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.

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. :-)

It has been quite a while that i was presenting at a conference. February 2009 at the PMI Congress in Kuala Lumpur. Now this years first presentation is about a chapter in my new book ‘Kompendium fuer ITIL V3 Projekte‘ released as the 2nd edition in January 2010.
Within this book we are talking about a model that we have identified and developed to visualise complexity, put the complexity into context and be able to adapt measures that help you in your day to day life as a project manager.
How ever, I will talk about this Model in a future Blog Post. At this point in time I would like to refer to the video taken and the slides presented. Please see below and feel free to comment on the model and the approach itself.
To do that you need to be capable in understanding German as a language.

And here are the slides:

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.

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.

I am just wondering, what has changed in the recent past in project management and what has been really new? To be honest, not much.

In the last 2 years I have visited a couple of project management conferences and I have presented on some, I have facilitated workshops, chaired whole conferences and gave presentations on several topics. What I have realized, especially in the break out sessions that we talk stuff over and over … and over. We dig deaply into Risk Management, Communication Management, Stakeholder Management, Quality Management and all other interesting topics around our micro cosmos. But really new stuff … I have’nt seen it.

OK, you might say … Agile … ! Yes, but isnt agile just a rapid waterfall with a different terminology?

OK, you might say … Web 2.0 … ! Yes, it has changed and will change the way how we communicate among teams, especially in a global and outsourced world. But is this anything new to Project Management?

Even PMI shows with their new credential programs, that they are going ‘more detail’. The PMI Risk Management Specialist, The PMI Scheduling Professional and more to come. The techniques and the terminology are enhanced but is there anything new to it?

Unfortunately a project is a project is a project. And project management compared to whats happening in the web 2010 and the dynamic thats happening in that field might look very boaring from the outside.

How ever, I am glad that there are projects! Which are not boaring at all, as every project is different and has it’s own challenges.

So lets do projects.

I just recently learned from Scoble (Famous Blogger in the western hemisphere) that Twitter has introduced Lists. I havent been a big fan of Twitter … yet. But now with this feature it covinced even me to join and to give it a try.

Twitter is not just about following people and yelling out the information that you just had a sandwich and waiting that people start following you. The question how smart they need to be or how much time the must have to follow you to understand when you have had your sandwich.

But there are are really smart people out there twittering about great news and fantastic stuff thay you might never had heard of or way to late, ‘wenn der Zug abgefahren ist’. To follow these guys is smart. Putting them into a list for a specific topic e.g. Project Management. And then, even smarter, to put them on your blog and pimp your blog in that way.

On the right sidebar you can see the new widget that you can customize yourself in twitter. In this list I have added some people that are ‘big’ in project management or in a peer area. They have something to say. They will point you in new directions. And sometimes they might even tell you that they have had a great tasty sandwich. I will increas the list overtime to give all of us the opportunity to learn more faster.

Inspired by my visit to McGills Bookstore in Brisbane CBD as well as some other website I looked at today and by finding out about Amazons aStore Program I integrated a Bookstore into the Blog.

Structured by different Categories

• Project Management
• Program Management
• Portfolio Management
• PMP / CAPM / PgMP
• Prince 2
• Management
• Case Studies
• Leadership
• Paragliding / Hanggliding
• Trekking / Outdoor
• !!! Good Stuff !!!

I identified the most relevant books in each of the areas within the amazing Amazon selection and assortment.

I will extend this area over time. So once I spoke about a great book that i found, you will also find it in the bookstore. I also added some of books / categories of my private interest, like trekking, long distance hiking and paragliding. The majority of the books is about the project land, how ever other great sources and books you will find in the “!!! Good Stuff !!!” section.

So keep on browsing.