Time for a networking cut!

concerning pro-social networking to management and project management audiences.  My networked ballooned from a rather healthy 750 to over 3,000.

While generally innocuous, I soon found out that not having a “fake” email address or inexhaustible supply of time to address impromptu email spams was a bad mix.  I deleted 75 of the more annoying contacts.  Yet as LinkedIn slowly adopted Facebook and Twitter status updates I noticed that those original 750, plus about 150 of natural market growth additions, were lost in the update shuffle.  While I think it’s great that someone is helping search for chefs or nurses in Miami, there’s not a lot I can contribute.

So I began to “mute” those conversations.  Yet I found that trying to keep up with the muting was an extra hassle as well.

Now, am really wishing that LinkedIn could incorporate a quick unfriend feature like Facebook, I’m in the midst of the painstaking effort to reduce my network back into that natural market place size.  I know this may sound like crazy talk to LIONS but I’ve never figured
out what value is added by having 30k direct connections (where maybe you sort of know 400).  Oh and LinkedIn it’s time to let people remove contacts from the primary contact search – ya there?

Image via CrunchBase

I joined LinkedIn as an early adopter in 2004 – primarily to keep in touch with people I met growing an online education business and by delivering at seminars throughout North America.   I remember the core value from LinkedIn in its Q&A section prompted by colleagues, initial group success and engaging in meaningful networking.   That was stunted with my experiment in 2009 of adding 2,000 contacts in 10 days.  It also coincided with a much more rigorous use of Facebook and Twitter.  I’ve found myself checking Facebook and Twitter daily and LinkedIn once or twice a week since then.

So I’m going back to the roots of LinkedIn.  A larger network is fine.  I just need some context and an opportunity to do something meaningful with it.  For example, I like helping out with an introduction and engaging in some dialog. I did that yesterday with a top-notch professional I met teaching an IT Project Management class in 2004.  It took all of 1 minute to forward an introduction and I was glad to do it.

What’s your opinion?  How do you use LinkedIn?  If you’ve used LinkedIn for more than 3 years, has that use changed (and how)?

Back to trimming!

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In the midst of some infrastructure / application remediation work for a great client in Omaha (insurance company) the concept of YAGNI came to mind.   There’s a couple of quick reads for you.

First a sort of “anti hero” opinion piece from one of the early members of Borland (Mike Rozlog) who apparently still holds the reigns of Delphi (hadn’t heard much of that tool since 2005/06 – and it’s on my remediation list for a Win 7 compliance effort) and the second a quick example of YAGI.

So take a peek at these two articles.  YAGNI really does zero in on things that are often added to project, even an Agile one, that may not be needed and end up wasting time and budget.  The opinion piece from Mike tests the 3 hallowed principles of “Open, Extensible and Standards” more.  One of the more poignant pieces for me is, still 20+ years after my grad work in MIS and learning of the death of COBOL in 1990, that COBOL is still around.

I’ve brought this home to my “PM” life by simplifying my project schedules.  I was very passionate and proud of several hundred to over a 1,000 task MS Project or Clarity schedules a few years ago.  Only to find the only audience to read or understand it was other PM’s (well really they may have pretended to read or care about them) and maybe a PMO admin.  Recasting those into Outlook tasks or copying and paste them into Excel began to wear on me – so I began thinking “why not just simplify this a bit”.  If I can still get the task done with 3 tasks and “to-do” lists, rather than 100 tasks, then that’s the direction I go now. 

Mike’s opinion

http://www.drdobbs.com/architecture-and-design/229402020#

And example of YAGNI

http://codebetter.com/jeremymiller/2009/02/17/a-quick-example-of-yagni-simplest-thing-possible-in-action/

Related articles

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• COBOL For GCC – a GNU project – Free Software Foundation (cobolforgcc.sourceforge.net)

TAPUniversity has partnered with gnomio to launch its learning management system ahead.  Additional must-have features include test bank expansion and knowledge sharing tools.  An innovator in online project management training since 2006, this partnership ensures our delivery keeps paced with your learning needs! Just click on the TAPUniversity LMS* on the menu to access the new TAPUniversity.

Also your first touch point with TAPUniversity is now our public content.  Dig in, learn, share, give your opinion and engage with us as we TAP into the future!

benchmarking reveals the fingerprint of a new system

Benchmarking is a valid, powerful and concrete way to compare a new system or process to the current, “as-is” state OR to compare multiple systems in a vendor selection process. To ensure each of those adjectives (valid, powerful and concrete) are met here’s some suggestions:

1. Valid – ensure a level playing field in all systems evaluated – think “sameness”!  The same approach, conditions and evaluation guides need to be used.  Many years ago, while benchmarking systems for Nebraska’s first Automate Fingerprint Identification System for the Nebraska State Patrol (circa 1994) we included fingerprints that would match, partially match and had zero probability of matching.  One vendor objected to the zero match fingerprints (called latent fingerprints).  We held firm in the benchmark and onsite testing – in part that two other vendors had already complied.
2. Powerful – benchmarks of the current process, user interaction and system performance ensure that new systems can be fairly and completely verified. This is powerful and makes for an apples to apples comparison.  If the current system provides 99.99% up-time and less than 2 hours for return to operational state, then all replacement systems can be held to that standard, OR BETTER!
3. Concrete performing benchmarks is a concrete way to see a set of requirements in action.  A few years back (2004) I facilitated a vendor review for a modernization of a large state agency unemployment insurance system.  Three leading vendors had pitched all sorts of cutting edge development frameworks, tool sets and approaches – it was at benchmarking that the complexity (or over complexity) and mismatch was found.

Benchmark away!  Capture metrics for quality, quantity, speed of your current system and maintain those metrics. They are the seeds for benchmarking.

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TAPUniversity Blog surpasses 100,000 visits!

Time for a little celebration.  Today the TAPUniversity blog surpassed 100,000 visits or reads.  Over the last two years our blog readership and contributions have grown steadily.  Several hundred professionals check in each day and explore over 400 articles and growing.    We’ll continue to publish and hope you’ll share in our exploration of the Management Nexus as well; from agile, to business analysis, kanban, leadership, lean, management, project management and six sigma. 

Thank you!

David Kohrell, editor, TAPUniversity Blog and Management Nexus

As well as blogging for Tap University, I am also a member of the team behind Pragnalysis.com, a website which provides free BA tools and templates to the BA community.  I’m extremely excited to announce the launch of our latest initiative :  A fully functioning, open source, requirements management tool.  The tool will be completely free to use and re-distribute, and a Beta version can be downloaded and used immediately:

You can download the ReqLine Requirements Management Tool now by visiting http://www.pragnalysis.com

Full details of the tool can be found on the website, however its features include:

• A common repository for all requirements
• Ability to maintain individual requirements, along with their status (draft/signed off)
• Ability to define requirements groups – releases, iterations etc
• Reporting functionality including various dashboard-reports and the ability to export a requirements catalogue
• Logging and monitoring of risks, issues, assumptions and dependencies
• An intuitive way to link requirements back to high-level goals and objectives, ensuring that stakeholders consider business value throughout the project
• Built in change-control and impact analysis functionality
• Project glossary

It has been very exciting to have been involved in the creation of such a useful tool. ReqLine is a requirements management tool designed for BAs by BAs, and we’ve combined the experience of a number of BA practitioners to create this first Beta release.  The Beta version is a single user, single machine version – but it is anticipated that future versions would be multi-user and server based.

Please try the tool, and provide feedback directly to me or any other member of the Pragnalysis team.

For more information, please visit http://www.pragnalysis.com

I look forward to hearing from you!

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Glossary, Data Dictionaries and Business Rule review doesn't have to be boring!

Equally at home with Use Case creation, or the earlier generation’s  database analysis,  Data Dictionaries and Glossaries provide a common place to store and retrieve definitions.  They’re used by business and technical roles.  The premise is to understand what is needed for a field of data or an entire table or record of data (aka data set) and let that understanding drive solution delivery .

In Use Case generation they form a close relationship with Business Rules.  Where Business Rules include processing logic – a Glossary Definition is simple expression.  For example the Glossary definition of “Ethnicity” may be referenced by a Business Rule on Equal Employment Opportunity validation and then referenced by multiple Use Cases and Scenarios.  Make sense?

In practice, I’ve seen Glossary definitions evolve into Business Rules and Business Rules trim down to Glossary definition.  The benefit of that swapping is when it’s done with a group of users or customers who then, with the information technology team members, gain a greater understanding of what is involved in their system and how it’s connected!

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Business Rules can be fun!

Business Rules.  Universal definitions or process descriptions that transcend a single use case or process flow.  A little bit bigger than a glossary definition (such as income range, gender, ethnicity) but not quite a usage scenario in its own right.  Business rules as they’re refined, adapted and updated are invaluable requirements assets – they really can help collect and focus attention.  Customers and sponsors like them because they provide a connecting point in the IT world.  For much of the same reason developers and quality assurance team members like them because they help maintain focus and provide an opportunity to write code once, reuse many times!

Some sample business rules include:

1. Payment receipt
2. Payment authorization (ACH, debit, credit card)
3. User login validation
4. Account balance
5. Purge record

The analysis includes creating those business rules and determining which processes benefit from their reference.  Time spent to gather and update business rules is rewarded with consistent and expedited delivery!

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One a hundred problem tracking tools and a personal favorite - BUGZILLA!

Problems, issues, bugs, defects, action items, punch list, clean up tables – so many synonymous terms for the same underlying concept – tracking known “stuff” and making sure it gets resolved before a product or service is released.   While risk management concerns the known- unknown, management reserves address unknown  -unknown, problem tracking is smack dab in the middle of the here and now.  It’s real!

As there are multiple ways to describe it, there are also dozens of tools to track it.  Over the course of my delivery I’ve used Defect Tracker, Bugzilla, RUP, Spreadsheets (Lotus, Quattro Pro, Excel), Public Folders (Microsoft), Silk, Mercury Tester, Sharepoint, Quick Place and large flowing legal pads with a thing called a pencil.

While using those tools I’ve found a few simple tips help to keep my and my team’s attention focused.  I use the term “AIR”.  It helps breath some fresh air across this stuff and make sure the mildew does not mire your project down!

1. Create a category for Action Items (issues or problems that have been assigned to a single person with a specific date)
2. Create a category for Issues / Problems (issues or problems that are known and may transcend your current project or change order)
3. Create a category for Risks (issues or problems that have not yet occurred but you’ve deemed may occur).
4. For Action Items and Issues / Problems assign an impact rating if it is not addressed.  The probability is equal to “1″ since it’s a known.  The decision support is how much that issue will impact your project.  Higher impact issues rise up in their priority for fast assignment to an Action Item
5. Keep the AIR up-to-date with any project scheduling tools you might use (Project, Clarity, etc) – a project schedule is a collection of Action Items (aka tasks).
6. Review the most pressing, the top 10 action items, issues/problems and risks with your team regularly.  That could mean reviewing those once a week or, if you’re in the midst of an Extreme Programming or SCRUM or similar Agile approach, every day.
7. Use this to help guide your product and service launches.  Transfer any lingering problems/issues to the operational support team.

Related articles

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