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.

Just would like to introduce a new blog to you.

A friend of ours, Margot Tesch, and a former colleaque has applied a change to her life more than a year ago. She swapped her worklife from a well paid consultant job, working for enterprises in Brisbane, to farm lady. Working with her lovely husband Chris on their farm, about 3 hours south west from Brisbane.
Recently they have suffered from the rain that did’nt fall and from the cows that died by trying to drink.
On the blog you find their stories. Great reading and keeps us connected.

To all of you out there, where ever you are. With a lovely picture from my daughter.

Not that more and more storms will hit Queensland but slowing economy and the d-word might already or will have an impact on you. Pat Weaver, the owner of Mosaic Project Service and Co-Author of Mosaic Projects Blog put a great post together how to “Survive the credit crunch”.

Providing ideas and thoughts around specific areas like Unemployment, Cash Flow, Keeping a Job and Marketing, you might find some tips that will help you to stay ahead of the game.

However, after more than 20 years running SMEs (small to medium enterprises) I definitely feel the doom and gloom in the press is greatly exaggerated. To a very great extent, it’s when the going gets tough, the tough get going! Not to build empires, but to position themselves for the inevitable upswing.

Read the full post here.

I wrote a lot about the “Presentation Zen” approach in former posts. My Keynote at the IQPC Project Risk Management conference earlier this year was based on that approach. Now Garr Reynolds the Author of that book “Presentation Zen” and Presentation Guru (at least perceived like that on the audience and by his follower) offers a free webinar on that topic.

On Monday, December 15 I will be giving a free live webcast for Safari Books Online. The time is 2:00pm on the west coast of the US, 5:00pm on the east coast. (This will be Tuesday, December 16 at 7:00am for me here in Japan.) Wherever you are around the world I hope you can join live as there will be a chance to ask questions.

So what does this mean for us Aussies:

• Brisbane: Tuesday, December 16, at 08am in the morning
• Sydney: Tuesday, December 16, at 09am in the morning
• Adelaide: Tuesday, December 16, at 0830am in the morning
• Canberra: Tuesday, December 16, at 09am in the morning
• Perth: Tuesday, December 16, at 07am in the morning

Garr will structure the presentation in a different way, he will talk about How to Think Like a Designer (and why it matters).

The applications of the items I discuss will focus on presentations, particularly presentations that are given with the aid of slideware, but the ideas can be applied to other types of presentations and even other types of disciplines such as web design and professional communications of all types.

So go and have a look, learn and read the full article here.

Accenture published another interesting article how to lead and manage change in a Multi-polar world.

What do they mean with that? Lets see!

Accenture is talking about a company in Brazil that was expanding their business model from producing just iron ore  into nickel, copper and coal. And in doing that acquired assests in Australia, Canada and China to increase and strengthen their competitive position.

Based on this example, as the company’s business became global because of their growth strategy to describe the critical success factors to lead and manage a company  effectively through that change.

The stunning emergence of a developing market multinational like Vale (the company used in the example) is possible only in a multi-polar world—one in which the flow of innovation, talent and capital is truly global and no respecter of political boundaries. It’s a world with astounding possibilities, to be sure, but astounding risks and pitfalls as well. Executive leadership will be challenged more than ever to manage the elements of organizational change now that companies can reach further, bring together more people and cultures, and serve more customers at almost every point of the compass.

As we as project managers sometimes are the executive power to put the strategy in place based on projects and programs that are delivered we need to be integral part of that leadership and managing approach.

So go and read the full article here to understand their investigated principles.

via Mail

Karine Simard, an author on a Project Management Blog, called PMstudent.com,created an excel sheet to highlight the input and output parameters on each process within each of the 9 Process Groups and has released it on the internet.

One Commenter mentioned that it would be usefull to add the Tools and Techniques and that it would help to flowchart the inputs and outputs using MindMap or Visio.

How ever, when I passed my PMP exam around 3 years ago the table based approach helped a lot to understand the principal and to get it into my head.

via PMstudent.com

Getting known to Kathleen Kuryl from the Tasmanian Government has been a pleasure and very enlightened as she has introduced to us several processes and methodologies applied in her area.

Today I have received notification that a new “Outcome Realisation Kit” has been released on their website.

In there view a Outcome Realisation is used to 

support the organisational change management process required for effective utilisation of the agreed project outputs in the business unit(s). It assists in ensuring the achievement of the project outcomes described in the Project Business Plan.

So don’t get confused that Outcome Realisation is like Benefit Realisation. In their sense its more about the transition of project deliveries in to day to day operations, how to manage organisational change coming with it as well how this transition is taking place.

So, the purpose is highlighted as follows:

• the final stages of the project are managed in a satisfactory manner;
• the transition to maintenance/operational mode is managed appropriately;
• the utilisation of the project’s outputs are linked to the planned project outcomes;
• the success of the project’s outputs is assessed and corrective action performed if required;
• ongoing ownership of the project outputs and any maintenance requirements are confirmed; and
• the planned project outcomes are wholly achieved, or achieved to a significant extent, prior to formal project closure.

Just look at all the great resources they have released in a very structured way. The kit includes the following

• Resources for outcome realisation
• Example project documentation and a case study
• Presentations from related better practice forums
• Links to other useful websites.