I am happy to serve you and share with you my thoughts and knowledge. Thank you so much
2011 Report
Or
2011 Report – Copy Paste the URL Link Below in your Address Bar
http://1on1consultingfirm.wordpress.com/2011/annual-report/
Spirit of SCRUM
The spirit of SCRUM is a power point presentation allowing you to understand the relationship between Agile, PMBOK, Waterfall, and SCRUM.
I started this presentation with the foundation of Agile which is Lean processes that has originated from Toyota Production Systems.
The fact is that they are all methodologies in approaching issues in a methodical and conceptual way. The philosophy behind it is that at the end one must be able to understand how one goes from point A to point B and are we able to reproduce, recreate, measure and improve.
Please click below link to open the PDF presentation:
What is the best methodology to implement in any organization?
Here are the list of methodologies and standardizations that are out there:
Agile, PM, ITIL, TPS, Six Sigma, HACCP, GMP, ISO series and many more………..
I am always asked this questions and my response has always been it depends. And really it does depend on several factors:
1. The Type of the Industry – Are in software development, IT service provider, manufacturing, R&D, food industry, financial industry….?
2. The culture of the organization. Is the organization ready to embrace this methodology? What is the need? And how will that help them? Will the new methodology add any value to the organization?
3. The leadership – Is the leadership 100% behind this new methodology. Have you been able to get their buy in?
4. The Employees – Are the employees ready for change? Are the
5. The Budget – Is there enough money to provide for training, and other support?
These are the attributes one should look for:
1. Metrics Driven
2. Repeatability
3. Reproducibility
4. Manageability
No matter what methodology you implement it must be able to:
1. Provide Results
2. Be Consistent
3. Be Adaptable
4. Be Scalable
At the end of the day I think it really depends on leadership and how much buy in you can get from them. You need their support not only monetary but as well as moral support in order to have an easy implementation with less headache.
Sincerely;
Amir Nasiri, MBA, MIS, PMP
ASQ Six Sigma Certified, Hyperion Certified
http://www.linkedin.com/in/amirnasiri
Minimize Waste in Software Development – An Agile Approach
When one hears of waste it is right away assumed that we are talking about tangible products and it is related to production and manufacturing industry
In Toyota Production System (TPS) there are three distinguished wastes:
Muda, Mura and Muri
TPS also defines the cause of waste such as transportation, waiting, overproduction, defect, inventory, movement and inefficient processes.
TPS has also established certain metrics as well as measurement to not only identify waste but also minimize it. If a company is unable to control and measure the waste that it generates the cost are huge in a log term
In software industry the kind of waste we face are rework bug fixes and
inefficient utilization of resources at the same time the misalignment with IT and Business
The fundamentals of an Agile approach are iteration, integration, automated developer test and simple design. The focus in iteration is to reduce the time to the market by utilizing iteration backlogs in order to reach a solid Done state. Continuous integration allows the developer team to reduce the overall development time through identifying bugs and errors as early as possible in development and leverage the time to test vs. development more efficiently.
SCRUM an Agile methodology is a great approach to minimize waste. By applying Agile methodologies such XP or SCRUM. Many who are not familiar with SCRUM and know a little about it think that SCRUM is not scalable. They are actually wrong. Ken Schwaber who published a book in 2007 talked about managing scalability in an SCRUM approach in his book called “Enterprise SCRUM”. Jeff Sutherland also has applied what he refers to as meta SCRUM and has been using the Type C SCRUM at PatientKeeper.
But the most important factor in understanding how to minimize and measure waste one must be able to align IT goals and strategy with that of business. In many software companies that lack strategic alignment the waste is much great and in some cases out of control.
I believe waste can be minimized by applying the Agile methodologies such as SCRUM. At the same time been able to understand the goals and vision of the IT department including the software development and how that can utilized to leverage against competition. The alignment of Business goals and objectives can also help provide the company its competitive advantage. Thus applying a well planned approach and methodology and clear alignment between IT and business one can minimize waste even in Software Development companies.
Sincerely;
Amir Nasiri, MBA, MIS, PMP
ASQ Six Sigma Certified, Hyperion Certified
http://www.linkedin.com/in/amirnasiri
News, Statistics & Quotes
News from Internet Retailer:
- Groupon Inc. closed $950 Million in new financing amid reports that an IPO maybe on the way. It is estimated that Groupon can have a value of over $15 billion after the IPO. I think Google should have had offered more, what do you think?
- LivingSocial flexed its muscles by running the most successful marketing campaign in one day, selling Amazon gift cards at half price. It is the No 2 daily deal site in US by traffic. It has also acquired a majority stakes in LetsBonus provider of daily discounts.
- Google has purchased e-book publishing assets. The acquisition came about after Google opened its eBookstore e-commerce. The consumers can access over 3 Million Free Books and purchase hundreds of thousands more titles. This is a move that can perhaps help Google to compete with Amazon.com Inc.
- Basket Lady and m-commerce
- Amazon has expanded its distribution network overseas
- m-commerce is the next e-commerce from Amazon to Disney the only thing is that many designers and software companies are struggling to provide the same look and feel as their e-commerce site.
Interesting Statistics from PM Network Magazine:
- Nearly 60% of PM say they don’t have formal benefits measurements and realization processes in place.
- 68% of companies don’t consistently have an effective sponsor to provide clear project direction or to escalate problems.
- 50% the portion of companies say their projects don’t consistently achieve what they set out to.
Good Quotes for PM:
“We have to stop seeing change as something that must be resisted and limited. Change is the only constant and Agile is a great way of handling it.” – Jeff Smith, SunCorp Business Services (PM Network Feb 2011)
“In Agile, the change management decisions should be delegated to the people on the ground – the team, product owner or project manager – unless the project is threatened in terms of cost or time.” – Steven Thomas, BBC, London, England (PM Network Feb 2011)
References:
- PM Network Feb 2011
- Internet Retailer Feb 2011
Is there Room for Project Managers in an Agile like environment such as SCRUM?
Agile Approach
Agile methodology is based on group of methodologies or frameworks used in software development that is based on iterative development between self organized and cross functional teams. Here are some Agile methodologies or frameworks:
• Extreme Programming
• Scrum
• Adaptive Software Development (ASD)
• Crystal Clear
• Dynamic Systems
• Development Method (DSDM)
• Feature Driven Development (FDD)
• Lean software development
• Microsoft Solution Framework (MSF)
• Agile Unified Process (AUP)
Project Management and Cloud Computing
A while ago I wrote in my blog about cloud computing and I did suggest that the trend of cloud computing will be moving towards mobile industry. Using cloud computing with your mobile technology that trend will have much added value to consumers than anything else.
But can cloud computing help Project Managers? Many businesses spend thousands of dollars on project management software and training but they can’t even understand the value that is adding to business. Just recently our business upgraded our project management software from 2007 to 2010. We just acquired the previous version last year.
However, is that the software that should define the project management or should the project managers themselves be able to understand the fundamental methodologies and tools in project management?
I mean what is so important that one must spend all these money to buy a project management software application and upgrade it because of one or more added futures by Microsoft.
Is that not how Microsoft makes its money? Every two years adds one or more futures that probably they should have added in their previous versions.
That is why I think cloud computing such as Google Docs and other open source applications are handy especially for small and mid size businesses who can’t afford the hefty licensing fees. As a project manager you can utilize Google Spreadsheet customize it and create your own project management tool and no you don’t have to be a programmer.
By using cloud computing applications such as Google you can share that information with anyone anywhere as long as they have access to Internet. Google also offers free websites and it hosts it for you for free. You can acquire a unique domain name and forward that address the Goggle Site. The Google Site has project management customized page that allows project managers to track their projects.
So next time you plan to spend thousands of dollars on licensed application try to look at open source applications out there that are free and consider cloud computing. In addition, try to become creative and use your skills to add value instead of relying on expensive tools.
Amir Nasiri, MBA, MIS, PMP
ASQ Six Sigma Certified, Hyperion Certified
http://www.linkedin.com/in/amirnasiri
Project Management and Social Networking
The recent past year social networking websites such as Facebook, Twitters, LinkedIn, Plaxo and more have shaped our daily life’s, in the way we interact or communicate with one another. Some people are so addicted to these social networks that they actually get help for it. There are even disease name after it such as Twitter Twitch syndrome or Facebook Junkie, I actually made those up, but really people are hooked on these websites. Again like anything else if it is over used it can have negative impacts.
However, I would like to talk about the positive aspects of social networking and how that can help project managers. If anyone remembers two years ago, the green movements in Iran and as a result of rigged elections thousands poured to the streets and given the government’s strict security, people were still able to meet and stage protests against the rogue state of that country. These coordination and synchronized development was all done through social media. Protestors were able to communicate with one another using various social media means and outside help poured in to help break firewalls put in by the government so that the protestors can easily communicate.
So can Social Media have a positive impact on Project Management and PMO? I have noticed from my past experience if an organization wants to leverage its assets which is mainly its resources as well as become competitive it must take advantage of technology trends. Each functional department can analyze its strengths and weaknesses and utilize that information in order to become competitive.
Each functional department must act as if they are running their own organization; therefore, must think strategy and be able to transform their functional department into profit center instead of cost center.That includes functional departments such as the PMO. If PMO in an organization doesn’t take innovations as well as IT trends as part of their growth and competitive strategy they will not be able to become sustainable force within the organization.
How can social media help PMO? Here are some thoughts and feel free to add yours as well.
1. Searching for vendors
2. Searching for team members
3. Posting questions
4. Get public opinion for public projects
Project Management Humour – Yes we have :)
Six Phases of a Project
1. Enthusiasm
2. Disillusionment
3. Panic
4. Search for the Guilty
5. Punishment of the Innocent
6. Praise and Honors for the Non Participants.
Approach to align Project Management Office With Your Organization
Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to understand how to align the PMO with the strategic business objectives of Your Organization. The PMO will improve the throughput of business systems projects, lower costs, and improve resource utilization.
The PMO is the center of excellence for project management by providing project support services, and not overhead. It will increase visibility of the quality project management skills that Your Organization team will provide.
The main tasks of the PMO and the PM in preparation for and during an engagement are:
• Project Communication
• Project Planning
• Project Scheduling
• Risk Analysis
• Project Tracking/Measurement
• Implementation/Release
To Read The Entire Document please click on the Link below:
Free Web Tools
I thought you will like these web sites as well. Most of them should be free please always read the footnotes carefully.
Please note these are 3rd party web site and I don’t have any affiliation or partnership. Any usage by you or your company or anyone else is at your own discretion and I or my company bears no responsibility or liability. You are using it at your own risk.
1. Any kind of templates you need anything from writing a business plan, financial plan, a Will or any legal non-legal documentation and templates free at your disposal from the God Father itself: Microsoft
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/templates/default.aspx
2. If you want to have conference call with multiple users in different locations.
http://www.freeconferencecall.com/index.asp
3. Access to Web Page:
http://www.asp.net/community/projects/
4. Steps to Creating a Simple Form in FrontPage 2002:
http://www.microsoftfrontpage.com/content/ARTICLES/dbpower.html#_Toc517024652
http://www.surveymonkey.com/Default.aspx
6. To have share calendar. This tool is very useful if you want to use it for your social club so you can share meetings or dates of events with all the members:
7. Share PowerPoint presentations without email attachments
http://www.authorgen.com/authorpoint-lite-free/powerpoint-to-flash-converter.aspx
or slide share
8. Designing Flash Design
http://www.5min.com/Category/Arts/Digital
9. List of some free Applications
http://www.sharewareconnection.com/titles/find-the-difference.htm
10. Free Desktop remote connection must have skype installed. You can remotely connect to someone PC and have control. Both parties need to have Skype and Yugma on their desktop or laptop.
https://www.yugma.com/share_skype.php
11. To set-up a meeting web site for your cluc, social club or non-profit agency
12. Free Gantt Chart application to show the progress of your project
13. Free Blog page for any kind of blogger
14. All Kind of great free tools from www.google.com
http://www.google.com/intl/en/options/
I mainly use Book Search, Picassa and Groups
How to design a competitive web site?
How to use technology to leverage your competitive edge and have a competitive advantage?
Analyzing the environment – Five Forces Analysis
Five Forces Analysis helps the marketer to contrast a competitive environment. It has similarities with other tools for environmental audit, such as PEST analysis, but tends to focus on the single, stand alone, business or SBU (Strategic Business Unit) rather than a single product or range of products. For example, Dell would analyse the market for Business Computers i.e. one of its SBUs.
Five forces analsysis looks at five key areas namely the threat of entry, the power of buyers, the power of suppliers, the threat of substitutes, and competitive rivalry.
The threat of entry.
- Economies of scale e.g. the benefits associated with bulk purchasing.
- The high or low cost of entry e.g. how much will it cost for the latest technology?
- Ease of access to distribution channels e.g. Do our competitors have the distribution channels sewn up?
- Cost advantages not related to the size of the company e.g. personal contacts or knowledge that larger companies do not own or learning curve effects.
- Will competitors retaliate?
- Government action e.g. will new laws be introduced that will weaken our competitive position?
- How important is differentiation? e.g. The Champagne brand cannot be copied. This desensitises the influence of the environment.
The power of buyers.
- This is high where there a few, large players in a market e.g. the large grocery chains.
- If there are a large number of undifferentiated, small suppliers e.g. small farming businesses supplying the large grocery chains.
- The cost of switching between suppliers is low e.g. from one fleet supplier of trucks to another.
The power of suppliers.
The power of suppliers tends to be a reversal of the power of buyers.
- Where the switching costs are high e.g. Switching from one software supplier to another.
- Power is high where the brand is powerful e.g. Cadillac, Pizza Hut, Microsoft.
- There is a possibility of the supplier integrating forward e.g. Brewers buying bars.
- Customers are fragmented (not in clusters) so that they have little bargaining power e.g. Gas/Petrol stations in remote places.
The threat of substitutes
- Where there is product-for-product substitution e.g. email for fax Where there is substitution of need e.g. better toothpaste reduces the need for dentists.
- Where there is generic substitution (competing for the currency in your pocket) e.g. Video suppliers compete with travel companies.
- We could always do without e.g. cigarettes.
Competitive Rivalry
- This is most likely to be high where entry is likely; there is the threat of substitute products, and suppliers and buyers in the market attempt to control. This is why it is always seen in the center of the diagram.
Just to let you know this the reference for this article if you needed more information:
http://www.marketingteacher.com/Lessons/lesson_fivefoces.htm
Just to let you know this the reference for this article if you needed more information:http://www.marketingteacher.com/Lessons/lesson_fivefoces.htm
How to Avoid Pitfalls while managing a project?
Have you ever successfully planned a birthday party, a wedding, a charity event? If so, aside from any embarrassing moments that may have occurred, chances are you’ve got a handle on the basic project planning and management process. Interestingly, these types of projects often experience the same basic issues that large corporate projects do. Even strong, organised and experienced planners have found themselves managing a project that ends up in chaos and results in missed deadlines and budget overruns.
While certainly not an exhaustive list, the following are some common pitfalls that projects experience and some tips to help make a project more successful and avoid the potential for chaos.
Pitfall #1: Not creating a common project vision at the onset of a project
A shared vision (or goals) and expected project outcomes across key stakeholders is key to managing project efforts and avoiding scope creep.
- Involve leaders and managers in the development of the project vision and ensure that all anticipated benefits are clearly understood and agreed upon.
- Identify success criteria and be specific. For example, total project costs will not exceed a certain dollar amount and the project will be rolled out within a specifically stated timeframe.
- Define the boundaries of the project by knowing what is out of scope (as well as in scope).
Words of Wisdom: Facilitate your stakeholders to the creation of a common vision and ensure that they own the vision and the ultimate solution.
Pitfall #2: Not getting organised, staying organised and organising those around you
Strong planning and organisational skills are essential traits of a successful Project Manager.
- Develop your project plan at the task level and communicate it to your project team and stakeholders. It’s well worth the time in order to keep you and everyone else organised.
- Create a robust communication plan and make sure it’s a “living document.”
- Understand who you need to communicate with, how they want to be communicated with and the frequency. Then determine how your messaging should differ by stakeholder.
- Conduct an interactive kick-off meeting to ensure everyone involved with the project is fully engaged.
- Ask for continuous feedback and be prepared to adjust your plan to address changing stakeholder needs.
- Develop risk and issue logs. Risks and issues are a part of every project. Get ahead of the game and brainstorm with people on potential risks and ways to avoid them before they become issues that impact your project’s scope, timeframe, quality and/or budget.
Words of Wisdom: The devil is in the detail. Review your plans at least twice daily. It’s the best 15-20 minutes you’ll ever spend.
Pitfall #3: Not involving the right people on the project
- Engage the right people at all levels of your organisation (and not necessarily those who simply want to chime in because it’s a high profile project) to solidify the project vision, avoid scope creep and implement.
- Ensure that all stakeholders understand what needs to happen, how it needs to happen and when.
- Identify a project sponsor, someone with authority and influence, and have them actively involved throughout the project.
- Communicate the project vision, project team roles and responsibilities and clearly set expectations.
- Ensure your key project decision makers understand the principles of good project management and that they need to operate within that framework.
- Include frontline personnel who can be key contributors to a project. They often provide insight into the “goings-on” of an organisation and have the ability to rally the troops when the rubber meets the road and things need to get done.
- Identify the nay-sayers and keep them very involved in the project (keep your friends close and your enemies closer).
Words of Wisdom: Don’t assume that senior leaders are the only ones that should be in your sights. Keep a laser focus on decision makers and those who directly impact your project.
Pitfall #4: Not asking for help and learning from others
“Mum’s the word” is not a mantra any project manager should embrace. Project managers who are new to project management or are managing a different type of project than they’ve managed before can have a steep learning curve.
- Identify people internally who have managed a similar project and talk about lessons learned from previous projects.
- Identify external sources who can impart their own words of wisdom on how to effectively manage a project.
- The Internet is a beautiful thing, use it to research project management best practices and tools and understand new technologies.
Words of Wisdom: Asking for help is not a sign of weakness. It’s better to ask for help then to place a project at risk. Let’s face it, every project has its ups and downs but it’s what you, as the Project Manager, do to handle the good and the bad that leads to project success and avoids project chaos.
Reference: From Internet an Article by Claudine Sirgant
Reference:
http://www.projectsmart.co.uk/avoiding-project-management-pitfalls.html
some other good references:
http://searchsoftwarequality.techtarget.com/news/column/0,294698,sid92_gci1344193,00.html
Reference:http://www.projectsmart.co.uk/avoiding-project-management-pitfalls.html
some other good references:http://searchsoftwarequality.techtarget.com/news/column/0,294698,sid92_gci1344193,00.html
How to measure a web site in terms of ROI?
There are no globally agreed definitions within web analytics as the industry bodies have been trying to agree definitions that are useful and definitive for some time. The main bodies who have had input in this area have been Jicwebs(Industry Committee for Web Standards)/ABCe (Auditing Bureau of Circulations electronic, UK and Europe), The WAA (Web Analytics Association, US) and to a lesser extent the IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau). This does not prevent the following list from being a useful guide, suffering only slightly from ambiguity. Both the WAA and the ABCe provide more definitive lists for those who are declaring their statistics using the metrics defined by either.
Hit (internet) – A request for a file from the web server. Available only in log analysis. The number of hits received by a website is frequently cited to assert its popularity, but this number is extremely misleading and dramatically over-estimates popularity. A single web-page typically consists of multiple (often dozens) of discrete files, each of which is counted as a hit as the page is downloaded, so the number of hits is really an arbitrary number more reflective of the complexity of individual pages on the website than the website’s actual popularity. The total number of visitors or page views provides a more realistic and accurate assessment of popularity.
Page view – A request for a file whose type is defined as a
page in log analysis. An occurrence of the script being run in page tagging. In log analysis, a single page view may generate multiple hits as all the resources required to view the page (images, .js and .css files) are also requested from the web server.
Visit / Session – A series of requests from the same uniquely identified client with a set timeout, often 30 minutes. A visit is expected to contain multiple page views.
First Visit / First Session – A visit from a visitor who has not made any previous visits.
Visitor / Unique Visitor / Unique User – The uniquely identified client generating requests on the web server (log analysis) or viewing pages (page tagging) within a defined time period (i.e. day, week or month). A Unique Visitor counts once within the timescale. A visitor can make multiple visits. Identification is made to the visitor’s computer, not the person, usually via cookie and/or IP+User Agent. Thus the same person visiting from two different computers will count as two Unique Visitors.
Repeat Visitor – A visitor that has made at least one previous visit. The period between the last and current visit is called visitor recency and is measured in days.
New Visitor – A visitor that has not made any previous visits. This definition creates a certain amount of confusion (see common confusions below), and is sometimes substituted with analysis of first visits.
Impression – An impression is each time an advertisement loads on a user’s screen. Anytime you see a banner, that is an impression.
Singletons – The number of visits where only a single page is viewed. While not a useful metric in and of itself the number of singletons is indicative of various forms of Click fraud as well as being used to calculate bounce rate and in some cases to identify automatons bots).
Bounce Rate – The percentage of visits where the visitor enters and exits at the same page without visiting any other pages on the site in between.
% Exit – The percentage of users who exit from a page.
Visibility time – The time a single page (or a blog, Ad Banner…) is viewed.
Session Duration – Average amount of time that visitors spend on the site each time they visit. This metric can be complicated by the fact that analytics programs can not measure the length of the final page view.
Page View Duration – Average amount of time that visitors spend on each page of the site. As with Session Duration, this metric is complicated by the fact that analytics programs can not measure the length of the final page view.
Page Depth / Page Views per Session – Page Depth is the average number of page views a visitor consumes before ending their session. It is calculated by dividing total number of page views by total number of sessions and is also called Page Views per Session or PV/Session.
Frequency / Session per Unique – Frequency measures how often visitors come to a website. It is calculated by dividing the total number of sessions (or visits) by the total number of unique visitors. Sometimes it is used to measure the loyalty of your audience.
I thought this was a great article:
Amir
This article was from a website. Here are other good website related to this topic;
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/291023/Web_Site_ROI
http://mashable.com/2009/10/27/social-media-roi/
http://www.webpagemistakes.ca/website-roi/
This article was from a website. Here are other good website related to this topic;
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/291023/Web_Site_ROI
http://mashable.com/2009/10/27/social-media-roi/
http://www.webpagemistakes.ca/website-roi/
Who is a project manager and what are their responsibilities?
“Project management is the discipline of planning, organizing and managing resources to bring about the successful completion of specific project goals and objectives.
The primary challenge of project management is to achieve all of the project goals and objectives while honoring the project constraints. Typical constraints are scope, time and budget. The secondary—and more ambitious—challenge is to optimize the allocation and integration of inputs necessary to meet pre-defined objectives. A project is a carefully defined set of activities that use resources (money, people, materials, energy, space, provisions, communication, motivation, etc.) to achieve the project goals and objectives.” (Wikipedia)
The primary challenge of project management is to achieve all of the project goals and objectives while honoring the project constraints. Typical constraints are scope, time and budget. The secondary—and more ambitious—challenge is to optimize the allocation and integration of inputs necessary to meet pre-defined objectives. A project is a carefully defined set of activities that use resources (money, people, materials, energy, space, provisions, communication, motivation, etc.) to achieve the project goals and objectives.” (Wikipedia)
The Project Manager is the person responsible for ensuring that the Project Team completes the project. The Project Manager develops the Project Plan with the team and manages the team’s performance of project tasks. It is also the responsibility of the Project Manager to secure acceptance and approval of deliverables from the Project Sponsor and Stakeholders.
The Project Manager is responsible for communication, including status reporting, risk management, escalation of issues that cannot be resolved in the team, and, in general, making sure the project is delivered in budget, on schedule, and within scope.
Documentation as well as process development in order to carry out the projects are also key responsibilties of a good project manager.
Organizations that adhere to process development, standardizations as well as continous improvement have proven to be successful and profitable. because they are check and balance in place.
Amir
References:
Various internet sites.
Should we standardize?
The purpose of standardization is to compare things or people with a known standard. Standards can be found throughout our daily lives but why do we need them?
Rather than asking why we need standards, we might usefully ask ourselves what the world would be like without standards.
Products might not work as expected. They may be of inferior quality and incompatible with other equipment, in fact they may not even connect with them, and in extreme cases; non-standardized products may even be dangerous.
Standardized products and services are valuable User ‘confidence builders’, being perceived as:
- safe
- healthy
- secure
- high quality
- flexible
As a result, standardized goods and services are widely accepted, commonly trusted and highly valued.
Standards provide the foundation for many of the innovative communication features and options we have come to take for granted, and they contribute to the enhancement of our daily lives – often invisibly.
We need look no further for evidence than the GSM™ standard which facilitates mobile communication the world over between (for example):
- friends and relations
- hospitals
- business
- schools
- industry
- emergency services
- airports
- governments
ICT standards are vital for efficient manufacturing:
- contribute to better regulation
- enable multi-market access
- create active markets
- encourage innovation
- improve communication
Standardization brings important benefits to business including a solid foundation upon which to develop new technologies and an opportunity to share and enhance existing practices.
Standardization also plays a pivotal role in assisting Governments, Administrations, Regulators and the legal profession as legislation, regulation and policy initiatives are all supported by standardization.
Regarding publishing industry, standardization ensures consistency and comparability of knowledge in terms of its quality and content and ensures objective measurement and positive evaluation of knowledge. Participants subjected to the standardization process conform to a known standard that is widely recognized as acceptable and usable.
The landscape of publishing industry especially for higher education books and programs varies greatly, thus causing an inconsistent environment. Factors contributing to the variability include:
(1) proliferation of business schools and degrees with different reputation levels,
(2) different curriculum formats with uneven content and quality,
(3) educators focusing more on research (theory) and less on profession (practice),
(4) educators having work experience more in the classroom and less in the real world,
(5) variety of admissions standards, teaching methods, and learning outcomes, and
(6) number of degree formats and specialized programs with different timelines for completion.
The variability creates many uncommon denominators in management education, business schools, law schools etc.. Currently, graduate business education is inconsistent in scope, size, quality, and content thus making it very difficult to compare and contrast between business schools and educational programs they offer.
Standardization becomes more important when things are in a constant state of flux or where one person’s knowledge cannot be compared with that of another because of very few common denominators. Until now, employers and recruiters had no objective method of evaluating and differentiating job applicants.
Areas to standardize:
- Nomenclature or naming conventions
- Daily processes
- Documentation
- Communication
- Technology
If companies fail to understand the importance of standardization over period of time chaos and miscommunication will overtake and company will start to see the setback.
References:
Various Articles from internet
m-Commerce vs. e-Commerce & Cloud Computing
m-Commerce vs. e-Commerce
In the past only a few retailers had that capability since only a few vendors had the market share to provide m-commerce technology such as Digby, mPoria Inc, Unbound Commerce. However due to the trend more and more e-commerce retailers are realizing the potential and are taking advantage of the low competition, such as IBM.
I think this is an interesting trend and one that I am excited to see where it is heading.
Cloud Computing
Cloud computing is a general term for anything that involves delivering hosted services over the Internet. These services are broadly divided into three categories: Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). The name cloud computing was inspired by the cloud symbol that’s often used to represent the Internet in flow charts and diagrams.
A cloud service has three distinct characteristics that differentiate it from traditional hosting. It is sold on demand, typically by the minute or the hour; it is elastic — a user can have as much or as little of a service as they want at any given time; and the service is fully managed by the provider (the consumer needs nothing but a personal computer and Internet access). Significant innovations in virtualization and distributed computing, as well as improved access to high-speed Internet and a weak economy, have accelerated interest in cloud computing.
A cloud can be private or public. A public cloud sells services to anyone on the Internet. (Currently, Amazon Web Services is the largest public cloud provider.) A private cloud is a proprietary network or a data center that supplies hosted services to a limited number of people. When a service provider uses public cloud resources to create their private cloud, the result is called a virtual private cloud. Private or public, the goal of cloud computing is to provide easy, scalable access to computing resources and IT services.
- Have you heard of cloud computing. More and more people and companies use cloud computing. GoogleDocs falls under this category. I have been using GoogleDocs a lot mostly for sharing, collaboration and of course accessibility. It is also FREE. http://tinyurl.com/y9t443k
- One really nice feature is that it allows you to create forms where the information then gets collected and you can collect information as needed.
A few cool things I have found that you can share with anyone:
- Google has a feature that allows you to design website. It is one of the best I have seen out there so far. As Lowell has brought it to our attention in the past with regards to the meta data tags for SEO but I think with this one you have access to the source codes(I haven’t explored it yet) I actually would recommend if you get a chance to go to the Google’s more feature option and you will be amazed with the amount of tools that they have that can help many businesses. Their Web analyzer is outstanding.
- If you ever want to buy cables such as HDMI or any of those expensive cables I found a great website: www.monoprice.com. I like to share a story on that. I bought a Sony camera Alpha 330 (which is amazing) but the only way I can view it on our TV is via mini HDMI cable. That cable can go anywhere from $40 to $60. I said I will not pay $40 for a piece cable. So after doing a search online I came across this website. The mini HDMI cable sells for $4 on this site. I was so excited about this and I wanted to share this great news with everyone but I said I should wait and see if I will receivce the cables first. They shipped the cables in 3 days and I used it yesterday.
- If you want great deals on laptop or netbooks here is a good website: www.computergeeks.com. My computer went kaputt during Christmas and I had no more money to spend so after searching for a cheap computer online and of course a reliable site I came across this website.
- Cincinnati Enquirer has a very useful feature called Share:
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- You can post stories, photos and events online by using the “Share” feature on Cincinnati.com.
- Share allows users to submit stories and photos for publication on our Web site and all submissions are reviewed by editors like me for publication in Hometown Enquirer, as well.
- You can also enter events into our calendar database – which is used to create event calendars online and in Enquirer print publications.
- You will have to create a login account the first time you use it, but after that, the process of submitting an article or photos is very similar to sending an e-mail with attachments. It is a much more efficient way for us to process your information.
- To access this program, please visit www.cincinnati.com/share
Here I want to share with you some of my power point presentations:
- The Art of Product Development
- Process Improvement
- New Marketing Trends
- Marketing in Today’s Economy
The cost of none-Conformance
Introduction
After many years working here as a project manager I have come to a conclusion that many companies lack standardized processes in doing business. That lack of standardization and clear definition of process and WBS can cause many times confusion and miscommunication and mainly can hurt the end user (customer), who in most casse will drop you for the competition because of mere these reasons:
- Lack of understanding of product or technology by the customer
- Inadequate training provided to the customer to use the technology
- Misunderstood technology
- Frustration
- Blaming factor
- Internal problems not knowing how to deal with issue such as customer complaints
- Lack of processes
- Lack of understanding who does what
- Lack of communication structure
- Lack of consistency
- Lack of coordination at the start to getting the customer ready
- Late delivery
- Over promising
- Providing wrong information
- Lack of adequate support and after service
- We sell then we leave customer alone
- Lack of follow-up
I highly recommend that companies or small businesses look into their processes by doing business process mapping which will enable them to identify each processes and the underlying task and recognize bottle necks and to rectify these issues before they lose more customers to competition.
What is Business Process Mapping (BPM)
Business Process Mapping is an approach to analyzing traditional processes in a business that combine IT and HR management. Business Process Management (BPM) can improve business performance.
Using technologies and a competent workforce, Business Process Mapping can be effective and starts with a commitment to a strategic vision from senior executives. Its scope can be broad but focused and can apply to cross multiple business functions. Its goals should be visionary and ambitious.
Rationale for Business Process Mapping (BPM)
It is inevitable that small businesses must implement BPM at some point in time the sooner the better. The business climate requires constant process updates.
Many small businesses have to change constantly in order to adapt to their external environment are consistently being presented with the following questions:
1. Is the competition better?
2. How can we improve?
3. What things really need to be changed?
By giving answers to the above questions, small business owners are challenged to put new processes, procedures, and technologies into place to affect the profitability and future growth of their business.
Factors that require process change and improvement
We can define the following items as major driving factors for process improvement:
1. Customer Service Concerns
2. Daily Operations Costs
3. Employee Productivity
4. Work Process Cycle Time
5. Constant Advances in Technology
6. Competitive Challenges in the Marketplace
7. Organization Infrastructure
By looking at the above factors one can infer that there are two that can cause devastating damages if ignored and they are:
- Customer service
- Competitive forces
Competitive Marketplace Drives Process Change
The nature of today’s competitive business environment drives differentiation. Companies are challenged on a daily basis to watch and understand what their competition is offering. The following factors have a direct impact on this competitiveness and the efficiency a company has to meet these needs.
• Customer Satisfaction
• Customer Needs
• Productivity
• Products and Services
• Cost
• Document Usage
Business Process Mapping Methodology
Structured Approach
In order to achieve successful change in a process, a structured Business Process Methodology must be used. I have found the following four step methodology to be very effective.
1. Identify and Select the Processes
2. Map the Processes
3. Redesign the Processes
4. Implement the Solution
Conclusion
The muda, mura and muri that currently is present as well as the inefficiency and ineffectiveness to deliver is all as a result of lack of standardization and processes. The commitment to process improvement and Kaizen starts from the top to the bottom it is an attitude change towards efficiency and effectiveness that can result into productivity, motivation and increase in the customer attrition rate.
There is no excuse to produce bad product; however that is avoidable by implementing project management methodologies certified by PMI institution a swell as Six Sigma concept DMAIC.
The main support in successful implementation must come from the top to the bottom.
How to gain/retain your customer?
Should IT be the driver for a business?
I always thought of IT as a tool as a cost center and an area where it is the back bone for a business growth and provides the competitive advantage that a business can leverage its competiveness and position in the market against other businesses.
IT department should never be placed in a position that can make decisions in a way that it defines the direction and visions of the business.
The argument is then what about in a software development organization?
I would answer the same thing.
Think of Software and Application Development Company as your Pharmaceutical companies where they rely heavily on the R&D department. The R&D departments in Pharmaceutical companies don’t drive the business they are the tool and the backbone to provide the support that helps the business and makes sure that it can align business goals and objectives with its mission and vision.
IT department should never be put in a position that can make key strategic decision to drive the business and define its direction in the market. IT must be looked as a service provider in any organization. If the leaders in the IT department don’t comprehend that position and have a false understanding of their role then they are making a big mistake. IT leadership must understand that they are there to support the organization and must align their goals and objective with the business goals and objective at the end of the day IT provides a service and as a service provider they are a cost center in the organization.
IT department needs to work collaboratively with other departments in the organization to provide the services and tools that is needed to make the organization to be competitive and become successful.
Many people who are placed as leaders in the IT department lack leadership understanding and usually lose perspective of their role. Thus put the IT department and their employees in great danger by creating waste, scrap and inefficiencies, from bad decision making in how to drive the department by purchasing technologies to bad hiring and poor planning.
After many years working as a developer then project manager in the IT setting environment I came to the conclusion that for an IT department to be successful it must understand that it is a service provider and a tool. That doesn’t mean that they have to stop innovation or continuous improvement, no , what it means is that they are there to be the backbone and one of the many pillars of the organization.
How can Project Management implement Project Management methodologies in a non-project management driven organization?
How many times you have been placed in an environment where the organization has never have had exposure to project management or has a wrong understanding of what project management is about?
First we must understand what the role of a project manager is. A while ago I tried to understand the role of a project and wrote a short blog with the title: “Who is a project manager and what their responsibilities are?”
Since then I came to the understanding that the Project Manager’s role is also defined by the organization’s culture and past experiences with project management and methodologies as well as the leadership acceptance of this role.
Let me make this clear as well that Project Management is not just Gantt Chart and setting-up meetings. Project management is the whole nine yard as defined by PMI. So, if the organization doesn’t have any PMO and has no prior project management experience refer them to the PMI and start implementing the PMI framework within the organization. PMI is a well respected entity and one that has hundreds of thousands of members globally.
Many organization who ignore the project management methodologies and think that PM are just here to negotiate and set-up meetings then they should hire project coordinators and not project managers.
Project Managers are involved from the beginning of the project to the end of the project. They might not be involved with all the facet of the project the 9 knowledge base areas but they are there to add value and making sure that the project is coming to the completion within the budget and on time.
Companies that lack Project Management are the ones that lack process and standardized way of implementing a project thus they are more likely to deliver a project over the budget and not on time. Most this organization also has inefficiencies through out the organization and has lack of understanding of their customers.
Project Management is more than just delivering a project it is to add value, it is to make sure that project managers can help improve processes or introduce standards and bench mark against other companies with the same field.
If an organization has a PMO makes sure to implement their processes and principles. It is the PMO’s job to ensure that all project managers adhere to the principles and standards of the PMO and everyone is implementing in consistent fashion and norm.
So going back to answer the question of what you do as a project manager within a non-project management environment I would say adhere to project management principles and philosophies set by PMI then try to customize it in order to fit to the organizations need and demand for project managers.
Other Related Articles by Amir
How did we do in 2010? Awesome
The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:
The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads This blog is doing awesome!.
Crunchy numbers
A helper monkey made this abstract painting, inspired by your stats.
A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 1,800 times in 2010. That’s about 4 full 747s.
In 2010, there were 5 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 12 posts. There was 1 picture uploaded, taking a total of 21kb.
The busiest day of the year was January 13th with 53 views. The most popular post that day was m-Commerce vs. e-Commerce & Cloud Computing.
Where did they come from?
The top referring sites in 2010 were linkedin.com, lmodules.com, 1harga.com, bigextracash.com, and facebook.com.
Some visitors came searching, mostly for pest analysis, pestel analysis, pestle analysis, pest analyse, and pest analysis diagram.
Attractions in 2010
These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.
1
m-Commerce vs. e-Commerce & Cloud Computing January 2010
1 comment
2
Free Web Tools April 2009
3
How can Project Management implement Project Management methodologies in a non-project management driven organization? November 2010
4
1 on 1 Consulting Firm LLC Providing Quality IT Solution April 2009
5
How to gain/retain your customer? March 2010
1 comment
The Best Quotes to Help you and your Business
“Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” Sun Tzu
“In the practical art of war, the best thing of all is to take the enemy’s country whole and intact; to shatter and destroy it is not so good.” Sun Tzu
“Regard your soldiers as your children, and they will follow you into the deepest valleys; look on them as your own beloved sons, and they will stand by you even unto death.” Sun Tzu
“Know thy self, know thy enemy. A thousand battles, a thousand victories.” Sun Tzu
“Improvement usually means doing something that we have never done before.” – Shigeo Shingo
“Are you too busy for improvement? Frequently, I am rebuffed by people who say they are too busy and have no time for such activities. I make it a point to respond by telling people, look, you’ll stop being busy either when you die or when the company goes bankrupt.” – Shigeo Shingo
“All we are doing is looking at the time line, from the moment the customer gives us an order to the point when we collect the cash. And we are reducing the time line by reducing the non-value adding wastes.” – Taiichi Ohno
“The only place that work and motion are the same thing is the zoo where people pay to see the animals move around” (not exact phrase) – Taiichi Ohno
“Where there is no Standard there can be no Kaizen” – Taiichi Ohno
“I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” ……………………… VOLATIR
“It is not enough to do your best; you must know what to do, and then do your best.“
W. Edwards Deming
“Information is not knowledge. The world is drowning in information but is slow in acquisition of knowledge. There is no substitute for knowledge.” W. Edwards Deming
“If money is your hope for independence you will never have it. The only real security that a man will have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience, and ability.” Henry Ford
Project Management and Ethics
As project managers we work with projects that require a great deal of personal decision making as well as judgments. Our actions and behaviors can have great impact on the delivery of the project.
I always argue that as a project manager one must adhere to highest level of ethical behavior and do things that is always right. As a project manager we must always follow PMI standards and stick to PMBOK as well as our company’s ethical standards and the organizational culture.
One way one can achieve this is by been very objective and use common sense.
But what do you do when another project manager is not following the ethical standards. Do we as project managers report such a behavior to our superior or approach the project manager him/herself?
You must have had come across a project manager who is involved in conflict of interests, his/her projects are way over the budget and as a contractor is benefiting tremendously from the late delivery of the project. So what should you do as a project manager who notices this kind of behavior?
Then what do you do when not even your superiors respond to your complaint.
Do you know I am always reminded about Enron, Global Crossing and not to mention the recent economic fall out and financial disaster that has caused millions of people to be without jobs and in some cases without homes? I am not suggesting that in all these case it was project management involved. But there were employees involved who knew about something and didn’t have the chance to speak or didn’t speak out by choice which left their company and a whole country in turmoil.
How can one create awareness in situation when one’s intuition is suggesting things are not right?
If the upper management and the business doesn’t support open communication and does not value high standard of ethical practices, what can one do? Should someone sacrifice his employment and career for the sake of others and putting his own family in harm by raising the alarm? Or protect himself and his career while disregarding all the signs of unethical practices?
As human beings we always have that dilemma to fight against these questions and coming up with the right answers.
One thing I can suggest is that doing the right thing is never the wrong thing.
Sincerely;
Amir Nasiri, MBA, MIS, PMP
ASQ Six Sigma Certified, Hyperion Certified
http://www.linkedin.com/in/amirnasiri
