Printouts that transfer data electronically

Wow! This is the coolest printer. With chips built into the paper, not only can you print wirelessly, but the electronic content you are printing out is conserved so that you can take the printout with you and plop it on your i-Pad, i-Pod or computer and listen to the music, watch the movie or get to the website you printed out. Watch the video or check out the website.

Babushkis lead village revival

The Eurovision competition is always fun. Often the winner is one of the more esoteric acts as people from each country cannot vote for their own country's acts so they vote for the weird ones so that the act from their rival country won't win. This year, one of the favorites was a group of Russian women in full babushka costume, singing 'Come on and Dance!'

They are all deeply pious women who used the winnings to rebuild their church which had been destroyed during the Soviet era. A clever project using today's technology to solve their problems.

Watch the old dears rock out below:

Leaders must represent their followers' best interests

The title above seems like a no-brainer in a democratic society but it is often not the case. Rogue CEOs bring down companies but they are not re-elected year after year. Today I'm writing about school boards.

For those readers outside the United States, let me explain how schools are funded here. Parents move to affluent areas if they can afford it and pay higher property taxes because that is what pays for the schools. Taxes pay for bonds that build new school buildings, teacher salaries come out of the taxes and so does everything else. I pay about $14,000 a year in property taxes, the majority of which goes to fund schools in my county.

When election time comes around, people running for the school board positions usually take care to present their credentials: showing how their three children are in the district or have recently graduated from the district or they themselves are products of the schools. That usually weighs highly in voters minds since they want the school board members to have the school district's best interests in mind.

Now there are some parents who send their children to private schools. They still pay the property taxes in addition to the amount they spend for tuition. And there are some who home school their children. There is always grumbling from these people who complain that their tax dollars are not being spent on their own children. But that's another argument. Most of those who send their children to private schools do so for religious reasons. In most school districts these parents have no say on the school board.

But what happens when the majority of children in one town go to private schools? This is happening now in East Ramapo, NY school district where 8,000 children attend public school while 19,000 attend private school. This group has hijacked the school board by voting as a block and now holds seven of the nine seats.

They have sold elementary schools to their private schools for below market value, suggested cutting graduations as a 'Superfluous expense' and are cutting kindergarten. Read about all the details in this article. Parents of public school children are trying force out the five who have been on this school board the longest using a Federal lawsuit.

East Ramapo, NY School Board

Complications arise due to racial tensions. 85% of the public school students are Black or Hispanic, the rogue school board members are Orthodox Jewish. The president of the board, Daniel Schwartz, ranted about the interference:

“We are headed on a crisis, a horrible, horrible crisis,” Mr. Schwartz began. He referred to Auschwitz and Treblinka, and to statements against the board and Jews that he said had been made by district students.

“If you don’t like it, find yourself another place to live,” he said.

In the interview, Mr. Schwartz said it was insulting to contend that Orthodox Jews did not have an interest in excellent public schools.

“What they are suggesting is that Orthodox Jews as a whole are an entire subgroup that doesn’t give a damn about anyone else,” he said.

He does raise an interesting point, though. They do represent the majority of voters and were elected fairly. But they were elected to represent the students who attend the public schools. They probably read some kind of oath of office that committed them to represent those children. Shouldn't they obey that oath, rather than their own children's best interests?

Dear PM Advisor August 6, 2012

Dear PM Advisor,

How do you best manage R&D projects where the scope and requirements are fuzzy and change is a common-place occurrence?

Stumped Scientist

Dear Stumped Scientist,

As an R&D engineer for fifteen years, I struggled with the same question. Before I fell into Project Management I used to laugh at PMs who tried to predict when we would reach a successful conclusion to our experiments. I even had a Director who's favorite saying was: "You can't predict discovery."

But if a company is going to be successful, it must be able to manage R&D projects in a similar manner to Development or Process or any other project. That means the steering committee must be able to promise a certain amount of time and money to an R&D group in exchange for an agreed upon scope. So how do you do that when you don't know when your experiments are going to yield the results you're searching for?

My take on my old Director's quote is: "You can't predict discovery but you CAN manage it." I'll show you how to manage it.

Let's divide up R&D into the two functions: Research and Development. In pure Research you are given x dollars per year to play around in your field and spit out things that the Development group can turn into products. This is an ongoing operation and does not fall into the realm of Project Management.

Development projects can be further broken into projects that have a defined scope that can be managed like any other project and those that still require a lot of testing. So let's focus on this last group. How do you manage these?

I'll give you an example of a project of my own that I had to manage in this way. I was working for a company that made vascular grafts out of Dacron. DuPont used to sell us the fiber but they wanted to get out of the Medical Device business due to the risks they perceived from silicone breast implant lawsuits. We found a new vendor willing to supply us the raw yarn but we had to prove to the FDA that the grafts we made out of this material were equivalent to those we'd been manufacturing for years. The process of converting raw yarn into complete Medical Devices took about eight weeks.

We would have to run this yarn through the full process, sterilize the products and then test them before we would find out how they did. We didn't expect them to pass the first time. We would test the products, make adjustments to the formula, then run the process again. While we could plan every activity in the eight week process in exquisite detail, we had no idea how many rounds of this process would be required. I talked to the technical expert and he hoped that we might find the answer in about five iterations.

What I decided to do was plan for six iterations, each eight weeks long, with a two week analysis time between each. I presented this to the steering committee, asking for 1.6 million dollars and two years to reach completion. They asked me to promise that I would succeed in six iterations. I couldn't do so. I told them I would keep them informed of the results of each analysis so they could see that the team was making progress. In the end, they had to agree to the terms of the project.

So that's how you manage research projects. Plan all the steps you can and manage the rest. Make sure they understand your assumptions, especially the important one about how many iterations it will take to reach success. Understand that the steering committee may well say no to your project and choose to invest their project dollars elsewhere.

Good luck,

PM Advisor

Send your questions to bfieggen@gmail.com 

Forty-first excerpt from 'Twelve Towers'

Re-entering Huish, Gwilym apologized to every resident he saw for bringing this disaster upon them. He joined the townsfolk at the body of the old man and heard the story. Palomides had heard nothing from the townsfolk where Gwilym was so he had held the man’s daughter at sword-point, threatening to kill her if the man didn’t reveal the secret. After the old man had told him that Gwilym’s family was at the beach, the knight had cut off the man’s head and galloped to the beach.

Gwilym saw the look of distrust returning to the townsfolk’s faces when they talked with him. It was the same look he had seen many times when entering a new place and he accepted with sorrow that this town was no longer home for him. He told the townsfolk he was leaving and that they needn’t worry about betraying him.

“Tell anyone who asks that I have gone to Londinium,” he said as he brought his family to his house to pack up. Grainne gave him the box of river jade from Merlin. “This is for your next tower,” she said.

The boys hugged her. Gwilym shook her hand and then pulled her into a hug. “I can never thank you enough for my children’s safety. I was helpless and you did for them what I could not, even if I had been there.”

Grainne winked at Gwilym and said, “I’ll see you at Beltane,” and walked off towards Avalon.

The next morning, as they packed the last of their belongings in the cart, Father Drew arrived to say his farewells. “I have been moved to Glastonbury, Gwilym. I start there next month. If you need any information from here, use me as a go-between.”

“Is it a promotion, father?”

“It is more than that, Gwilym. I have been granted my wish to serve under some of the older priests who follow the original British church: the men who are rumored to resist the influence of Rome over Christianity. Perhaps I can find out more about this Gospel of Joseph for you there.”

“God be with you, Father.”

“And you too, son.” The priest took his leave.

Just then, Fred stepped up with his belongings on his back

“Fred!” exclaimed Gwilym. “I’m not going off to a job site. I’m leaving for parts unknown, with three children and no job. You can’t come with me.”

“Of course I’m comin’ with you. We still have towers to build. I still have words to learn. You still don’t know how to handle a horse. Shove over and give me t’reins.”

“But Fred, what about Heilin? I thought you two were getting serious.”

“Oh we’re serious all right. But a married man needs work and I believe I’ll find it easier with tha than here in Huish. I’ve said my goodbyes and I can visit when I have money for a wedding. So, which way do we ride?”

Gwilym looked shocked but happy. “We take the road to Londinium. At least until we are out of town.”

They took the road south and then east toward Calleva. At those cross-roads, Fred steered the cart north toward Corinium at Gwilym’s instructions. “We must travel to Caerleon to ask of Sir Kay where our next project will be.”

Fred’s eyes grew wide with this prospect.

To read the entire first draft in one shot, click here:

Mars Lander Project

NASA, via Associated Press

An artist's rendering of NASA's new Mars rover, Curiosity

Wouldn't it be cool to work on a project like this? One where there is a huge, complicated timeline that goes for years but punctuated with a few tight, second-by-second timelines where everything has to go exactly right. That's what I love about NASA projects. There are those tight timelines around launch and landing that must be planned meticulously with all sorts of back-up plans and contingencies in place to ensure that the billion-dollar investment isn't lost.

This Monday, NASA lands a new rover on Mars to explore the planet. The steps to slow the descent of the spaceship from 13,000 miles per hour to a soft landing have been dramatized in an awesome video called  'Seven minutes of terror. ' Click on the link above to view this video.

Let's hope this project is successful and doesn't have the problems of a previous NASA project where the difference between Metric and US units doomed an orbiter.

Free WBS Software

A friend told me about a free web-based Work Breakdown Structure tool so I gave it a shot. It's pretty good. Looks nice when printed out and exports well to MS-Project for scheduling. Check out their Web site.

Here's what it looks like when it's exported to Project: