Monthly Archives: November 2016

What are processes without people to follow them?

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The … process is only as great as the people who participate in it. – Jeff Miller

Congressman Jeff Miller is attributed to saying this quote in reference to the democratic process, but I think it applies to most process. A process without people following doesn’t go very far.

If you know me, or have navigated my site at all, you know I love to read. Fiction, non-fiction..books, articles, blogs, pretty much anything I can get my hands on. This also means I look for and want documentation and process. I want to see my starting point, and then figure out where I need to go. This also means that I strive to leave the same for others. I am not afraid to leave behind my knowledge or information for others to benefit.

Too often though it is becoming more common to want to be fed information, rather than seek it. When did we lose our natural curiosity? And further, why are we so quick to stop after the first roadblock? Even more frustrating to me are those that should know where to find the information they are looking for, but still don’t follow through.

Don’t get me wrong, this inclination has yielded plenty of new opportunities for me. Because I know these resources exist, I can leverage them and very quickly expand my knowledge, making me more effective. I guess I will keep doing what I do, and try to leave my knowledge on for the next person. I can hope that someone will take advantage of it.

 

 

 

Project Manage with Intention

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Some-people-want-it-to-happen-some-wish-it-would-happen-others-make-it-happen

Sue Sotter – https://www.pinterest.com/susoutter/inspiration-to-be-intentional/

In doing my research for today’s blog, I read two separate articles that referenced “accidental project managers” as anyone who leads projects that hasn’t undergone formal project management certification. I’m a bit taken aback by this. While I don’t hold any project management certifications, I have done extensive studying of project management methodologies and am quite successful as a project manager. This isn’t by accident, but rather by intention.

I’m not going to argue the validity or value of having project management certifications, but I will argue that someone taking on the role of project manager isn’t accidental. “Accidental” means that it’s unintentional, unexpected and happens by chance. Is that really the case? Does our corporate leadership randomly pick an employee to lead a project?  Or rather, does the employee demonstrate some set of qualities or interest that results in project leadership? While the timing and recognition may happen at unexpected times; or the size or scope of the project may be larger or smaller than intended (by the management, or the person who solicited the additional responsibility), deliberate steps were taken to initiate this shift.

And my story? I transitioned from an operations role to a technical role when I became pregnant with my first daughter. At the time, it was thought that I would have more flexibility in a technology than in business operations. After a year or two as a database administrator reporting to misogynous boss, I handed in my resignation. I was asked to reconsider with the offer of a project management role. I understood both the business and technology; and had been at the organization long enough to understand how to get stuff done. I developed subsequent leadership (project & team) skills while getting my MBA and managing teams of technical and analytic resources (software developers, project managers, billing specialists, etc.) Every decision made along the way in my career, and when I manage projects are done with thought and intention.

While I don’t think the two articles were using the term “accidental project manager” as an insult, they were definitely on the side of promoting their products. They were trying to target the people who fill project management roles without having received any project management certifications. Maybe it would be better marketing to focus on being “new to project management” or “running your first projects.”

I on the other hand will continue to manage projects, building on my experience and constant reading, researching & self-learning. Practical application and incorporating lessons learned from post mortems supplement my experience and allow me to improve for each project.

 

 

Losing ourselves in the moment….

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or maybe it’s just on conference calls. I believe strongly in remote work, and by extension I believe in asynchronous communication like email and chat apps, but also believe we need real-time communication like phone calls, conference calls or web sharing sessions. However, I am still amazed by how people behave on conference calls. It seems as if people just lose a little bit of themselves, and forget common courtesies. Today I’m going to use my soapbox to discuss some of my bigger pet peaves.conference-call-meme

  1. Remember everyone on the conference call, not just those in the room. As a project manager, I try to be conscious of everyone on the call. This includes multiple people that might be in the same room or that person sitting alone. There have been times where I’ve been the only decision maker participating by conference call. During these times, I feIt I had to time my opportunity to speak up just right. I had to do this by jumping in on any pause, regardless of where the discussion was at the time.  Alternatively, I will often have side conversations via text to facilitate progress. For people in the same room, or for the conference call organizer, it is important to remember to intentionally include all participates. You invited them for a reason.
  2. Someone needs to lead the call. The belief that conference calls aren’t effective speaks more to the organization of the call, than anything else. There is always a reason a conference call gets scheduled. Someone needs to facilitate the call. What are you trying to accomplish? What is the take away? And most helpful, if something needs to be prepared or investigated beforehand, make sure that expectation was set when the call was scheduled. Otherwise you are wasting everyone’s time.
  3. Don’t forget your manners. I guess all my frustration really boils down to this. I want to believe that we are all passionate human beings and sometimes tempers flair. I know that’s happened to me. We can only control our own behavior so let’s try to reign in our tempers and remember we are all there, in that moment, for a common good.

 

Semi-homemade is better than bespoke for data analytics

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I read a product review this week where the company referred to themselves as a provider of “bespoke” data analytics. I had never heard that term used in the context of data analytics, or software specifically. However, when I googled the term, I found many companies using it in their marketing language, but no reference to it by the people who write about data analytics or software. This led me to start thinking about my experiences managing data integration software projects and how my customers view the solutions.

The projects that I’ve worked on in the last couple of years have primarily been data integration projects where we are combining multiple datasources into a single data warehouse and then leveraging that data to deliver data insights. The platform has some standard integration components that you can leverage, but there is also room for quite a bit of custom development. In every implementation, I have had conversations about what “standard” tools are available and what capabilities can be developed custom. On one hand, once these customers start reviewing the available tools, the first questions asked are usually about how we can customize those tools to their business. Each customer self-identifies as a unique even though most are within the same overall industry. There are always unique scenarios for each customer that needs to be accounted for.

bespoke-suit-pattern

http://www.giandecaro.com/img/background-bespoke.jpg

On the other hand, customization takes time and effort, regardless of whether the work is done in house or by external consultants. Where does that leave us if our customers want/need something specific to their business but don’t want or can’t invest the time and money to do so?

I think as integration partners, we are probably looking at the entire product management and implementation process incorrectly. Our customers need a balance of standard tools that they can quickly customize to their specific needs along with partners who will work with them to develop custom solutions for new or innovative work. This is similar to the idea of leveraging a template to develop your website, but then be able to customize your experience by changing colors or adding widgets that extend the template capabilities. We can think of these types of products as “semi-homemade.”

Semi-homemade is a term used heavily by Sandra Lee regarding her cooking style. She leverages pantry staples and other ingredients and creates amazing dishes. By not having everything made from scratch, Sandra Lee reduces the cooking & prep time but is still able to deliver tasty dishes people want to eat. If we apply the same principles to data analytics, I think we can definitely leverage some basic tools that we allow people to extend or meld, which result in delivering data insights without the pain of everything being a custom solution.

It’s time to shift our mindset away from solely developing out of the box solutions, or solely developing custom solutions. Product and services should be working together to build base tools that are easily extended to meet the changing needs of our customers. We won’t totally eliminate the need for custom solutions, or new products for that matter. But we will more quickly be able to meet the changing needs of our customers.