Blog from here to there

I am in the process of creating the documentation for a cloud application I have been commissioned to develop.  I have to tell you that cloud services are as varied as grains of sand.  No two are alike.  Of course I do have the option of building a standalone application but, why not take advantage of the technology that is available.

Don't get me wrong, I really like my WP7 phone and like many others I have waited patiently for the Mango update.  So, on Saturday, I finally received my notification that Mango was available on my phone.   With much anticipation, I connected it to my computer adn started the update process.  First time through, I received the error "80004005 Update failed!"  To the internet I went searching for an answer.  What I found was that I had to perform a hard reset and that supposedly would fix the issue.  After three hard resets, back to the factory settings, I was still getting the same error.  I tried numerous things like pulling the SD card, several hard resets and nothing seemed to work.  Finally, I found a forum in which it said to flash the firmware.  I don't like flashing firmware.  One runs the risk of bricking whatever you are trying to get to work.  But, with much consternation, I decided to go through with it.  After all, I wanted the Mango update.

I haven't posted in a while.  I have found it to be very cleansing.  Up until yesterday, I had not even been on any of the social network sites in a while.  I must say, it has been nice not being so connected.  Maybe I was just bored with the whole social network thing.  Don't get me wrong, I don't have anything against the social networking sites, I just haven't been interested.  I did have an old college friend find me recently, and that was cool.  Again, it has just been nice doing other things.

I am reminded of a book in which the first line is "Life is difficult."  A friend gave it to me once to read.  I read the first line and gave it back to him.  He wanted to know why I didn't read it.  I told him I read the first line and didn't think there was anything else that needed to be said.  IT systems, whether personal or corporate, do not fall into that category.  Systems are delicate.

Sure, there are those systems that seem to run endlessly without fail, but that does not imply that someone or a group is not watching them and keeping them tuned.  IO know some out there are going to say, "I have a Linux box that I have not touched for months and months."  Those are a rarity.  Linux boxes can be very unstable depending on what it is being used for.  Still, they require love and care just like Windows devices.

So what is important when maintaining a system? 

Yes I know that many of us over the years have had managers that we could care less about.  We each have our specific types that we would rather not work for but, who we report to isn't our decision to make.  Some managers like to micro-manage for no apparent reason , while others do not manage at all. Balance in management is a true art that requires practice.

I honestly do not remember a micro-manager that I have worked for.  I have known them but just haven't worked for them.  However, I can say i have made some observations about them.  They typically do not trust their reports and do not foster a collaborative work environment.  On the flip side, those that work for them end up just being drones.  I don't know about you, but I like to think.

Now I have worked for people that do not manage at all.  I can't say I enjoyed that either.  These types of managers stay on the fringe.  Don't count on them sticking up for you in a touchy situation.  Oh yes, the allow free thinking, but don't offer a lot of guidance that 99% of the work force needs.  And when things get sticky, nothing sticks to them.

Personally, middle of the road is a good place to be (unless a truck is coming).  Let's face it.  Even the greatest ideas do not come about without some amount of guidance and direction. There is one key to success though, no matter what type of manager you have.  All you have to do is make them look good.  I once reported to a person who was more hands off than middle of the road.  He taught me a valuable lesson.  I called him once when I had made a mistake.  After explaining the situation, all he said was "You're smart. I know you will make me look good."  I didn't really understand at the time what he was getting at.  I finally realized that if he looks good, the whole team looks good.  When they look good we all benefit.  It may only be a thank you note but the small things count.  It reminds me of a quote;

Risks come in many shapes and sizes.  They can be related to budgets, timelines, company policies and a litany of other things.  Lets first be clear. If you have a risk identified that has come to fruition then, it is no longer a risk but and event.  Now it can lead to other risks but it is still an event.

Let's take a very simple example.  Suppose in your risk management plan you identified a risk as being a short time line.  This is generally inter-woven with other risks, but we will forgo that for now.  If the timeline is specified as being 3 months is defined in the project plan and you have hit the 3 month mark and the project is not complete, that risk has become an event.  You several options, all which will require you answering to the management team.  First one has to determine why the timeline was busted. Maybe there weren't enough resources assigned. Again there can be numerous reasons. Your goal is to identify the "Why" and "How".  Management is going to then want to know what the plan going forward is so, be prepared to be on the hot seat.  If you can't defend the position then you are in trouble.

There are other times when a risk is a company policy matter.  No company policies, big troubles lie ahead.  However, if there are policies and an employee has violated the policy, that violation may present legal ramifications down the road.  Depending on the violation, the employee may have to be reprimanded, moved to a different department, or even termination.

The important part is to have a risk management plan, both from a corporate view and from a project view.  The plan is developed the same way for both.  There will be some intricacies unique to both however.  The key is to have a plan, implement it and use it.

Last week, one of my closest friends had a heart attack.  After riding his motorcycle to the emergency room, a trip through the cath lab for two stints in the left anterior descending artery, a few days in intensive care, he is back home and doing well.  I am writing this so that we each take time to review the signs so that we can act accordingly.  The Mayo has great information out on the web that you can review for future reference.  I hope you never need it though.  http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/heart-attack-symptoms/HB00054

Now with that being said, I think a couple of recommendations are in order.

1) Do not ride your motorcycle to the ER.  He did and I don't care because he is alive and doing well.  None the less, don't do it.

2) Do not wait until you think you are having a heart attack to Google the symptoms. If you think you are in peril, just go.  It may indigestion, or, it may be more serious.

Many people will ask, "Aren't all projects customer centric?"  The answer is "No!"  We have to think of the business model for a particular enterprise.  There are those companies that are only concerned with price.  They are not so concerned with the customer or the product, as long as it is the cheapest on the market.  That may be a little strong.  Actually, what happens is, a company well have a specified margin for their products.  There is little concern for the customer or their experience with the product.  No matter what, the price has to be within the margin range or the service is discontinued.  Some thank that this is a terrible business strategy but, there are many organizations that have longevity which follow this business model.  There are those times that the product or service is so good that people will pay for it no matter what.

Product Centric organizations are generally driven by having the best product and or service available.  They can be cheaper or they can be very expensive but, the idea is to compare their service with the services of the competitors. "Clearly we have the best product and service available," is the rallying cry of the Product Centric organization.

So what does that leave but the Customer Centric organization.  Notice how I have used the term organization instead of product, project, or service.  Customer Centric is a corporate culture.  It is a really nice buzzword that the members of the board like to throw around as well.  Oops!  Did I really say that?  Yes I said it and, here is why.  Most of this article is false. 

Last week I touched on the idea of risk management.  Please understand that it was only a smudge on the glass of what risk management is.  There are entire educational programs dedicated to risk management, so it would be difficult to explain all of the details in a few posts.  However, there are many people in the corporate world who have always wanted a 150,000 ft over view but never grasped the courage to ask.  So, as a final lesson in Risk Management, we are going to address the scenario of "from the outside looking in."

Don't confuse outside as meaning outside the company.  It could be from outside the company but it could also be an internal resource that happens to be managing internal risks.  In the financial business, there are risk managers evaluating loans while in software development projects, they can be managing the risk as it relates to the company.  The list can be extremely long.  In one organization I worked for, the risk was if we would have the correct radiologists on the schedule to cover the facilities in the states we were reading exams for.  While we had scheduling personnel, there wasn't a tracking of the risk which would have been a huge benefit.  But that is neither here nor there. 

From a project perspective, the PM will generally track the risks with a risk management plan.  These risk are related directly to the project though.  However, in large projects, there are risks that go beyond just the project and affect the company environment.  Staffing can be one of those risks.  Whole the PM needs to staff his project, that staffing can mean larger consequences to the company as a whole.  If the project is staffed with new employees, the risk manager will have that as a risk.  After all, what is the company going to do with them when the project is over?  Also, there are the benefits that have to be paid, maybe additional management staff, etc.  But, if the project is staffed with contractors, there is an entirely different set of risks to identify and track.

Yesterday I discussed some of the generalities of Risk Management from a project perspective.  Today, I am more interested in Risk Management from a corporate point of view.  As a friend pointed out to me, a Risk Manager can simply be someone from the outside looking in.  He is correct, and this is one of the corporate sides of Risk Management.  There are two actually.  One type of risk management manages the risk associated with projects.  These risks may be outside of the Project Managers realm though.  The other, is the risk associated with exposure of the company or people within the company.

Exposure of the company or people within?  huh?  Yes.  How many of us have ever taken the time to read those long company policies in the company handbook.  I know I rarely have, and that is failure on my part.  Those policies and standard operating procedures are there for a reason.  Yes, they protect the company, but they also protect you as an employee.  They protect us from getting hurt, hurting others and harming the company.  Those are a few of the things that corporate risk managers do.  Many Risk Managers have backgrounds in law, human resources, information technology, insurance and operations.

Why does a corporate risk manager have such a wealth of experience.  The reason is, that a corporate risk manager has a huge responsibility.  You will find that the risk managers negotiate insurance contracts, set HR policies, deal with IT security or anything else that could expose the company or its people to litigation or risk.  And, these are just a few of the issues they deal with on a daily basis.  Furthermore, some industries have specific laws that have to be followed.  As an example, if one works for a company that writes and distributes healthcare software that is used in patient care.  If someone finds a bug that could adversely affect the health or treatment of a patient, the company is required to notify the FDA within a certain time frame of the bug discovery.  Upon consultation with other people within the organization, the risk manager will make the decision to notify the FDA and many times will do so if the criteria for patient care has been met.

So, as you can see, Risk Management is not just part of a Project Plan that a PM is working on, but true Risk Management goes much further.

In Part 3, I will cover the last part of Risk Management,  someone looking from the outside in.

Recently, I had a discussion regarding Risk Management with a friend.  It prompted me to do some research into the various positions that are being posted on the "job boards".  I discovered that many people and a large number of organizations really do not have an understanding of the difference between a project manager and a risk manager.  I came to this conclusion based on positions that were posted as risk manager jobs.  More often than not the job descriptions would be something like, "...manage the risks associated with numerous projects to ensure projects are within budget and scope..."  My first thought was, "What is the Project Manager doing?"

Yes, I understand that PM's are very busy.  Many times, they are buried in the paperwork of numerous projects.  Even with that being true, a project manager should not be released from the responsibility of mitigating the risk associated with the tasks at hand.  If a project is at risk of being behind schedule, over budget, creeping scope, etc, it is the PM that needs to deal with it.  I have worked with PM's that have had as many as 50 projects rangeing in size from a few thousand into the millions.  From my experience, we have all had to manage the risks.  A risk management plan is one of the basics that any PM worth their salt should be able to handle without reservation.  Even if the team has several hundred people, the PM needs to do it.

Sometimes I get the urge to write on something that is off topic.  Today I had one of those moments.  When I got out of bed this morning, I looked at my alarm clock and for some reason I thought to myself, "I have only owned three in my lifetime."

My first alarm clock my parents bought for me when I was about 8 years old.  It was one of those big round ones wind up models with the bells on top.  I loved that clock.  It had glow in the dark numbers that you couldn't see by morning because paint did not have enough light to keep them illuminated the whole night.  But the thing I remember the most was the sound that it made.  The tic-toc, tic-toc, could be heard throughout the entire house all day and night, unless I forgot to wind it.  Even more when the little hammer between the bells started rapping back and forth at the designated time in the morning, everybody woke up, except me.  It was cathartic signal for me to really hit the REMS.

My second alarm clock mom and dad bought for me in 8th grade.  It had two alarm times, snooze but even more importantly, AM and FM radio.  There was not much on the FM side at the time, so I listened to KOMA out of Oklahoma City.  I am sure that shows like "Dr Demento", "King Biscuits Flower Hour" and the "Wolfman Jack Rhythm and Blues Hour" played a part into the development of my psyche.

I had that clock/radio for years.  At times, when I lived alone, I never turned the radio off.  That thing followed me from my home in  Kansas, to Lawrence, Houston, New Orleans and Birmingham.  It finally died about seven years ago and I was forced to go buy a new one.  That was a challenge.  For a while All I could find were the little crappy ones.  Sure they would shine the light on the ceiling, which I don't need, but they either didn't have a radio or only had one alarm.  When I found the one I liked, it cost  a pretty penny.

More and more I am finding myself being drawn to cloud computing.  Companies in the cloud business are moving so fast that it is difficult to keep up.  Of course, Google is in the mix with others.  However, there are very few that do a good job of explaining just what cloud computing is and what it can do.

A friend recently sent me to a SalesForce site that has some great videos on what one can do in the cloud.  While the demos are specific to SalesForce, the idea is the same for other platforms. I also have found that the SalesForce videos do the best for explaining what you can do.  http://www.salesforce.com/platform/.

In the corporate world, there are numerous types of managers and as many types of reports.  I would have said Employees, but even the executives are employees.  They are not not above reproach simply because they are executives.  When you get right down to it, executives are held to a much higher standard than the rest of the company.  The reasons are many but, executives have to answer to more people than those who have one or two people they report to.  Executives report to the Board, investors, stockholders, clients, as well as the employees which they are responsible for their welfare and happiness.

However, management styles are as varied as snowflakes.  Everyone is an individual.  So who do you want to work for?  I have worked with people who only want employees to agree with them.  I liken this to the military style.  The boss makes a decision, and the reports should follow it blindly.  But companies are not the military where you do not question authority.  Now that is not to say that our members of the military are doing anything wrong. They aren't.  But in the corporate world, many times, the objectives are not always as clear.  Even in the military, the leaders have advisers.  So is it worth it to work for someone that wants to hear "yes", no matter what you think?

I once worked for an organization that was so focused on money that they didn't care what happened to the employee at the client site.  Their view was, "If the client is paying the bill, do it."  And for quite some time, many of the people on the project did what was asked.  But there came a breaking point when the tasks were so demeaning that some chose to find other things to do.  Eventually the project came to a grinding halt.  My point being, is that saying yes, no matter what, is not always the answer.

We as managers and executives, at times, need to support the people who report to us.  Yes, sometimes it means the loss of client.  But we have to understand that if our employees are happy, they carry that to the client which is good for business.  Now that does not mean we can have 100% of our employees happy.  After all, we are all individuals, and what makes me happy may not makes the next person happy.  The idea is to have a positive work environment.

Over the past few weeks I have received several questions from friends about storing and or sharing documents and media online.  The last question came this morning.  I have been doing some research aver the past few days and have found several different options.

First, we need to make the distinction between personal items we want to share with friends and corporate data and items.  For either scenario, one needs to completely understand the security of the various services that are available.  Some of the services store your information in a public domain for all to see.  If you are like me, I don't want everyone in the world to have access to my private items.  Personally, there are two services for individuals to share and collaborate that I am fond of.  One is Dropbox.  DropBox has several different profile settings that allow you to share with a specific group of people or with the world.  It offers 2GB of storage for the basic plan which is free.  You can get additional storage for a price.  The downside is that if you share a folder with a group, have to download an app that connects to the dropbox servers.  Then when you add an item to the shared folder, it automatically updates the other users who have access to the share. 

From a more reasonable perspective, I prefer Google Docs.  You can store several GB of data, movies etc.  The initial setting is private.  Thus no others can access it.  To share items, all you have to do is setup who to share with.  It is straight forward and easy to use much like other features in Google.  One thing to keep in mind is that you should never share copyrighted material or corporate information in either service.  Intellectual Property Rights can come back to bite you unless endorsed by your corporate management.

From a corporate perspective, the rules are a little different.  Many organizations are moving to the cloud for many things.  There are numerous options available but, again, the corporate IT, Security, CIO, CTO, etc needs to sign off on it.  We have to realize that there is a difference between online storage and the cloud.  Storage is just that, nothing more nothing less.  Cloud computing is much more.  In the cloud a company can install applications as well as set up storage space for their employees, vendors and customers.  Anyone with a browser and the proper credentials can access the cloud applications and storage.  Cloud applications can be very beneficial when it comes to running apps.  With a browser, one can access the apps and run them without having to install the app on the local device.  Yes, there are apps for mobile devices. These apps generally provide a logical way to access the information instead of using a browser.