The Rookie and I

I was actually going to call this How to train a project manager but decided against it because it would probably raise such universal questions as 'Can you really train a project manager?' So, herein I present the almost neverending saga of project managers and IT professionals.

Project management... Some think of it as an artform, others think of it as irreverent and pointless, but all agree that it often is a necessary evil. I am not going to debate either side here but just present some experiences albeit embellished of project management in the IT world. A lot of the experiences sound remarkably similar yet so different which presents a dilemma when cataloguing and classifying them. So as the author of this blog, I have taken the liberty to classify by project manager, as after all this is the key determinant and differentiator in all the projects.

The Rookie: A project management virgin for lack of a better term. Often thrown in the deep-end without actually being told how deep the pool actually is but also without being taught to swim. Thus, the onus is often on the other project team members to train and manage the project manager. As if this wasn't complicated enough, this also involves managing not only the person but the EGO. Often (and not always) you are dealing with someone who is not only underprepared in managing the project albeit the team but also doesn't realise it. A bad workman may blame his tools but first he has to actually have some. Better still, they often have a supreme confidence in their abilities where they actually truly believe that they are managing the project people. As much as I hate to admit it, that is what they should do but the clincher for me is their management style. Without the necessary tools in hand and experience to draw on, they are forced to rely on the Command and Control approach (to quote Joel Spolsky). What I like to call the kindergarten approach - I am bigger than you so you have to do what I say. Not an ideal way to manage kindergartners, let alone an IT project team. Especially in the IT world of today when one project makes you the team lead and the other makes you part of the development team. There are almost always going to be more experienced people on a team. The problem the rookie faces is he doesn't realise how to manage this. Again, the kindergarten approach - I am the 'boss' so I should tell them what to do. The net result often is that the project members either get frustrated, infuriated, insulted (often all of the above) leading to a lack of confidence in the project manager and either non-cooperation or a power struggle. Net result: IT project disaster in the making.
I don't mean to say this is always the case or that the other team members are not in any way contributors to the potential failure of the project, but having project management issues certainly doesn't help!

Build it before they come...

The Global Sourcing phenomenon has really taken us (in the IT industry) by storm. There's no escaping it and in my opinion an organisation would ignore it only at their own peril. It has become one of the key strategies in the game of staying alive let alone ahead in the IT market. In an earlier blog, I bemoaned the lack of ownership within an organisation for the failure of outsourcing - the fact that often employees don't see how it benefits them. To some that may sound very philosophical and (dare I say it..) HR speak.

Another more concrete or tangible reason is the logistics. Before I go into this let me just digress (again...). My perspective on outsourcing and it's implementation comes from an application development background, so needless to say that will be my focus. Let's consider the scenario...

An organisation decides to descend down the road of outsourcing. What's the easiest thing to outsource? Often the so-called back office functions; development and testing. The theory (often heard by many) is this; development and testing work is partitionable (for lack of a better word). You slice of blocks of your project and pass it to either the test or development teams and at the end of that timeframe (in your project) the work magically appears done. Classic waterfall model and it lends itself (in theory) as an ideal candidate to Global Sourcing.

This does of course include several assumptions.

• The piece of work is well defined with clearly outlined start and end criteria. In the case of development, this is well defined requirements documents (with no potential for scope creep - I just noticed all the developers glaze their eyes over on that, but bear with me..) and in the case of testing, a complete unit of software that is ready for testing again with clearly defined documentation.
• Minimal micro-management of teams. The project manager would only require updates on progress and otherwise everything will continue as is.
• Communication between the various teams will not be an issue. This includes accounting for time zones and geographical diversity.
• All resources required by the various project teams will be readily available and accessible.

There are many more to this list and all if not most are easily rectified. The key is identifying these issues and working through them. There needs to be a willingness and acceptance of the issues and risks associated alongside them. To think that a seamless transition will occur is setting oneself up to fall a long long way down.

But I digress... back to the logistics. The biggest thing from a purely logistics perspective for outsourcing is the geographical diversity. That which is it's biggest advantage can also be it's biggest disadvantage. Your teams may be at the antipodes from each other. Not only does this hinder face-to-face discussions but something as simple as the time difference can cause an issue. One group will work while the other sleeps and vice versa. The positive spin is that you can have work on the project close to 24 hours a day. Conversely, you have a 24 hour turnaround in responses between teams and potentially team members. You may have someone work on a project for a whole day only to realise that they are operating on a completely different tangent to another team member. This coupled with communication (as in being able to contact team members when required and not language) pose potential roadblocks on the path to outsourcing success.

Another side of the logistics is the infrastructure...

To be continued...

A crisis of opportunities

Outsourcing the bane of many IT professionals' existence. I recently met a fellow IT geek (professional I mean...) whose response summed up the way a lot of people think about it. His organisation is currently undergoing a strategic transformation - but wait before you get excited for all this means is that a new manager is doing a bit of sweeping to clear the decks as it were. Part of his organisation's strategy includes the big 'O' - outsourcing. So, here I am and I ask him a question 'So what do you think about Outsourcing?' - expecting one of two responses, a resounding yes or a doomsaying nay. He just looks at me and says 'What can I do except wait until I get sacked?' Now, this doesn't sum up the way all IT professionals look at it but certainly includes a fair chunk of them. Without a doubt, outsourcing does mean job losses but it also means opportunities (as discussed in an earlier blog).

It's like a quote I once heard ' The germans use the same word for crisis as opportunity' - and no it's not crisotunity!

Outsourcing

Outsourcing. To some a magical word opening a world of opportunities; efficiency, cost reduction, agility and more. To others it is a signal of doom and gloom, a sign of all things negative. So which is it? Of course it depends on your perspective.

To the corporate it makes perfect sense; reduce costs while increasing agility and delivery capacity - heaven on earth. To the guy sitting at the next desk it makes no sense; invest money in training up some guy half way across the world to do his job when there are already skilled and talented individuals doing it already. All to save a few dollars!

The problem (in my humble opinion) is that there generally has never been reason for the software developer or tester to ever think outsourcing would benefit them. Why should they? From their perspective it's often job losses to the other side of the world. Of course this isn't always the case. Several companies outsource and do it well. While their strategy I'm sure is a complex web of various technical, management and human resource strategies the one they do or should do (in my humble opinion) is get their employees on board. Give the employees a reason to make outsourcing work. Why do you need the employees if you are outsourcing their jobs?

The reality is that while the majority of the work (in extreme cases) may be outsourced, every organisation still needs people on the ground at their locations liaising with clients, coordinating activites and presenting the company the outside world. The outsourcing itself should be seamless. And for this seamlessness to occur you need the employees at the client locale to buy-in to the corporate strategy. After all outsourcing doesn't mean (and never has) that all jobs or positions get pushed overseas - though that always seems to be the conotation.

There is no denying that there may be job losses but at the same time it offers opportunities - those that do remain in the organisation may take on more client-facing/lead roles (in effect moving up the management/corporate ladder). And while any true IT geek (professional I mean...) wouldn't admit this, none of them would deny that this is the ladder they would like to traverse - after all the climb means a pay increase at the least. These are the opportunities that corporations need to present to their employees - it allows the guy at the other end to realise that he has a vested interest (by seeing what opportunity it brings him) and not only will he cooperate and he may even go out of his way to make it all work.

Golden rule of Outsourcing 1: Get everyone on board

You are in a priority queue...

The Internet is a wonderful thing... it lets every Tom, Dick, Harry and in this case Prazy speak their mind on anything and everything under the sun. It's often a double-edged sword since not only does it let one speak their mind but it allows everyone to hear (read anyway) these opinions and thoughts.

Keeping all this mind, I still figured I had to share my self-professed amazing idea to the world (or at least the portion of it that might inadvertently read my blog). So what is it? Wait for it...

Self-service kiosks at movie theatres!

There I was standing in line at a movie theatre waiting to buy my tickets with a queue of about 30 people in front of me (particularly large by usual standards here) and 2 minutes before the movie was scheduled to start. Before I go any further I should probably the explain the concept of EFTPOS to anyone reading (if you are not from New Zealand). Essentially, it's an immediate fund transfer mechanism, similar to a credit card but more immediate - the money disappears straight out of your bank account.

So there I am wondering how much of the movie I might miss and suddenly I thought if something as complex as domestic air travel could be automated to the extent of self-service check-in, in this age of the computer and digital revolution why not something as simple as movie tickets. Putting on my application architect/developer hats here is the high-level design...

• Client inserts a credit card/eftpos card into a terminal
• Client selects a movie and session time (easily obtainable of the theatre's website)
• Available seats are presented to the client (if required)
• Client selects number of tickets
• System displays total price and asks for confirmation
• On client OK (involving a card pin number), the system prints out the tickets, returns the card and of course, debits the account.

The feasability technically of this is not the issue, I guess the profitability and efficiency is. This might not work in small theatres but when you have a multiplex of 10 or more theatres, why not? At the risk of sounding like a cost-focused manager, this should surely reduce costs by eliminating the need for staff manning ticket counters (the efficiency of automation etc etc..). The cons of minimal human interaction are far outweighed by the quick service and user flexibility. Another con that some might suggest is dependency of the computer literacy of the user, but if ATM machines can work.. why can't these?

All I ask is if someone does implement my grand plan is that I get to play with Beta versions and the royalties of course ;-)

Instinctively flashier than Java

As a software engineer one always likes to keep abreast of the trends and advances in technology, particularly software development. So what's the latest and greatest programming language? Java... C# ... Maybe for application development... but what about mobile computing?

According to one game development firm, it's FlashLite. Before you form an opinion hear me out. They make this somewhat bold technology choice based on the 'impending rise of Flash and imminent downfall of J2ME' - I'll give you all a few minutes to contemplate that...

Now I know that everyone would have had their thoughts on the choice of Flash over J2ME and more particularly the impending fall of J2ME - all I am going to say is 'script kiddies', rather self-explanatory I hope (at least on what I think). I'd be interested to know what Sun's response is. I always thought side-scrolling games (even with flash) would have disappeared with the new millenium. let alone the advent of 3D graphics and technology. Nonetheless, full credit to the game development studio and their innovative plans for domination of the side-scrolling flash game world!

Nanometres of Unlimited Potential

Two consecutive days of blogging... well one and a half.

Having heard Paul Reynolds give us his general, political and professional commentary on the state of technology (and I have to say I thorougly enjoyed his talk), it was on to smaller things - nanotechnology (pun intended!)

So here we were, a room full of technology geeks (for want of a better word) waiting with bated breath to hear about the latest academic research into nanotechnology. The speaker comes up after being introduced and then proceeds to explain to us what a nanometre is... 'a human is in the scale of metres tall, a human hair is in the scale of millimetres (still smaller than a nanometre) ...' I realise that this forms the basic understanding for the scale of things but I'd like to think that a technologist would know what a nanometre ( or for that matter any high school physics student...). Needless to say I felt quite patronised by the whole thing (though I'm sure it was completely unintentional). This doesn't take away in the slightest from the research that the academics are doing but I'm sure discussion on more of the research would have been a lot more engrossing (maybe it's my research background speaking...)

More ranting to follow...

Origins of my blog Part 2

So as part of the magical all-integrating triangle Paul mentions how he uploads photos straight from his mobile device to Flickr and that he loves how he can easily integrate it with his blogs. Hence, my sudden albeit calculated and obviously well thought out plans for blogging...

So the next question on your mind... do I have a Flickr page? Of course I do (just haven't got any photos on there yet, but once I do you can rest assured I'll have the obligatory self-advertisement on here!)

I realise that now you know why I am blogging there isn't any suspense for you to keep reading. But there is albeit to see if I write any more posts at all or update my Flickr page?

Stay tuned...

In the Beginning...

I couldn't just setup a blog and not post anything now.... could I?
I've lost count on the number of blogs I have now setup and never ever posted to (apart from the obligatory initial post). Each time I do this I seem to get inspired by some comment/forum/newspaper article/scrawling on wall...


This time it was Gadgets, Games and Geeks - a semi-conference for geeks on (wait for it..) gadgets and games. I term it a semi-conference or perhaps a better term would be conference-in-the-making. Why? Perhaps the best response would be to paraphrase what one of the organisers said 'We initially were going to have a gaming convention where we just came and played x-box games but this has turned into something much more.' Unassuming and not pretending to be anything more than it was - a chance for geeks (sorry - IT professionals) to speak their mind and show off how cool what they have been doing is (and of course the chance to win an iPod nano - I'm sure that wasn't the reason people came though I still do wonder why there were 3 business cards with the same name in the draw to win the iPod.)

So how does this even remotely relate to me setting up a blog...

It all comes down to the keynote speaker Paul Reynolds an IT consultant/commentator. His keynote address on the digital revolution and the internet was interesting and talked about the three intersecting circles of ... let's just call it IT shall we? So what are these three circles? Well the three circles (vaguely) are:

1. the circle of the bloggers and general masses
2. the circle of the IT professionals in business (trying to do something creative and make a buck)
3. the circle of the government institutions, libraries etc who need the net and see it as part of their way forward

His point (and Paul will have to excuse me if I've missed the point completely) was that intersecting all these is the giant triangle with the large question mark - the all see-ing, all know-ing, all do-ing integration point and that 'we', that is the geeks (I mean IT professionals) hold the key and hence, determine the way forward for this integrating triangle.

So how does all this relate to why I started an umpteenth blog? More will be revealed in Part 2!