This one annoyed me. I was installing import tools but after activating them and selecting them, the page was blank. Anyway, gfra discovered the solution is to edit the .htaccess file and add in the following two lines…
AddType x-mapp-php5 .php
AddHandler x-mapp-php5 .php
This worked a treat. Thanks gfra!
Walk off the Earth and Sarah Blackwood cover “Somebody That I Used to Know” by Gotye [pron: goatyay] all on one guitar…
Some people think it’s lipsynced but it could be a mix of live and dubs – watch for the guy in the middle drop his arm onto the guitar at the end. Anyway I don’t really care – it’s a great example of a cool video on a budget.
Just as there needs to be a better word for “positive risk” – the risk of benefit or opportunity – there needs to be a better word for “negative assumption” i.e. assuming the worst. This extends my earlier posts on assumption (http://iqi616.com/2011/01/assumption-is-the-mother-of-all-mess-ups/) and risk (http://iqi616.com/2011/01/risky-business/).
When compiling lists of assumptions we are usually looking out for assumptions that might trip us up by turning out to be false in a bad way. That is to say, we focus on identifying the assumptions which assume that something is going to turn out for the best. But don’t forget that we often also assume that things will turn out for the worst. These negative assumptions can also turn out to be wrong. An example would be assuming that the City would not allow you to hold your rock music festival in one of the public parks.
So, you need to be just as careful to identify implicit negative assumptions and make them explicit and document the corresponding risks and mitigations in the same way you would handle positive assumptions. Taking the example of the rock music festival, you might not even have thought to approach the City council to see what they have to say about it. If the City hasn’t already stated that they don’t allow music festivals in their parks, you couldn’t know for certain without asking.
There are two benefits to identifying negative assumptions… You will have a plan for what to do if things go too well so you won’t end up with a situation where you have all the parts for a project but no team to put it together. But most importantly, you will be ready to take advantage of any opportunities that open up to you.
…Mike.
No, I’m not talking about using Adobe Photoshop® to make your project appear more successful. It strikes me that an important part of project management is converting a project full of colour and nuance to black and white. And I’m not talking monochrome either. This is pure black and white. On an image you achieve that using the Threshold tool and you often have to pre-process the image to get what you want because the tool is so unforgiving and will only give you black or white – nothing inbetween.
To manage a project you have to obtain clarity of status… Done/not done. Ready/not ready. Complete/incomplete. Pass/Fail. Approved/not approved. Fuzziness may be attractively expedient but at some point you will find the project moving ahead when it shouldn’t. You might get away with it but if you don’t, people are going to start asking you awkward questions. The only way to handle fuzziness is to find an acceptable threshold for “good enough” to convert it into yes/no.
For a long time I always felt sorry for people working hard on a task where it’s taking a long time to get from being “almost ready” to “done”. It seemed unfair when tasks were recorded using the 0/100% rule. They weren’t 0% done, they were 95% done and with a little luck would be finished very soon. But then I started seeing things from a customer perspective – incomplete is incomplete. If a deliverable has not been delivered to the customer, the customer has received 0% regardless of how close to 100% the deliverable is.
I was once part of a project team where a go/no-go was allowed to pass because the team was “almost ready” and no-one was brave enough to re-state that as “not ready”. That was a big mistake that took months to recover from. So, that added another binary decision point and I now had a list!
Adding pass/fail for test results to this new list of binary decisions was a no brainer and that led to a growing awareness that careful design of binary decisions brings clarity. The design of each binary test must be careful to avoid inappropriate results but I can see that effort is worthwhile. It puts the project manager in a position of strength. You can say “Yes, because…” or “No, because”. If particular stakeholders are unhappy, they will be forced to argue for a change in threshold that is acceptable to the other stakeholders. Either that or they will have to over-rule the project manager and by doing so will be responsible for the consequences.
So, how do you track these thing? Checklists are the easiest tool. A readiness checklist will have all the criteria listed with a Yes/No box for readiness. If any of the criteria are No, the overall status is also No. I have found that this really focuses attention on the criteria that are status No. It also helps you obtain the assistance of major stakeholders. They might be attention deficient but they can understand that No is bad and will push for whatever is needed to convert that to a Yes.
To summarize, when you see fuzziness take a positive step to convert the issue into black or white by finding a way to define a valid threshold that will make any decision into a simple Yes/No. Ask yourself and the stakeholders what is needed to get over the problem and take a step forward.
…Mike
One of the things with being a project manager is that some people try to use you as a buffer. They never seem to want to communicate directly with each other. Carol needs a report from Fred, so she asks you to ask Fred to give you the report. Fred knows that it’s Carol that needs the report yet he sends it to you for you to give it to Carol. That wouldn’t be so bad if there weren’t a bunch of other people trying to do that and it would be even less bad if you weren’t away on vacation!
Not only does that behaviour make you a bottleneck, you are also taken away from the project management work you should be doing.
When this happens to me, I politely say that information flows faster round me rather than through me. I just need to know that the action happened – I have no intention of reading Fred’s report unless it is pertinent to my role as project manager. In RACI terms, I’m just an “I” – I only need to be Informed because I am not Responsible, Accountable, or Consulted on that report.
The only time you should be a buffer is when there is a specific need to do so – e.g. a personality clash between the customer and one of your key geeks and you can’t afford to lose either of them.
So keep an eye out for when you are being placed in the flow and take action to have people communicate directly with each other and just inform you of the result. Be especially vigilant for people that are using you as a buffer to buy themselves time with the plausible deniability of waiting on you!
…Mike
Last time, I wrote about assumption not being bad but actually a desirable technique for overcoming analysis paralysis (http://iqi616.com/2011/01/assumption-is-the-mother-of-all-mess-ups/). This time I’m going to tackle another aspect of project management that has negative connotations that need to be revised. The R-word: Risk.
Risk always seems to be viewed as a bad thing – especially in corporate projects. At best there is the strange concept of “positive risk” i.e. the danger that something might turn out good when all expectation was that it probably wouldn’t. These days, whether in business, parenting, or walking in the park, risk is seen as something to be eliminated.
And then there’s the calculated risk. Again something that implies something dodgy took place – someone trusting to luck instead of judgement (despite the use of the word “calculated”). Why is that? Surely a calculated risk is a reasonable thing to do – as long as the calculation is sensible. Part of the problem is that people don’t like to tell other people that they’re taking any form of risk so the risk takers only admit it afterwards. The problem with that is it doesn’t change anyone’s view on risk – they just breathe a sigh of relief they didn’t have to pick up the pieces.
Let’s take a look at history. What about sailing ships and their trips across the Atlantic and around the globe? What about the moon missions? Huge risks but calculated and mitigated. Even less dramatic adventures involve a certain amount of risk that if mitigated render the risk acceptable. Take flying, the risk seems higher but so much mitigation takes place that you are very much more likely to be killed in the car taking you to the airport than the plane flying you to Paris.
So, the same to risks in projects. What is wrong with saying “we are going to take a risk, this is the payoff, and these are the potential pitfalls and these are the mitigations”? Don’t avoid discussing risks, bring them up-front and show that the risk has been properly handled.
Far from being bad or even neutral, risk can be good. I’m not a great adventurer but risks are exciting and when carefully presented a risk can capture the imagination of the team and stakeholders and help get them excited and engaged. Thinking back to my earlier post about using the word Ambition instead of Vision or Goal (http://iqi616.com/2011/01/revelations-about-project-management/) why not make the risk part of the ambition? Don’t hide from it. Lay out the risk from the outset and highlight the payoff and the mitigations.
…Mike
Assumption is the mother of all mess-ups
That’s a cleaned-up version of one of F1 team-owner Frank Williams’ favourite sayings.
My second revelation over the holidays is that it is only implicit or taken-for-granted assumptions that are a problem. Explicit assumptions, on the other hand, are completely different and a useful tool for the project manager.
Like many words in project management, “assumption” has all sorts of connotations. If you like, we make all sorts of assumptions when we come across the word “assumption” and not all of those are favourable.
Assumptions are a way forward. Used intelligently, assumptions can get you out of analysis paralysis or at least give you a start on a project. If you don’t know something for certain, can you make a sensible assumption that will enable you to move on? Even the whole project needs a fundamental assumption that it is possible to succeed.
Now, you have to remember that every assumption has a risk, so for every explicit assumption you must have an explicit risk and risk assessment. For example, you can assume that the city will give you permits for construction but you need to address the risk that the application will be delayed or denied. You don’t want to hold everything up until you actually get the permits so you proceed with the assumption you will get the permits and a risk assessment of the chances that you won’t get the permits.
Final point… going back to implicit and taken-for-granted assumptions – you need to have at least one attempt at identifying them and making them into explicit assumptions so that you can handle them properly. You also need to keep a watch out for any that crop up while the project is in progress.
…Mike
I had a couple of revelations over the Christmas holidays. One of them is that project management terminology is pretty cold and unexciting. Yes, it has to be precise but does it have to be such a drag on one’s enthusiasm?
Take the word “Vision”. All very nice but it speaks more to religious or drug-induced hallucinations than anything achievable. “Goal” is better but even that’s not so hot – after-all how many goals get scored out of the number of attempted goals (talking soccer and hockey)? That’s quite a high failure rate.
How about “Ambition” instead? That word says more about desired achievement. An ambition is usually achievable if it’s reasonable and you work hard enough and persistently enough. That word has a much deeper emotional draw for me.
…Mike
This Toyota Matrix has to be the most feminine customization I’ve seen since the Mini that used to run around Southgate that had lace antimacassars on the seatbacks. That’s not a criticism – more power to the ladies!
Anyway, yesterday evening we headed up to the new Moxies at Hunt Club and Riverside and what did we see parked outside the T&T Chinese supermarket but this eye-catcher. Check out the interior too!
Wow, life is crazy at the moment and not enough of that has involved photography or cool cars. I’ve got some shots of some interesting local vehicles to upload when I can grab a few minutes somewhere. There was a nice old Ford Mustang hanging around outside Wendys. There’s some others that I haven’t taken pictures of yet… an old S-type Jaguar that looks like someone’s new restoration project and an old-school (okay late-70s) Chevy van. There are so many cool cars in Ottawa. We saw someone hauling a black Lamborghini Murcielago on a flatbed the other day. With the weather changing most of the Harley’s are on their way back into storage for the winter.
I did get some inspiration to improve one of my shots, you’ll have to wait for me to get a moment to post it but here’s the original version…
I’ve never been fond of the colour cast on it so I fixed that and did some other tweaks in Adobe Lightroom and I’m now happy with it. I just need to export it and upload it. I’m pleased because an un-chopped 1927 Ford Model T Coupe is one of my all-time favourite cars. My ambition would be to build a Fad T based on it but instead of chopping the roof, I’d actually make it taller – now wouldn’t that be something different?
Anyway, I gotta get back to work. Just wanted to let you know I’m still around and hungry to take pictures of cool cars and bikes.
…Mike.
