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• Trust us. We have block chain and we are here to help.

  

  Block chain's great Promise

  Middlemen are part of our daily lives. The great promise of block chain technology is eliminating the middleman. The original / most famous application of block chain is cryptocurrency, such as bitcoin. With no middleman, for example, with no bank to have to deal with, we could avoid those annoying fee’s and charges. Sounds great! Really? Who is going to do the work to provide a monthly statement of all your deposits and withdrawals? Who is going to do the work to lend money so you can buy a house or car, or pay for the hundreds of smaller purchases you make? Who am I going to call if I am having trouble logging in and can’t access my money? Who am I going to call if my bank engages in fraudulent activity?

  Block chain's technology

  Block chain uses crowd sourcing, massive computing resources, and math. The result is a process to allow us to exchange value directly with each other, without using a middle man. You might think we do this already. For example, if I make a deal with the neighbour to cut my grass for $25, you may think there is no middleman. But there is a middleman. I can’t pay unless I deposit my pay cheque and take out money from my middleman/bank. The promise of Block chain is that we can eliminate the middleman and instead of using a middleman/bank to keep track of our money, we will use the crowd to keep track of our money. The block chain response is something like, ‘Isn’t this going to be fantastic? We will deal direct with each other and rely on math and big computers as a proxy for trusting our bank/middleman’. This is not so fantastic. In the current models, we have no way to reverse a fraudulent transaction, no way to track money laundering, and no way to stop terrorist financing. Governments and banks aren’t going to hand over the keys to the economy so easily.

  Peak frenzy

  We are approaching block chain peak frenzy. I know because I failed my second-year statistics course but still read Satoshi Nakamoto’s paper on distributed databases, probability, and time-stamping. The trouble right now is the conversation is being dominated by charlatans jumping onto the next big thing. If not charlatans it is geniuses interested in the math, or disaffected folks interested in disrupting big corporations. Or, all the above.

  Steve Jobs

  Something big is happening but block chain is missing it’s Steve Jobs. I think block chain’s Steve jobs will emerge from Toronto, but that is for another article.

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  How to be a great leader

  Colin Powell, the retired US Four-Star General says to remain calm and be kind. He also has a rule - to have a demanding vision. Vision, he says, is our destination.

  1. Have a Vision of the future

  Vision, what is it? Where do I find it?

  Vision is not “Establishing vaccination guidelines and agreements, activating a network of furloughed retail workers, and implementing a military supply-chain technology for transportation and storage.” That is the strategy.

  Vision is not “Vaccinating all the citizens against COVID by September 2021”. That is a goal, that will be driven by the Strategy.

  Vision is higher than that. Vision is not something that exists today. It is something that is imagined that could be created in the future.

  Developing a compelling vision is done by looking into yourself. What are your beliefs? What do you believe is possible? Figuring out who you are, why you are here, and what is most valuable to you.

  Cultivating vision is a process. It does not emerge during an off-site, or from reading leadership philosophies, or watching an inspiring movie.

  To be visionary you need to set aside significant time to percolate these questions.

  2. Provide Clarity of desired results

  Bruce Lee may have said, “The successful warrior is the average person, with laser-like focus.” Results require change. Without change there is no result. Motivating anyone to change is expecting them to work towards the unseen and unknown. At every level of challenge this is a fundamental issue that needs an answer every day.

  Giving your team the answer they need is not difficult, your job is to provide clarity.

  You need to communicate to your team the information they need to risk working on the unseen and unknown.

  Explain to your team what is most important. Work with them so they understand why the choices made are the best choices. When the team is aligned on what is most important they will have clarity on the desired results.

   

   

   

   

  3. Demonstrate effective Decision making

  Nelson Mandela said that “Action without vision is only passing time. Vision without action is merely daydreaming. But vision with action can change the world.” Standing on the shoulders of giants, I say the sum of the actions will not be productive without a robust decision-making process.

  The problem with change is that, only after starting, on the way to achieving results, does the solution emerge. The detail is previously unknown on what is required, how it will come together, and what is needed. Leaders who make the mistake of communicating their vision from on high, hiring the best team, and delegating all responsibility for results will be in for a surprise.

  Leaders need to reserve time to develop vision and they need to be effective at engaging others to deliver lofty goals. However, do not let go of the steering wheel and don’t look away from the dashboard.

   You need to ensure that everyone is aware of and reliant on a process for obtaining your decisions on how the strategy and goals are to being met. You need to ensure that you are aware of and broadly communicating key decisions to all stakeholders. If you miss this – you will more than likely not recognise the final product.

   

   

   

   

  Questions for you, the readers.

  • What would be an example of a Vision that is supported by the vaccination goal and strategy mentioned above?
  • How have great leaders from demonstrated these three skills of Vision, Clarity, and Decision-making? (e.g., George Washington, Martin Luther King Jr., Captain Kirk)

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  STEPHEN D WISE

  INTEGRATION PROFESSIONALS
  DRAMATICALLY IMPROVE TRACTION

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

• Turnaround: Leading a Project Recovery

  It’s true! Most every failed project had an earlier phase as a troubled project. I will look at techniques a Project Manager can use to gain control of a troubled project and lead a turnaround. Does this sound familiar?

  • The volume of identified defects has swamped testing or development or change control.
  • No-one on the project team has a firm view of when the project will be finished.
  • The budget is red and no-one knows how much additional work is still required.
  • The customer is losing confidence and showing signs of buyer’s remorse.
  • Team members are working excessive hours of overtime, email wars are breaking out, and personal relationships are unraveling.
  • The Executive is no longer on the same page as to the status and outlook for the project.
  • Vendor contractual misunderstandings are emerging and creating additional challenges.

  If you have a troubled project, crisis is imminent and your world needs to change. Sooner rather than later management will request increased and more detailed updates. Customers, team members, and other internal stakeholders, such as audit, will soon be checking old project emails and asking additional questions. Now is not the time to become defensive. You are the Project Manager, and now more than ever, the stakeholders need you to lead them through the turnaround steps to project recovery. Step 1 – Initiate Recovery

  1. Seek guidance from the project team, business owner, and corporate methodology on an appropriate approach to initiate recovery planning. This step shouldn’t bog you down. Equally important as the guidance gained, is the communication you share with the stakeholders. That is, “You are leading the team into project turnaround and recovery mode.”
  2. In order to understand the status of the project and the nature of the recovery required, interview key stakeholders and analyze key project documentation such as project org chart, Charter, Work breakdown Structure, Issue log, Schedule (planned and actual Activities, resources, assignments, timing, and costs), and Change Log.
  3. Ensure the Project Team and executive reflect on the status of the project as measured against the business case benefit. Many events have occurred since original assumptions and it is possible that changes in market needs, technology, and enterprise risk, et cetera, render the existing project as unviable.

  A very common mistake is to rationalize the continuation of a project due to the vast money and effort expended to date. Never use the amount of time and effort spent to date as a reason to continue a project with a broken business case – the money that has been spent can’t be recovered, however, it is possible that additional money about to be spent could be re-allocated to bring relatively more benefit to the organization. If the business case is broken, recovery is not possible, and your job as Project Manager is to ensure an updated business case is approved or the project is stopped. Step 2 – Planning Recovery Assuming that the Executive, Sponsor, and Project Team are in agreement with implementing a project recovery, it is time to gather the stakeholders in a series of planning sessions. It is crucial that all stakeholders are represented in the re-planning exercise and that they are representing their relevant departments in committing to the new estimates in the plan. The Project Manager has several levers available to make change over the original project plan. I recommend working each of the three levers below.

  1. Reduce Scope Facilitate review of the incomplete scope elements by the team. Identify and validate dependencies, resource requirements, and alignment to the business case. Request or impose a haircut to the scope of the project.
  2. Increase Schedule Seek deep clarity on the reasons and alternatives to any “drop-dead” dates articulated by stakeholders. Review duration estimates and resource leveling for the remaining work. It is common for team members to underestimate overall time required and to spread individuals too thin across numerous tasks. Unless the customer is willing to accept reduced deliverables, avoid planning backwards from a “drop-dead’ date as this is likely one of the factors that sent the project schedule into trouble in the first place.
  3. Increase Productivity Tailor the approach to meetings, documentation, bug tracking, task assignments, and overall communication for ways to make it easier to get the work done. A caveat – if the team is working on the wrong things or running into problems that impact others, now more than ever, it is up to the PM to surface these things and help to resolve. Now is not the time to tailor your approach by skipping status meetings or decreasing PM follow-up activities.

  As an output of the re-planning exercise a new plan must be built. To ensure the new plan will not fail, it must have buy in/commitment from all appropriate stakeholders; and it must be maintained and updated rigorously by the Project Manager. Step 3 – Execute the Plan Over and above the tremendous efforts from those doing the work, the success of the recovery depends on the persistent monitoring and tracking of the agreed recovery schedule and issue log. Avoid the noise - a good PM must repeatedly step-up and exert pressure to steer the team away from the many potholes that seem significant but in actuality, are not really blocking the path of the project. Conversely, the PM must be prepared to step outside their own comfort zone to influence stakeholders for the sake of the project when tasks are slipping or issues aren’t being resolved in a timely fashion. The essence of project recovery turnaround is to demonstrate leadership and renew the team with a refreshed analysis of the situation, a re-invigorated sense of purpose and shared commitment, and a clear and detailed plan to reach the end of the project. Finally, I note that I have not addressed reporting and metrics unique to project recovery. This will be covered at a later date. Stephen Wise Integration Professionals http://www.IntegrationProfessionals.com/ http://www.IntegrationProfessionals.com/Twitter/
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  Delivering Business Transformation Strategy

  Michael Porter’s books on Competitive Strategy and Competitive Advantage led me to embrace Project Management. That is, I have frequently said, a company that invests in Project Management is making an investment in their competitive advantage. Less frustration delivering value, less disruption to teams, improved engagement, etc.

  Porter’s Five Forces and the SWOT analysis are now inadequate as concrete underpinnings for strategy design. Strategy is still important, but the amount of change driven by disruption, innovation, and transformation means that the interpretation and implementation of Strategy – which occurs during the delivery – requires a high-touch feedback loop.

  An increased importance in the strategy delivery does not mean that strategy design is less important – it means that executives must give equal personal priority and attention to designing the right strategy as to delivering.

  Here are three key tips for executives to stay engaged in the delivery phase of business transformation strategy. Governance – Decision Making – Planning & Re-planning.

  Governance – Build a governance structure that reinforces the accountability and responsibilities for the vision. Ensure the team is adequality resourced in terms of experience and availability. Review and address risks and interdependencies at the beginning and periodically and through the realization of accumulated benefits. Insist on a complete set of regularly reported metrics and milestones.

  Decision Making - Move quickly to re-prioritize and remove roadblocks that are uncovered despite a lack of complete information or analysis. Accept changes to time and budget milestones based on new information from the working team.

  Planning & Re-planning – The less time you have available – the more important it is to have a robust plan. Don’t forgo detailed planning, but in today’s business environment planning and re-planning must be rapid and agile. Documenting tasks, task owner, and interdependencies are as important as schedule and budget. Issues impeding success should be discussed regularly and recommendations to tweak the plan fed up to the executive team in order to ensure alignment and ongoing support.

  Delivering strategy is like going on an expedition through a deep jungle. Every so often you will get to a hilltop and be able to asses how things went so far and what new landscape is coming in to view. An executive that spends time and money crafting the strategy needs to protect her investment by staying available and engaged for those hilltop moments.

  Stephen Wise

  Integration Professionals

  Dramatically Improve Traction

• Six things I must do to bring value. Part 2 of 2.

  4. Use Earned value to track schedule and budget progress against plan. Consider that the “Must finish on time” 6 month project you are leading has burned up 80% (5 months) of the calendar.  You request an update to senior executives where you report that the team has determined that they need an extra month added to the schedule to finish the project. Some time later, the project finishes after a total of 10 months. Did something unexpected cause extra delay? Could you have provided a more accurate forecast during your executive update? Consider that:

  1. Team members, usually under subtle and not-so subtle pressure, consistently underestimate how long it takes to get things done. As an aside, in my experience, the most common source of the underestimate is changing requirements, unexpected complications, and lack of available folks to do the additional work.
  2. Given the chance to re-plan the project, the team looks only at the amount of work remaining, ignores the leanings from the start of the project, and bakes in the exact same underestimates in the re-plan.

  Earned Value is the single most powerful Project Management principle in the entire PMBOK; it provides unbiased status of current state and forecast of future impact to schedule and cost. It is also the most underused key concept by Project Managers. In a nutshell, Earned Value provides an independent Project Management perspective to the following questions:

  • Are we ahead or behind schedule?
  • When is the Project likely to be completed?
  • What is the remaining work likely to cost?

  It isn’t unusual, that it is not appropriate to report and discuss Earned Value metrics to management. That’s not a showstopper, because the information is still highly valuable and actionable by the person most accountable to take the required day-day actions to ensure project success – the Project Manager. 5. Hold regular status meetings.

  • Hold Weekly Status Meetings: Less frequent, for example, every two weeks, is too long because if key people miss one it is a month until you are together again. More frequent and not enough will have changed resulting in meeting churn.
  • Standard Agenda and Meeting materials: That is, status late and upcoming activities, review new Issues, Risk Log updates, and potential Change Requests. Ensure that all “Work breakdown Structure” stakeholders are represented at the meetings.
  • Issue Agenda/Pre-Mail / Minutes: – That is, issue the agenda and meeting materials at least 24hr prior to the meeting.

   6. Escalate unresolved Issues and significant Change Requests to the management team. 

  • “Unresolved” – Don’t escalate until the Project Team has reviewed the issue without success.
  • “Issue” -  Ensure the item being discussed is within scope of the project and is impacting success, if not, note it for later discussion.
  • “Significant Change” – a) Establish risk and impact thresholds, below which, the project team will “adjudicate” change requests internally without escalating, and above which, will always use the agreed change management process.
  • “Escalate” – Advise the appropriate stakeholders quickly as a courtesy and to ask for help.

  There you have it. I support and subscribe to PMBOK, ITIL, Agile et cetera, and the more I learn about each one, the more similar and complementary they seem to me. However, as a Project Manager working with diverse clients and changing needs, the above six are my must-haves in order to provide value-add as a Project Manager. Thanks for reading. Feel free to leave comments if you feel strongly about anything. Stephen D Wise http://www.IntegrationProfessionals.com/   Look for a future drill-down on Earned Value.
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  How to Improve Sales Revenue in Your Company

  A typical business goal is to execute the sales strategy and increase revenue by X% over the period. The sales process is an ongoing operational activity and is usually not suited to being treated like a formal project. However, the sales process needs to be managed and there are similarities between managing a sales process and managing a project.

  A sales process needs:

  • Management of key milestones and timing
  • Identification and assignment of people to assist
  • Encouragement of teamwork at client site and internally
  • Risk identification and mitigation planning
  • Tracking and reporting of selected metrics
  • Feedback/improvement loop

  Management of key milestones and timing in the sales process

  I recommend every sales team to work with an expert project manager to develop a template of tasks and estimated timing which gets stored in a central library. At the earliest reasonable time, the template should be fired-up and customised to suit the opportunity. That is, tailor it to needs by modifying the tasks that need to be accomplished, the estimated durations, and dependencies.

  This plan, will guide all stakeholders to manage expectations and keep everyone on track for what needs to happen next.

  Identification and assignment of resources within the organization to assist with the presentation

  Once an opportunity has been identified, team members need to be called on for assistance in various parts of the proposal. It is important that the sales person ensure that everyone has time to take on the work, understands how to do the work, and understands when and how to report that the work is completed or that some sort of issue has caused work to slow down or stop.

  The sales person may not have the authority to prioritise everyone’s time and therefore it is important to keep the lines of communication open.

  Risk identification and mitigation planning

  Sales people are able to identify unique risks because they are the closest to understanding the client’s expressed needs. These insights are extremely relevant. Combined with their own experience dealing with other customers, sales people can see risks that no one else can. Positive risks, those that have upside potential lead to new items in the sales funnel. Negative risks, those that can push a deal off the rails should not be pushed under the carpet.

  The (negative) risks, should be identified and reviewed. Each risk has a likelihood/ probability of occurring and severity/impact on the sale should it occur. The sales person’s team and management should periodically develop and review tactics to reduce the probability and lesson the severity of impact, should it occur.

  Tracking and reporting of selected metrics back to the team and management

  Peter Drucker, has been paraphrased, “you can’t manage what you can’t measure”. The selection of appropriate measures and metrics is a cornerstone of sales management. Most sales people are keenly aware at all times of the status of their metrics and how much they are exceeded or failing short of their objectives.

  In addition to short-term results, frequently communicating a sales dashboard may be more beneficial then you thought. The benefit is to improve organizational alignment with the sales strategy. Having visibility to the sales dashboard could be the trigger to makes those changes

  Feedback/improvement loop

  Deals get won. Deals get lost. The salesperson will obtain lots of knowledge about the client or at least they should. Knowledge represents a significant asset for most businesses. Left unmanaged knowledge tends to quickly fade. When deals are lost, it is important to learn from the process. Are there changes that can be made to the sales process? A lessons learned process and central repository for the post-mortem will help the next sales rep and also help when it comes time to review the process for a complete over hall or investment in technology to automate parts of the process.

  Stephen D Wise

  Stephen Wise Integration Professionals

  Dramatically Improve Traction