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.

Just returned from the IQPC Project Risk Management Conference with Food for Thought and a Summary on all 4 days that I attended and participated in.



1) Masterclass by Kathleen  Kuryl

A very well conducted and facilitated Workshop by Kathy (President of the Tasmanian AIPM Chapter) and even if she was that nervous that she had to get up at 0530 in the morning you could see a thing of that . We got a lot of insights of the Project Methodology that has been put together by her and her team and is fully available on their website. The session was very much focused on the Risk Management component of the method itself. Kathy printed a lot of material and provided that as a hand out for the participants (overall around 7). The Masterclass was very intimate due to the fact that we just had a small audience like this and Kathy got a very good discussion going which helped us to understand how Risk Management is being applied by other industries. Another perception was that Government and Construction was very well represented in the Masterclass and in the overall conference. 

In the Afternoon we focused on a couple of areas. 

• How to present a risk profile to various audiences like stakeholders, steering group members, team members etc. (will have another post on that soon)?
• How to practical apply Risk Management in you day to day project management work?
• How to facilitate a risk assessment with an immature audience?

Another good point, that was raised, was that Lessons Learnt that you do after a project or a phase / stage has finished should drive and influence future risk assessments. So a two page summary of the outcome of a lessons learnt session was recommended (1. Area of project to get the reader to understand if they run a similiar project, set the context etc.; 2. Circumstances and Situation the project was running in; 3. Scope of project; 4. The Lessons Learnt summary)

2) Two days of conference

11 presentations and two interactive discussions, and each one of them scheduled for 45 minutes, plenty of time and opportunities to network was the structure for these days. Around 50 to 60 participants and everyone of them actively working in the Project Risk Management area, in one or the other role.

The three presentation highlights for me have been

1. Liam Wallace from ASC - about Comprehensive Risk Identification, Analysis and Planning
   Liam came across very knowledgeable and for sure coming out of a mature organisation where Risk Management is enforced and embraced. He has given us practical examples of risk registers, presentation options of risk profiles, their risk appetite and how they change the risk appetite according to the project. The “Heat Map” was definitely a very valuable tool that ASC is using to present risks to board members. He also referred to that how to identify risks constantly and how you can keep that simple. The slides have been great in a way they can be used for further reference, depending on how much he was allowed to put on the CD that was handed out.
    
2. Eddie Stewart from Newcastle City Council - about Applying Project Structure
   Eddie was talking about how Project Management Frameworks and Risk Management Strategies go together and his slides were just great as they provide a great reference to how the Newcastle City Council does Project Management and how they run projects and, most interesting, what projects they are running, which for somebody like me out of the private business environment was quite interesting. From an asset management side of thinks IT people often just think about PCs and Monitors and that such as assets, but for the City Council there are more than 70.000 trees and every tree is treated as an asset with additional information about size and age etc. Make sure you get a hands on the slides as they provide a good point of reference.
    
3. Rob Loader - Analysing the complexity of stakeholder management
   Rob was talking about the difficulties as well as critical success factors around Stakeholder Management in the context of risk management and was referring to the challenges how to understand your stakeholder, why you need to understand them and how. So referring to the question how you can understand a stakeholder that you never get exposed to he gave a couple of examples like waiting at the elevator until he shows up and give him the “elevator pitch” or wait for him at the car park near his car and give him the “car pitch” or just go and constantly ask for 15 minutes of his time. But clear advice was, you need to understand him and do everything to achieve that. His slides are another good point of reference. Clearly visible that Rob has done plenty of presentations in his career.

Regarding the interactive discussions about budget forecasting and software for risk management I dont know whether the delegates got much out of that. Haven’t had and heard much feedback around that area, but at least the crowd was engaged and shared experiences to the audience. Which helped for the networking as you knew whom to talk to about specific topics.

3) The Workshop - How to Identify, Measure and Manage Risk Throughout the Life Cycle of the Poject

We had a couple of cases prepared for this conference plus a short introduction of the Diamond Model based on the book “Reinventing Project Management” by Aaron J. Shenhar and Dov Dvir and how it could be used as tool to start facilitating a risk assessment and to present a risk profile of a project. A great discussion we had, around the model its use and how different industries and their projects are related to the model and how the projects could be mapped with the model. After that we had another very good discussion around how to embed a simple risk process in your day to day work and how to present risks to various audiences and several great ideas got shared between the attendees. Again, a very intimate workshop which was probably the biggest asset as this helped to facilitate a good discussion and sharing of ideas amongst the participants. The area around how to present risks created so many ideas that i need to summarize them later on in a different post.

Bottom Line

I perception is that the concept of a boutique conference style focused on niche topics really works. You find your audience (Gavin Halling for example is selling a risk management tool and he cant get a better audience than this for selling it), you find your peers to talk about issues and getting ideas how to resolve them, you build your network to be able to be more successful in your role and depending on the topics and speakers you might get great content and knowledge you can walk away with. The only downside is, that the conference has a price which some might not be willing to or even cant afford. Thats why we havent seen many people out of IT and other industries beside Construction, Engineering and Government. So here is my advice, if you have your Company paying for it -> GO, if you do not or you cant afford it your self -> PRESENT as you are able to get to the conference for free.

Looking back to the PMOZ 2008 i found another interesting article / post on the web that describes a different experience around the conference.

Pat Byrne from holistech held the following presentations

• The Factors Contributing to Project Success (Presentation and Paper)

and

• Understanding the Complexity of Program Management, Co-authored with Graham Durant-Law (Presentation)

and addresses the Co-Conference approach (PMOZ and SEPG) and describes his experience in the in the following way:

Overall, I think the co-conference is a great idea. But there are a few challenges and none of them detract from the co-conference concept.

One of the challenges I suspect from my chats with a few people at the conference and from my experience at other events, is that it is an easy transition from the software/systems engineering perspective to move into a project management forum, because project management is so much a part of software/systems engineering. But the other way around is problematic. If a project manager has experience in the software, defence or aerospace industries, then software/systems engineering isn’t so foreign. But if you are a project manager in say construction or civil engineering, then going to a software/systems engineering presentation at a conference means you can be confronted with gobbledygook.

and

I suspect that PMOz/SEPG got this balance about right, particularly with some of their joint keynotes. But I also suspect that an offering of “systems engineering basics” for project managers may perhaps be useful - more so than “project management basics” for systems engineers (although I do note there were some interesting workshops suitable for either stream).

Pat is absolutely right, the combination is worth doing, but there have been far to many streams in parallel (7 streams) where the co-conference approach doesnt achieve what Pat is mentioning, you have so many topics and by far cant attend as many as you wish and want. Some times more is less what i mentioned in one of my previous posts. An Pat is referring to that as well with the following recommendation:

Perhaps a worthwhile objective would be to have a single stream for the combined conference for refereed academic papers. This might be accompanied by a properly put together electronic journal published by the combined conference. I have no doubt this would be well received and would assist in that integration of theory and practice so necessary for the professions to progress.

And as he says, may be something to consider for 2009.

via Holistech

So many articles have been published around the iPhone. Hitting the market at June 29th 2007 more than a year has passed. How ever, Australia, always a little different and remote got pleasured July this year. Returning from my long hike in the western US, the first thing after 4 weeks not spending a dime was to get access to an iPohne. Prior to that i was and and still am using a Blackberry provided by my employer around one and a half years ago i was suffering from not having access to my private email and on the weekend if you want to be reached via phone the whole thing was turned on and you never got a real break from work, therefore i made a decision to get one of the new toys as soon they hit the Australian market.

After 2 weeks of heavy usage this is a summary

1) The Phone
Comes with all you need, standard phone capabilities, a poor Camera, wide open display, and an expensive telco contract. The look and feel, especially the feel is outstanding, a must touch gadget. Phone quality is far better than the other device i was using in parallel and a better reception where i life which is because of the provider i have chosen. Wireless LAN which is great to reduce transaction costs and GPS which is great for positioning based services is built in. The iPod and Video capabilities are standard and well know based on the iPod and iPod touch.
Sometimes the speed / responsiveness is not the greatest, it seems that the iPhone has to think before it takes action. What ever happens in the background, it takes some time, some times.

2) Usability
The Usability is outstanding, no doubt about that. My little daughter was able to use the weather and Google Map application instantly, she is browsing through website as she has never done anything different to that. The ‘haptic’ experience is great and the touch screen is one of the first ones where finger movements are recognised and used for application navigation through out. I always refused to change brands as i got more and more scared (must be because of my age) to leave my comfort zone and get used to something different, also my experience trying different devices wasn’t supportive for a change either (I was on Nokia for the last 10 years). But with the iPhone this change was so dam easy.
The only obstacle is the touch screen software based keyboard and if you are fast writer on a blackberry or with T9 on Nokia, this thing is really demoralising. Never found it so hard to type a message. Beside that the iPhone is so slippery in your hands that you basically have to hold with one hand and type by using one finger with the other. Using a blackberry was a faster and more rewarding experience.

3) Standard Features (Phone, Mail, Contacts, Calendar)
The usability of these features / applications varies. The phone capabilities are great, never was so easy to establish a conference amongst different parties, put on the speaker etc. To find the right number while you are listening to your voice mail is a challenge without looking at the phone. Integration into Contact list is like any other phone, but more fun to scroll through. Mailing features have never been so easy to configure and access. Lots of mail accounts all in one application and quickly to configure and access. The mails are pulled via your phone from the email providers you are working with and not pushed as sometimes mentioned in other posts. You are able to configure that pull routine, and according to your battery lasting and information desire but also consider the phone plan you have signed up for as the more frequently you pull the more bytes you spend, you choose between 15 min and an hour or manual. Contacts are easy to access, how ever the response time of the application increases quickly based on numbers of contacts you have. Sometimes the response to your fingertips are around 3 to 5 seconds which is annoying sometimes.To key in new contacts via the iphone is as time consuming as for other phones, but it feels nicer. The calendar is probably the application which is least of fun. Not from accessing and viewing it, but entering an event is just to many fingertips until you have an event captured. This needs improvement.

4) MobileMe
This ist the standard synchronisation application on the web for your mails, contacts and calendar entries. As Apple drives the concept of a closed shop as we see it with the iTunes application for quite some time, the same concept is followed when it comes to synchronisation. There are options built in  to sync it with outlook express, how ever, if you are an internet only person and manage your mails, contacts or emails by Google for example no real synch options are out there. Services are provided but the level of trust needs to be questioned as you have to provide all your passwords to some provider. MobileMe wasn’t the smartest and best launch for Apple, its expensive for services you receive elsewhere for free ($119 for a year), its slow as pages are reloaded when you access the browser or tab, has some strange behaviour and is not the most intuitive and usable application seen so far. Also the capabilities are limited and the integration of these applications are not as well solved as with Google Gmail for example. Currently i have signed up in the free of charge period that will last for an extended period until 15th of December and i have to make a decision by then whether its worth the money and the have improved the functionality and stability.

5) The Apps (iTunes Apps Store)
That’s the killer feature for my opinion. They started of with 500 apps in the iTunes Apps Store and 4 weeks ago there have been over a 1.000 and heaps of them are free of charge. I have never seen a phone in the last 12 years of my phone experience that had so many apps available, increasing daily. Like 2 month ago in Australia you have had to by voice recorder to record something. Today you find a 99c application that does all this. I will have a category and a stream for that where i will introduce Applications for the iPhone that are worth having for a Project Manager.

6) Phone for PMs
I will and must say a strong YES. Not the standard features or the feedback you are getting from your peers and everybody wants to have a scroll, no, its the applications that do the job, and every day there will be more apps to look at that increase the value of that phone and will make it an replaceable device. And that’s what Apple anticipates. How ever, Lets wait for Googles Android, to be release later this year, and several Phone Companies have announced App Stores for Android already, as Google follows the open strategy. Lets see and let the battle begin.

Never had a phone like this, inspiring, addictive feeling and haptic experience plus more than 1.000 applications to choose from. Some glitches and on mobileme some work to do. A companion to love more every day.