tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16673784991356780862024-03-17T05:00:33.631-04:00Musings on project managementAn opinion page on contemporary topics in project managementJohnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04852874885562983654noreply@blogger.comBlogger1816125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1667378499135678086.post-78899873649265003442024-03-17T05:00:00.007-04:002024-03-17T05:00:00.284-04:00Heat BatteriesDoes your project need green energy for development purposes, or is your project incorporating green energy in a deliverable?Perhaps a Heat Battery fits your need.As reported by the WSJ:".... researchers are developing heat batteries—also called thermal batteries—that store renewable energy as heat and then release it on demand to power industrial processes.Traditional batteries store and releaseJohnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04852874885562983654noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1667378499135678086.post-46931904041665438822024-03-14T05:00:00.003-04:002024-03-14T05:00:00.293-04:00From soda straws to 'constant stare'Does your project have proprietary or other intellectual property that is, of necessity, our of doors?Specialized antennas, telescopes, and other sensors?Unique infrastructure or private facilities?Proprietary ground or air or even space and underwater vehicles, or vehicle performance?New, competitive installations?In the past, you could keep the wraps on by simply hiding the location, or Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04852874885562983654noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1667378499135678086.post-84250402724775543572024-03-11T05:00:00.015-04:002024-03-11T05:00:00.283-04:00Help coming: IT Risk ManagementRisk Management in IT projects For years (a lot of years) IT companies have been paying bounties to hackers to find vulnerabilities in target IT systems and report them to bug fixers before they become a business hazard. This bounty system has worked for the most part, but it's a QC (find after the fact) rather than QA (quality built-in) approach, somewhat of necessity given the complexity Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04852874885562983654noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1667378499135678086.post-19996073559987471822024-03-07T05:00:00.001-05:002024-03-07T05:00:00.133-05:00Redesigning the "Meeting"From Connor Grant at the WSJ:The traditional business meeting is changing; the 'pandemic' made me do it!Here is Grant's reporting -- somewhat abridged -- on changes now in place and expected to come:1. More office meeting rooms will have high-tech equipment such as holograms, virtual reality and other immersive technologies that allow remote workers to feel like they are in the same room as theirJohnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04852874885562983654noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1667378499135678086.post-88605013723638882902024-03-03T05:00:00.023-05:002024-03-03T05:00:00.137-05:00Some Big Words about the Risk RegisterEvery PMO plan includes some form of risk management, and a favorite way to communicate risk to your team, sponsors, and other stakeholders is the (ageless) risk register.So much has been written about the ubiquitous risk register, it's a wonder there is anything more to be said. But here goes:In simplest terms, the risk register is a matrix of rows and columns showing the elements of expected Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04852874885562983654noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1667378499135678086.post-19127007477499217532024-02-29T05:00:00.001-05:002024-02-29T05:00:00.142-05:00Responding to an RFP .... Steps1 and 2Are you a proposal leader tasked with responding to a competitive RFP?An RFP from a private sector customer or from the public sector?And if from the public sector, local, state, or federal?And if from the federals, defense or non-defense?Every one of those customer groups will have their own style, culture, and constraining rules, regulations, and statutes. But even so, there are two steps, Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04852874885562983654noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1667378499135678086.post-86719866375300871582024-02-26T05:00:00.003-05:002024-02-26T05:00:00.159-05:00Chief A.I. OfficerSo it didn't take long. AI has invaded the C-Suite, the latest title being Chief A.I. Officer, aka CAIO.The job description is partly directed at technology, partly directed at culture, and partly directed at functional impacts, like HR, recruiting, and intellectual property.What does it mean to project management?In the PMO, the CAIO is going to be there to help you! (I'm from HQ, and I'm Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04852874885562983654noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1667378499135678086.post-73317346587761305812024-02-22T05:00:00.002-05:002024-02-22T05:00:00.135-05:003 E's drive successLee Cockerell, a retired Disney executive and author of several successful business books, says this about the people you want on your project: Hire and retain people who value "reliability" in commitments and relationships, and Hire and retain people who value the "3 E's" (or maybe it's 4 E's)Education + Exposure + Experience = ExcellenceCockerell's points should be self evident:PeopleJohnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04852874885562983654noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1667378499135678086.post-52746666670148849622024-02-19T05:00:00.001-05:002024-02-19T05:00:00.141-05:0010,000 project internsDavid Miessiler has this idea about AI tools that are "good enough" to make a real project impact. He says, in part:
To me .... in both offensive and defensive security use cases, the main advantage of AI will not be its exceptional (superhuman) capabilities, but rather the ability to apply pretty-good-intern or moderate-SME level expertise to billions more analysis points than before. In Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04852874885562983654noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1667378499135678086.post-15091157509985526682024-02-15T05:00:00.001-05:002024-02-15T05:00:00.140-05:00Andreessen opines AIWhen Marc Andreessen speaks, it's worth your time to listen. He says this about AI[A] short description of what AI is: The application of mathematics and software code to teach computers how to understand, synthesize, and generate knowledge in ways similar to how people do it. AI is a computer program like any other – it runs, takes input, processes, and generates output. AI’s output is useful Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04852874885562983654noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1667378499135678086.post-87593977191532886552024-02-11T05:00:00.001-05:002024-02-11T05:00:00.130-05:00Doing a bit of strategyConsider this military wit, and put it in the context of a PMO. "There is an old—and misleading—bit of conventional military wisdom which holds that “amateurs study tactics, while professionals study logistics.” The truth is that amateurs study only tactics or logistics, while professionals study both simultaneously. The most brilliant tactics ever devised are pointless when the Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04852874885562983654noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1667378499135678086.post-65809189378331894792024-02-07T05:00:00.001-05:002024-02-07T05:00:00.135-05:00Risk Management and AIThe U.S. NIST has issued, after long discussion and drafts reviewed, their risk management framework (RMF) for A.I. You can read it here.NIST says: The AI RMF refers to an AI system as an engineered or machine-based system that
can, for a given set of objectives, generate outputs such as predictions, recommendations, or decisions influencing real or virtual environments. AI systems are Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04852874885562983654noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1667378499135678086.post-63455830714519736672024-02-04T05:00:00.001-05:002024-02-04T05:00:00.144-05:00Do you work "turn key"?You may say -- you may have heard -- "make a 'turn-key' project".Fair enough.What does that mean? Actually, there are a few things built into that expression:You're throwing off risk by pushing scope and cost to someone else, presumably with a proven track record of expertise and performance.You probably mean 'fixed price' for a 'fixed scope' of work. There's no 'bring me a rock' uncertaintyJohnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04852874885562983654noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1667378499135678086.post-80867367301628833642024-01-31T05:00:00.001-05:002024-01-31T05:00:00.354-05:00Directing attention: shall, will, and mayYou shall ...I will ....You or I may .....Heard these phrases before?What to make of them?Actually, if you're sitting in the PMO reading a contract or other legal document handed to you by your contract's administrator, or you're on the other side helping to write an RFP , then these words are important."Shall" should be understood to be directive without discretion to act otherwise. Take 'shall'Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04852874885562983654noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1667378499135678086.post-87634153051556974992024-01-27T05:00:00.001-05:002024-01-27T05:00:00.159-05:00Metrics: some rules"Management 3.0" has a blurb they call "12 Rules for Metrics"There are a few of these I find unique and interesting, repeated here, more or less:"Measure for a purpose": Without using those words exactly, I have written on this topic many times. Don't ask for metrics and measurements unless you have a plan for using the data productively to advance the project"Shrink the unknown": This is a play Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04852874885562983654noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1667378499135678086.post-81001413118262612612024-01-23T05:00:00.001-05:002024-01-23T05:00:00.132-05:00Are we there yet? Agile "done"Now we're getting somewhere! No less an Agile/Scrum eminence than Mike Cohn -- author of some really good books and articles -- has come out with a newsletter on -- are you ready for this? -- what's the meaning of DONE in Agile.
His acronym, a bit a poor choice to my mind, is "DoD"... Definition of Done. But, there you have it... perhaps a new GAAP "generally accepted agile practice" for Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04852874885562983654noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1667378499135678086.post-38448074526644909842024-01-19T17:24:00.001-05:002024-01-19T17:24:00.129-05:00Managing idle white spaceMy advice is always to schedule loosely, spreading buffers at strategic points to protect the critical path and even the feeder paths. Strategically: sound advice. But.... If you do this, your schedule is going to have idle time or 'white space'. Some would look at that and see schedule dollars slipping by. What's a good tactical thing to do?Begin with the teamOne of the big Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04852874885562983654noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1667378499135678086.post-90710313200525297262024-01-15T05:00:00.001-05:002024-01-15T05:00:00.128-05:00Asymmetrical Value PropositionI've written a couple of books on project value; you can see the book covers at the end of this blog.One of my themes in these books is a version of cybernetics:Projects are transformative of disparate inputs into something of greater value. More than a transfer function, projects fundamentally alter the collective value of resources in a cybernetics way: the value of the output is all but Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04852874885562983654noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1667378499135678086.post-74229890936298037752024-01-12T05:00:00.001-05:002024-01-12T05:00:00.141-05:00Scheduling: Don't do this'The mistake' to avoid in scheduling is to construct a milestone-success situation that strictly depends upon two or more tasks scheduled (planned) to finish at the same time.So, what's the big error here?First, as regards milestone success, each of the tasks leading into the milestone is a risk to success (success means: it is achieved on time)Second, total risk is the product of all the input Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04852874885562983654noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1667378499135678086.post-22484904047776528602024-01-09T05:00:00.003-05:002024-01-09T05:00:00.130-05:00Is Game Theory the answer?
In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.
—Theodore Roosevelt
Actually, that's Teddy's version of cousin FDR's famous "Try something!"
But what if it's all about a threat -- something external -- for which you have no experience?
Call in your PMO team and brainstorm? Perhaps
Ask Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04852874885562983654noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1667378499135678086.post-36552481113497375262024-01-06T05:00:00.084-05:002024-01-06T05:00:00.132-05:00Tactical brilliance; Strategic blindnessIt happens: a successful project is a business bust. Put it down to "tactical brilliance but strategic blindness"And by "strategic blindness" we mean being oblivious, either deliberately or unwittingly, to the impact to, or needs of strategic success for the enterprise. (meaning: long-term success). Built into that statement is this idea: The tactical--strategic bridging difficulties Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04852874885562983654noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1667378499135678086.post-53759529824513761502024-01-03T05:00:00.001-05:002024-01-03T05:00:00.142-05:00Project patents for AI InventionsPatent an invention of an AI system?Not so fast!This we learn from David Miessler:The UK Supreme Court has ruled that AI systems cannot be recognized as inventors of patents. In other words, only a natural person can be an inventor, which is fine, except it won’t stop inventors from using armies of inventor/documentation agents from not only coming up with ideas but writing and submitting all theJohnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04852874885562983654noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1667378499135678086.post-75596954838714303472023-12-29T05:00:00.001-05:002023-12-29T05:00:00.134-05:00To lead and to followA mark of effective leadership is recognizing that following advice, sometimes tactically off the main beam of your strategy, is not a weakness of leadership but rather an indicator of personal security and strong character. About a leader somewhat infamous for stubbornness it was said:Once again [our leader] had demonstrated his uncommon ability both to lead and to follow, to stand Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04852874885562983654noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1667378499135678086.post-73922722637120316792023-12-26T05:00:00.001-05:002023-12-26T05:00:00.143-05:00How much knowledge?Got knowledge?"If a little knowledge is dangerous, where is the man who has so much as to be out of danger?" Thomas Huxley, "On Elementary Instruction in Physiology", 1877
Like this blog? You'll like my books also! Buy them at any online book retailer!
Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04852874885562983654noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1667378499135678086.post-68823351645832394722023-12-22T05:00:00.001-05:002023-12-22T05:00:00.149-05:00Gambling for resurrectionYour project is in trouble.You've spent all the money and have little to show for it.There's a decision to be made: Shut it down, or take a gamble on resurrection?A gamble on resurrection is a financial theory about risk taking that posits taking on more risk or leverage in a hope that circumstances -- mostly beyond your control -- will turn favorably and bail you out. (When visiting casinos, I Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04852874885562983654noreply@blogger.com