When you separate the “doing” from the measurement of the doing, you start to establish credibility for the work.
From: Herding Cats: The Role of Program Planning and Controls (PP&C)
- Baskerville – cultured, dignified and just and admirable
- Bodoni – elegant, subjective, both classic and modern
- Caslon – dignified, formal, vigorous but graceful
- Franklin Gothic – classic sans serif
- Frutiger – strong, readable, simple, smooth
- Futura – elgante sans serif
- Garamond – classically elegant, adult
- Gill Sans – sans serif font with a strong, warm and friendly personality
- Helvetica – neutral without being boring, simple, contemporary
- Optima – smooth, refined, calming, elegant, in my view, however, partially limited line width for presentations
- Rockwell – owned, bold, confident
From: Warum ignorieren Sie Typographie in Präsentationen? Die wichtigsten Regeln!
Read the passage carefully. Determine its structure. Identify the author’s purpose in writing. Make a note in the margin when you get confused, or when you think something is important.
Reread. This time divide the passage into sections or stages of thought. The author’s use of paragraphing will often be a useful guide. Label, on the passage itself, each section or stage of thought. Underlying key ideas and terms. Write notes in the margin.
Write one sentence summaries, on a separate sheet of paper, of each stage of thought.
Write a thesis: a one or two sentence summary of the entire passage. The thesis should express the central idea of the passage, as you have determined it from the preceding steps. You may find it useful to keep in mind the what, who, why, where, when, and how of the matter. For persuasive passages, summarize in a sentence the author’s conclusion. For descriptive passages, indicate the subject of the description and its key feature. Note: in some cases, a suitable thesis may already be in the original passage. If so, you may want to quote it directly in your summary.
Write the first draft of your summary by (1) combining the thesis with your list of one sentence summaries or (2)combining the thesis with one sentence summaries plus significant details from the passage. In either case, you eliminate repetition and less important information. Disregard minor details or generalize them. Use as few words as possible to convey the main ideas.
Check your summary against the original passage and make whatever adjustments are necessary for accuracy and completeness.
Revise your summary, inserting traditional words and phrases where necessary to ensure coherence. Check for style. Avoid a series of short, choppy sentences. Combine sentences for a smooth logical flow of ideas. Check for grammatical correctness, punctuation, and spelling.
Behrens, L., Rosen, L. J., & Beedles, B. (2002). A Sequence For Academic Writing. New York: Longman.
Bottom line…success equals focus.
From N2Growth
The golden rule is a good standard which is further improved by doing unto others, wherever possible, as they want to be done by.
Google translation from Meine goldenen Regeln des Projektmanagements
My golden rules of project management
Hi All,
Recently I have reported in our company intranet on the golden rules of project management.
Each rule, I could not agree more! Stable project team, good planning and controlling, clear structures and authenticity are crucial. I still think it would add a few personal issues and experiences, rather than practical tips rather than a theoretical treatise:
Tell me how your project starts and I’ll tell you how it ends. This saying is just right: the foundations of a project is built at the beginning of the project: goal definition, project structuring, team composition, organization, … There are many factors that need to be carefully considered and planned. Of course, changing every single point in each course of the project – but it’s much easier to adapt an existing plan as erstmal create a plan and the existing way to rebuild it reinpasst in this plan.
Complexity can not be reduced by simplifying, but only by understanding. The customer has high standards and precise ideas, he has complex business processes, which he wants to make using the solution to be created by us effitzienter. Our goal again is the successful and efficient completion of the project. Therefore, we must understand the customer! And although widely as possible. Only in this way we are able to map its processes and IT needs of technically successful.
Projects are successful because of motivated people – so treat them well! A stable and well-functioning project team is the key to the success of a project. Therefore, each project should have a special attention on how each individual and the team goes as a whole. Keywords: feelgood factor!
A pragmatic approach is able to react flexibly to changes in the project. Less Organization, more common sense. Simple ways to target search and go. Has a direct influence on “Fit to the budget. Pragmatic – one of my favorite words.
Project work must take place across phase. Not only the current phase (task, activity, task, process, …) is make it supergut, but also the future. Therefore, every project must have not only its own task in mind, but also the subsequent ones. At best, the next phase. Example: The design team does a great job and designed the egg-laying Wollmichsau 2.0. However, the customer is not so much budget, so that the implementation is beyond the budget. That brings the entire project team in trouble, because you must realize this is now the customer. Stupid also …
Fit to budget. We are perfectionists and want to offer our customers the best. And thus prove our competence and therefore obviously do a great job. AAAAB: It helps us all, not if this is exceeded the budget – because we can not permanently exist in the market. Therefore, some services must be adapted to the budget – even if it often hurts.
Organization is half the battle – but goal-oriented organization is more efficient. This fits at first glance, not quite … but the more pragmatic middle ground is what matters! Protocols Leave: Yes! Use e-mail distribution list: Yes! Maintain wiki pages: Yes! Documentation: Yes! But please, with little formality – and above all, targeted and effective!
While paper is patient – but also constantly! Unpopular with everyone -) except for some (larger customers. The final touch of a successful project for me is a documentary that reads the customer actually uses and. Everything else is for the ton. And should therefore not only not be produced. A documentary also stores the knowledge permanently and keeps the knowledge in the company. In many projects, the document will rausgezögert but until the end, and then the last the dogs bite: He has to document the last six months project work. My experience to create: The documentation at the beginning of a project as a blank document and not be weary in Stand-Up/Projektmeeting colleagues point out the findings of recent days hold it in writing. This must indeed not be the same in prose, yes, it goes even a small comment with words of the author. Later, this can then be formulated and provided with consultingmäßig Pictures. Works great for user manuals!
Well, now it is a longer post now .. Is also an important issue. I hope I could give you some food for thought. Who wants to read yet – I have a few (not considered qualified) compiled sources:
http://www.guerilla-projektmanagement.de/index.php/archives/2010/01/22/goldene-regeln/
http://aron.blogg.de/eintrag.php?id=239
http://manager4rent.wordpress.com/2007/09/21/% E2% 80% 9E12-golden-rules-successful project management /
http://www.kompetenzschaffterfolge.de/images/10_goldene_Regeln.pdf
There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.
Several people have asked me how to get on the blogroll. Here is my curmudgeonly view of how that is accomplished:
- Ask me
Surely it is not as simple as that? Well, it is, but…I read upwards of 1000 blog posts per day in order to keep up with things (i.e., not just project management). Consequently, I only want to look at high quality, really useful, stuff. I probably prune 20% of the blogs I follow monthly (yes, I probably add more than that). Here is what will get you pruned:
- Failure to deliver a full-text RSS feed. I read a LOT of blogs. I WILL NOT click through to read an article unless it is exceptional. And face it folks – there are only a few exceptional blogs out there worth spending additional time getting to. So I’ll follow a blog for a short time to see if the posts are exceptionally high quality, then you are history.
- Failure to be interesting. I am passionate about project management. I have strong opinions about project management. I love to teach project management. I’ve been doing it a very long time. I love the practical aspects. I love the theoretical aspects. So tell me something I don’t know. Tell me some I need to know and need to reinforce. But be interesting.
- If you don’t know how to spell, use a spell checker. If you don’t know how to write, use a grammar checker. And if you don’t know how to use HTML then either learn or become a consumer rather than a producer on the Internet.
- Don’t repond to me if I leave a comment on your blog. This is supposed to be a conversation. Worse, don’t answer me if I email you directly. If I take the time to try and engage, and you won’t, then you fall outside of my circle of trust. And off my blogroll, because obviously you are not important to me.
Let me respond to the folks complaining about losing advertising revenues because I won’t click through to the site. If I think a post is noteworthy enough to tweet about then I am going to click through to your site. The bit.ly link that I use is a link to your full page, and that is where I send visitors. So you get your ad revenue…but not from me!
To those who say, “but you don’t have xxx on your blogroll”, my response is:
- See #1-4 above.
- It is possible I don’t know about it. Tell me.
- Remember this is MY blogroll. If you don’t like it, start your own.
Having said all this, here are today’s additions to the PM blogroll:
- A CEO’s Perspective on Project Management
- Alec Satin on People, Projects and Process
- All Things Project Management
- Change Management Blog
- Eric D. Brown’s Technology, Strategy, People & Projects
- Eye on the Workforce
- GigaBizByte
- Just My Thoughts
- Keeping the Peace
- Learning Leader
- Manager Skills And Management Development
- Maven Training Blog
- Paul Pondering
- PMinFOCUS
- Project Management For Real
- Project Management Guide
- Project Management Knowledge
- ProjectOffices.com
- Sounding Off
- The Enlightened Manager
- the Technology Garden
And yes, there have been some removals as well.
The tribal wisdom of the Dakota Indians, passed down from generation to generation, says that when you discover that you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount.
In the Public Service, however, a whole range of far more advanced strategies are often employed, such as:
- Change riders.
- Buy a stronger whip.
- Do nothing: “This is the way we have always ridden dead horses”.
- Visit other countries to see how they ride dead horses.
- Perform a productivity study to see if lighter riders improve the dead horse’s performance.
- Hire a contractor to ride the dead horse.
- Harness several dead horses together in an attempt to increase the speed.
- Provide additional funding and/or training to increase the dead horse’s performance.
- Appoint a committee to study the horse and assess how dead it actually is.
- Re-classify the dead horse as “living-impaired”.
- Develop a Strategic Plan for the management of dead horses.
- Rewrite the expected performance requirements for all horses.
- Modify existing standards to include dead horses.
- Declare that, as the dead horse does not have to be fed, it is less costly, carries lower overheads, and therefore contributes substantially more to the bottom line than many other horses.
- Promote the dead horse to a supervisory position.
From: Wicked Thoughts
Why Experts Never Stop Learning
Several years ago, we conducted a study analyzing the knowledge of professionals with 15 years or more of experience to those with less than a year of experience. One of the questions we asked was this: “On a scale of 0 to 10, with 0 representing no knowledge at all and 10 being all there is to know about your field, where would you rate your level of knowledge?”
Now for this discussion, if I asked you that question, how would you answer? What would be your rating? Keep that number in mind as I tell you what our research participants told us.
The experienced professionals reported their knowledge, on average, at 4.5. In other words, they saw themselves knowing about half of everything there was to know about their field. The novices reported their knowledge at the 8.5 level. They, in sharp contrast to their experienced colleagues, believed they pretty much knew everything there was to know about their field—and this was all with less than one year of experience! I found the results shocking—until I gave it some thought, and then it made sense for several reasons.
First, experts make it a point to always be learning. That is how they became experts in the first place. They are insatiable learners when it comes to their areas of expertise. And as long as they maintain this ‘always ready to learn’ perspective, they will remain at the forefront of their field.
Second, because of their extensive knowledge and experience, experts know what they don’t know. Novices don’t know enough to know how much they don’t know. Perhaps in time these novices will begin discovering the gaps in their knowledge. Until then, they will remain comfortable knowing just what they need to know to minimally get their job done.
Third, experts’ knowledge is specific to their area of expertise. In other words, when one refers to an ‘expert’s knowledge’, that knowledge is largely confined to a single field of specialty. Because you may be an expert in sales does not mean you will be expert in manufacturing or management. Expertise favors the specialist and specialized skills, developed over many years of extensive training and deliberate practice.
Finally, when you believe that you pretty much know all there is to know about your field, how motivated are you to attend conferences, participate in workshops, listen to colleagues, or read? Not very. But, if you believe you only know a percentage of all there is to know in your field and you aspire to a top performer, your motivation to learn skyrockets.
Despite a common misconception, experts do not see themselves as ‘all knowing’ individuals. They, therefore, continue to learn, regardless of any accomplishments or recognitions they have achieved. Because they know that what got them where they are today will not necessarily keep or advance them tomorrow. It was, after all, by learning all they could, whenever they could that helped make them expert in the first place.
A new Web site, Open Educational Resources Center for California, brings together information on free and open textbooks and course materials in one location. Though the Web site was designed for California’s community-college faculty members, it could be a useful resource for anyone trying to find learning materials in the public domain.
The site links to more than 400 open textbooks and peer reviews of open textbooks.
From ResourceShelf
Remember, there are two kinds of people – Project Managers, and everyone else who wish they were Project Managers.
From The Critical Path
SMART goals? Nope. How about STUPID goals?
Long ago, Deming warned managers of target setting through his 11th point of leadership: “Eliminate numerical goals, numerical quotas and management by objectives. Substitute leadership.”
So, if SMART goals are stupid, let me introduce you to STUPID goals:
Sincere: attack issues you really care about. Don’t waste time where is heart isn’t
Transparent: you likely won’t achieve big things alone. Make your goal as much visible as possible so others know how they can help you
Unique: your worth depends on the assets no one else has. Cultivate those
Preeminent: focus on outstanding things to have outstanding impact
Independent: reaching a goal is hard enough, don’t tangle them together
Daring: be courageous, and push beyond your limit
Once set, let flourish.
Revise when necessary.
From: Running Agile
- It takes one woman nine months to have a baby. It cannot be done in one month by impregnating nine women.
- The same work under the same conditions will be estimated differently by ten different estimators or by one estimator at ten different times.
- Any project can be estimated accurately (once it’s completed).
- The most valuable and least used WORD in a project manager’s vocabulary is “NO”.
- The most valuable and least used PHRASE in a project manager’s vocabulary is “I don’t know”.
- Nothing is impossible for the person who doesn’t have to do it.
- You can con a sucker into committing to an impossible deadline, but you cannot con him into meeting it.
- At the heart of every large project is a small project trying to get out.
- If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything.
- The more desperate the situation the more optimistic the situatee.
- If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it probably is a duck.
- Too few people on a project can’t solve the problems – too many create more problems than they solve.
- A problem shared is a buck passed.
- A change freeze is like the abominable snowman: it is a myth and would anyway melt when heat is applied.
- A user will tell you anything you ask about, but nothing more.
- A user is somebody who tells you what they want the day you give them what they asked for.
- Right answers to wrong questions are just as wrong as wrong answers to right questions.
- Of several possible interpretations of a communication, the least convenient is the correct one.
- What you don’t know hurts you.
- The conditions attached to a promise are forgotten, only the promise is remembered.
- There’s never enough time to do it right first time but there’s always enough time to go back and do it again.
- I know that you believe that you understand what you think I said but I am not sure you realise that what you heard is not what I meant.
- Estimators do it in groups – bottom up and top down.
- Good estimators aren’t modest: if it’s huge they say so.
- The sooner you begin coding the later you finish.
- Anything that can be changed will be changed until there is no time left to change anything.
- If project content is allowed to change freely the rate of change will exceed the rate of progress.
- Change is inevitable – except from vending machines.
- The person who says it will take the longest and cost the most is the only one with a clue how to do the job.
- Difficult projects are easy, impossible projects are difficult, miracles are a little trickier.
- If you don’t plan, it doesn’t work. If you do plan, it doesn’t work either. Why plan!
- The bitterness of poor quality lingers long after the sweetness of meeting the date is forgotten.
- If you’re 6 months late on a milestone due next week but nevertheless really believe you can make it, you’re a project manager.
- A verbal contract isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.
- What is not on paper has not been said.
- If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.
- If you fail to plan you are planning to fail.
- If you don’t attack the risks, the risks will attack you.
- A little risk management saves a lot of fan cleaning.
- The sooner you get behind schedule, the more time you have to make it up.
- A badly planned project will take three times longer than expected – a well planned project only twice as long as expected.
- If you can keep your head while all about you are losing theirs, you haven’t understood the plan.
- When all’s said and done a lot more is said than done.
- If at first you don’t succeed, remove all evidence you ever tried.
- Never put off until tomorrow what you can leave until the day after.
- Feather and down are padding – changes and contingencies will be real events.
- There are no good project managers – only lucky ones.
- The more you plan the luckier you get.
From: Beyond the Firewall
Project management is not a popularity contest.
From The Disfavor of Doing Favors
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