht-Experten” einen schnellen Zugang zu diesem Thema ermöglichen.

Gut gefallen hat mir die Verbindung von Projektmanagement-Ansätzen mit den pragmatischen Hilfsmitteln zur Prozessimplementierung und -optimierung. Das Buch ist Kapitel für Kapitel einheitlich aufgebaut, so dass man in allen Phasen eines Projekts einsteigen kann.

Fazit: Ein hervorragendes und absolut empfehlenswertes Buch!

So thanks to our first reviewer and we are looking forward to see more like this in the near and far future. We have put a lot of effort into this book and we are glad that it pays off. Thanks again.

I have been on twitter for the last 2 weeks.

After a friend of mine said to me, that twitter is a great resource and great articles and pearls are referred to, I started to create an account, loaded the great ‘Tweetie 2′ Application onto my iPhone and gave it a go. I looked for public known PMs within twitter, like the ‘pmstudent‘ or ‘CorneliusFicht‘ aka Cornelius Fichtner and started to build my ‘network’ on Twitter. I started following Project Managers and accounts from Companies. During that time Twitter announced the ‘list’ feature, where you are able to categorize Twitter accounts into lists so that you can build areas of interests. So it started to set-up a list which follows great individuals around project management (you can see it on the right side in my blog; an example for the real time web, where all new tweets are published at the very second they are visible on twitter).

So after two weeks I almost posted 200 tweets, more or less in the area of project management, and I do have around 80 followers. I guess most of the followers are not organic, they follow me because of specific key words I have used in my tweets. Those guys are following a couple of thousand accounts or even more, and I am not sure how you can follow more than appr. 200 people. I would call that information overload.

But the best part are the tweets that I am seeing every day (I check them while I am on the train in the morning and in the evening while going to work and back home; wondering sometimes how I get there as I am fully focused on my iPhone :-) )

Out of all these tweets I am getting I do tag the ones as favourites that are focusing on my key areas of interest like ‘pearls in project management‘, ‘social media and project management‘, ‘How to use agile approaches in your projects‘ and other special topics.

As I have written 2 books in the recent past and another one due to be published in December this year, the next book has been planned and kicked off already which will focus on revolutions in project management, twitter has become a key resource for me. Just look at the fantastic pearls I have identified in the various fields over the last two weeks (abstract) thanks to all the great people I am following.

Perls in Project Management:

1. theplanis : New article: Disaster projects and how to recover them: http://bit.ly/7UAJWF
2. projekt_log : Super Artikel über Festpreisprojekte und Scrum: http://bit.ly/8cqOOQ
3. commsabilities : PMs: practical advice on how to turn projects round using communications http://cli.gs/2QRPj
4. pmstudent :What to Include in Your Project Kickoff Presentation: http://bit.ly/8JWncM #PMOT

Social Media and Project Management:

1. JoachimNiemeier : 12 Adoption Strategies for Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 - http://bit.ly/8HwJgH
2. shim_marom : “Social Media in the work place | quantmleap” ( http://bit.ly/7GY0Pi )
3. tweetmeme : 10 Ways Social Media Will Change In 2010 http://bit.ly/7vKnms

Agile Approaches:

1. zcope : Turning #Storyboards into #Agile #Requirements http://bit.ly/5lYDtp
2. thepmp : Presentation: Principles and Practices of Lean-Agile Software Development http://bit.ly/4th6kj
3. garmahis : The waterfall trap for “agile” projects http://bit.ly/4JlTwi

Specials:

1. garmahis : Nine Awesome iPhone Apps for Business - ReadWriteEnterprise http://bit.ly/4pUwa2
2. chaoskind : Betrachte nicht müßig den Steinhaufen, sondern frage dich, wen du damit bewerfen kannst. (Persisches Sprichwort)
   
3. PhilipGDavis : Tips For Attractive Book Covers http://bit.ly/8egDWJ

Twitter is wonderful and I am looking forward to receive more perls and to contribute to the #pmot network. Thanks to everybody out there.

Yesterday I attended a presentation session, organized by the GPM (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Projekt Management), called “Agiles SW-Projektmangement - Ist Softwareprojektmanagement ohne agile Techniken und Werte noch verantwortbar?”, which basically means weather you can ‘afford’ to do Software Development Projects without using Agile Apporaches. Presented by Dipl.-Ing. Bernd Oestereich, Geschäftsführender Gesellschafter oose Innovative Informatik GmbH, based in Hamburg. The outline says:

Aktuelle Studien zeigen, dass agile Methoden wie Scrum, APM und XP sich immer mehr verbreiten. Ebenso bedienen sich auch viele traditionelle Projektmanager immer systematischer bei den vielen einzelnen Techniken aus dem agilen PM. Was dafür sorgt, dass die Übergänge fließend werden.
Statistiken von Standish, Gartner & Co. in den letzten Jahren zunehmend mehr erfolgreichere SW-Projekte ausweisen, so sind die absoluten Zahlen doch weiterhin unbefriedigend. Als ein entscheidender Unterschied zwischen erfolgreichen und weniger erfolgreichen Projekten wird immer wieder das so genannte agile PM angeführt.
Trotzdem ist Agilität kein Allheilmittel. Eine aktuelle gemeinsame Studie von GPM, PMI und oose zu den Erfolgsfaktoren agiler Projekte belegt, dass weniger die Wahl einer Methode wie Scrum, APM etc. erfolgsentscheidend ist, sondern das richtige Verständnis und die richtige Anwendung weniger ausgewählter Konzepte und Techniken. Welche das sind und vor allem, was das bedeutet, stellt Bernd Oestereich in seinem Vortrag dar.

Bottom Line, you should look at Agile Approaches and decide which one could work in your project, like making small iterations rather than slow motion waterfall and other approaches.

Great presentation with lots of facts. I was sitting in the audience and used a different type to minute that presentation. I used twitter to highlight the key messages. Here is the stream:

1. Attending GPM presentation in Frankfurt on agile software project management. Keen. Will start soon.
2. Interesting study results are presented. Agile vs waterfall - succesful vs unsuccessful.
3. It’s all about applying the right agile technics to the approach you are using for your software project.
4. Iterations are short and sweet. Average 4 weeks and certain technics (planning, retrospective, etc.) are to be applied.
5. Changes are welcome in agile. Requirements are designed, developed and presented to customer. Achievements secured.
6. Milestone vs timebox. Deliver a scope or deliver a timebox (things achieved in a certain timeframe).
7. Project level followed by release level followed by team- and iteration level incl feedback loops and propability questioning.
8. From project target via product features via release features and iteration features to the word order.
9. Now we see an example where agile methods have been applied. Container terminal software project in hamburg.
10. Explaining the apm-timebox-iteration-modell. Wow, what a slide @presentationzen wouldn’t like this one.
11. Question on costs. Agile more expensive but higher quality, higher likelihood to be successful, customer receives what expected.
12. Q&A almost over. Question on who would apply the approaches presented … Small number of hands. How ever, great pres.

Interesting way of floowing a presentation and stepping into a discussions with followers on Twitter. Looking forward to the next session.

The PMBOK has been rewriten and enhanced and published throughout this year.

I have just came across in interesting article that describes all the major changes that have been applied to the 4th edition.

So what has changed (read the article for further information):

1. Consistency around the terminology and concepts used
2. clear and standardized writing style
3. Some minor process changes
4. Consideration of new PM practices (Agile etc.)

A great step forward but nothing really new.

As I have written in my past post, the methods and tools around Project Management do not change much. We are vertically rather than expanding the horizon. Agile gave some new momentum to the industry and new books have been published around this topic and you see more and more presentations on conferences. But emagine, after some years you would need to rewrite was has happened on the Internet, I am sure that book would have for more major changes than a book about project management.

As said, I am glad that there are projects as they make our lives.