TI2011 Spring 2020 – Page 29 – Project Evaluation and Management

Deadline, chapter 10

--Originally published at Project Evaluation and Management Blog

Finally a chapter where Webster is out of Morovia, it’s kind of refreshing to imagine a different scenario in your head when you read. But what for sure is different than any chapter is the proposal from Dr. Jamid, it seems we jumped from management to artificial intelligence, specifically a way to measure hunches.

There is a famous expression in the field of AI (artificial intelligence), and it says “When a solution that seems to require AI is created, then it’s no longer AI”. Somehow this expression is very accurate, as AI is always related to what is impossible, but once you make it possible it means there is a tangible solution, and suddenly AI is nothing more than machine learning, lots of graphs, and lots of ifs, in short, AI becomes the quantification of what didn’t seem possible to make numbers out of.

Life with Covid-19 – How to slay working from home

--Originally published at Project Evaluation and Management Reflections

130 Days

It´s been 130 days now since the first patient was diagnosed with the corona virus in Wuhan, China. With its rapid spread around the world, our everyday lives changed almost instantly, sweeping us off our feet and completely turning around our routines and the things we took for granted until now.
The economy in many countries has come to almost a full stop. A lot of companies are now forced to switch to remote working models to keep the business going at least a bit while at the same time protecting their employees
(everybody who doesn´t really need their employees to come to work should be doing that actually!!).
However, most companies and individuals are poorly prepared for working from home. Essentials like trust, equipment and tech, experience etc. are missing.

People already see this pandemic as the trigger for a fundamental shift in business, changing business models, communication channels and working models alike. So how can we master this shift into working from home as good and especially as fast as possible? How can technology help us make the long-distance (work) relationships actually work?

CBC Spark Radio’s podcast #469: Remote from Toronto this week focuses exactly on this topic. Nora Young and her colleagues talk about working from their kitchen tables while entertaining children, bad internet connections and how to interview guests when you don´t have access to recording studios anymore. During the podcast they are talking to Natalie Nagele, Wildbit CEO and co-founder, a company with employees working remotely from all over the world on a 32-hour week. They also spoke to Shawn D. Long, the dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences of Kennesaw State University, about the informal aspects of remote working such as the hallway chat or

Home Office – The pre pandemic way

--Originally published at TI2011 – DVant Blog

It is the beginning of the day. As usual, I start the day by preparing breakfast and getting ready for work. But this time, I sit down on my desk and start communicating with my coworkers to establish the task due today. This is what millions of people are experiencing in this time of pandemic.... Continue Reading →

Deadline 10 & 11

--Originally published at TI2011 – The Broken Wallflower

Before reading

In the previous chapters we talked about two new different characters one that seems to be a current character, Markov, and one that only appeared to show Mr T about project managemen and how to assure that the projects that he is doing get to their full potential, Dr Rizoli, they were not the most interesting chapters of all but sure they taught us a lot about project manamegent, which of course is the focus of the book, now lets read The Deadline.

Chapter 10

Time has happened since the last chapter apparently Mr T is in Rome because he has been living the life of a project manager, and by that time he actually contacts with a friend to know about the money that the morovians promised for him, that since the first day a big amount of money would be in his account and as they said the money was in its account, by talking to that friend they get to remember a boss of Mr T when he was an employee back in the day, Mr T actually remembered this person because he was actually a really good boss, if an employee remember a boss is either for one of two reasons, that boss was actually extremely great, or it was extremely rude, there is no middle point in here.

As they keep talking his friend actually introduces someone that could be usefull for Mr T, this person names Jamid, they get to meet once they are there, Mr T of course wants to know about what Jamid has done for project management because eventhough Mr T is not the most expert of all, he is going to keep learning until he becomes the best, Jamid tries to explain Mr T that usually the guts

Deadline 8 & 9

--Originally published at TI2011 – The Broken Wallflower

Before reading

The last chapter that we talked about The Deadline it actually ended in a very instrctural way.
the chapter focusen on teaching us how to recognize when a interviewer really cares about the team they are into, instead of just working and developing, the main focus of the previous chapters were to realize that creating a loving work eviroment is actually more important than just having the best developers, lets see what the book has for us now.

Chapter 8

The chapter starts in a diferent way that from where ended the last time, Mr T gives a brief explanation of what has been happening during the projects work, because all of the six projects seem to have already started to beeing developed, for each project there is 3 teams developing the same product, to see how rivality and competition can influence in the teams to create one really great project.

Mr T statrs thinking about what would they need to controll the teams and how does these teams are going to be evaluated in terms of success, Lahska who is the one that kidnapped Mr T suddenly remembers of a famous doctor names Dr Rizoli, who is a manager that has run some very cleverly controlled experiments, he could be the one that helps Mr T with his problem, Mr T recognizes that Rizoli could be really helpfull for his project, but how would Mr T convince sush a famous character to fly to Morovia just to talk about six projects, little did he know that Lhaska was actually setted uo everything to make Rizoli arrive at Morovia, and this time without kidnapping, just confunsing Rizoli, one really tricky but clever way to reclute Rizoli.

This is a gif of a cat and a man playing

Continue reading "Deadline 8 & 9"

Working from home

--Originally published at Erick learning experience

Whit the current situation thanks to the COVID-19 a lot of people started to work from home and other people just don’t have the opportunity to work from home risking their health to get money, but talking about the people working from home the majority don’t have experience with that making works a little bit more challenging and more time consuming, but talking with my experience working from home with other people is not as bad as the majority would think, first you can communicate with your team using some online tools like Zoom, Skype, Discord, etc…, and use some tools for working together like google drive or in the part of code using different git pages like GitHub or Bit-bucket that let you modify different files and share it with your team with another benefits, another advantage of working from home is that you can administrate your time as you want and doing some things you like in the time you take a break.

Working from home have a lot of advantages and commodities but it also have some disadvantages, for example in my experience working from home sometimes in the reunions online we have different technical problems like for example audio, or the internet of someone was slow at the moment or in my case my internet went down for two days so I have to go to a coffee store and work from there, but these problems were uncommon.

One of the main thing mentioned in the podcast that I have experienced myself is that some people wants to maintain their privacy at home, so when someone insist on turn on your webcam those people feel uncomfortable about different factors like the size of their house or apartment, their children or even the conversations of their family

Home Office

--Originally published at Project Evaluation and Management Blog

“They feel as though they can get more personal work done. They feel that they are much more productive at work,”

What used to be an option some people had, now is a privilege many would wish to enjoy. Home office is now the best answer to keep up with work and protect the community from COVID-19 pandemic.

A few months ago, home office was a good option for those who felt were more productive working at home, and one of the main reasons is that you can adapt way easier to fit your work with your personal life. Traveling to work becomes extra time, many small personal life tasks become way easier, but with all those luxuries a new challenge rises, the communication challenge.

Of course for the past few years there has been a debate whether it is an effective choice to home office or a comfy choice that reduces efficiency, but as of a few weeks ago, it is the only choice available for all of those who don’t need to interact physically with work. CBC spark talks about home office, how it is a new challenging experience for many, but just another day to companies like Wildbit, a company that has worked remotely for 20 years.

The first thing you can notice from that podcast is how hard it is for inexperienced workers as they haven’t adapted their needs to be efficient, me personally trying to work in the kitchen table was one of the worst decisions, as people came in and out, distractions were everywhere and the mess it created just slowed me down dramatically. For sure the most important thing is finding out a way to get your own personal space, as if once you sat in your desk you weren’t at home,

Belok: the enemy arrives

--Originally published at Parra’s Project Management Blog

A new enemy arrived, just as evil as lord Vader,

As Tompkins says and forshadows, he didn’t have until this point someone that caused problems to his strategy. Everything was going perfect, the members of his crew were the best and deadlines were fine, but, where is the challenge? In this story, it has a name: Minister Belok. Today I’ll be talking about chapter 11 of The Deadline, by Tom De Marco.

Turns out the NNL went out to a trip that will take long, so he put his finances director in charge of the project led by Tompkins. As a financial guy, he decided to cut the time in the deadline of the project and decided to merge the separate teams working on the same project in order to “maximize output in less time”. As seen in the past chapter, this would not be the case, as aggregating people into a team costs effort and time in unification.

So how will Tompkins be getting out of this one? Simple, by playing to his rules. Since he is powerful, they had to obey his demands, but Mr. T devised a solution: they would merge all the teams, but form another two teams with extra members, the ones that aren’t doing anything related to the project led by general Markov. This would be the ultimate experiment: getting a team of the best engineers all together and overpopulated, vs normal engineers that will work in less quantities.

As seen by the predictions using Abdul Jamid’s method of modeling, the smaller teams would finish first, but let’s see what happens. It was time to spice things up, that is why I liked this chapter. We learn about politics, in this case pathological politics, the ones that make things worse every time. They form Continue reading "Belok: the enemy arrives"

Deadline, Chapters 8 & 9

--Originally published at Project Evaluation and Management Blog

New chapter, new kidnap case, to be honest I’m getting a little used to it but now they took it to another level. Best way to kidnap someone famous temporarily? Make it so he doesn’t know he was kidnapped.

Tomkins asks Rizzoli (the “kidnapped”) about moving the entire staff from CMM Level 2 to Level 3. CMM stands for Capability Maturity Model, its a 5 level process improvement model to determine how well defined, controlled and standardized a process is. If you are unfamiliar with this model I suggest taking a look at this small reading.

” There is no such thing as a short-term fix in our business. There is never a way to improve productivity in the short term”

One of the big lessons in this chapter in project management, is that as well as many things in life improvements and achievements don’t come overnight. As many people say: “Rome wasn’t build in a day”. Many times the search for that instant and effortless miracle becomes a waste of time.

“Software development is a risky business and managing that business is, most of all, an exercise in risk management.”

The truth is process improvement will only take you so far, and risk management is crucial for the survival of any project. Mistakes happen and being ready for them can make the difference between a quick fix and source of a huge problem in the big picture.

Hunch simulator

--Originally published at Parra’s Project Management Blog

Welcome readers, this time we’ll continue to cover the book of The Deadline, by Tom De Marco, and as I suspected last article, this new chapter grants us with new information to learn from. Tompkins meets a man called Abdul Jamid, a young man that is very talented in data analytics regarding project management.

He meets Mr.T in Rome while he was out for some personal business affairs. There they ate together and talked about the same subject Tompkins brings: you guessed it, the Morovian project management laboratory. This time the new stuff that this random character brings to the table is a way to turn the subjective into objective: hunches into a simulation.

Every project manager that has experience has its personal feelings, they are their instinct of experience that helps them to make decisions. The truth is that they are 100% subjective, as there are no ways to clarify if those personal hypotheses were true at the end. What Jamid taught Mr. T that evening was a sort of pre-machine learning process to make a model that simulated one of those feelings involved in PM.

After developing a sort of flowchart in which the model is represented the manager has to test it and refine it, along real case scenarios. The more info you feed it with, the more ways it will simulate the real hunch. It is sort of machine learning, but human made. Finally, you can use this tool to compare an initial hunch with real results at the end, thus verifying or rejecting the proposed version of the model.

This could be a useful to use, when refined of course. Instead of waiting for a hunch to be true or false, you could instantly know if you hypothesis is correct or not, and save Continue reading "Hunch simulator"