Nice graphic showing income disparity

The Times graphic department did another great job, showing a lot of data in a clever way. How have American's incomes increased (or decreased) over thirty years by percentile compared with other countries. I'll let the graphic speak for itself:

Pretty cool, huh. If you want to read the article, click here.

Dear PM Advisor. Apr 21, 2014

Dear PM Advisor,

I'm having difficulty with a particular team member who wants to keep adding features and improvements to the product. This keeps adding time to the project. He says he is doing his job by adding quality to the product. He is the Quality Director. What do I say to that? 

Stymied in Syracuse.

Dear Stymied,

Give him the definition of Quality. The degree to which a set of inherent characteristics fulfills requirements. If you received x amount of money and y amount of time to fulfill z amount of requirements, it is not within his purview to add to this list.

It appears that he is changing the grade of the product. There is a key distinction between quality and grade. An i-phone is a higher grade than a flip phone when it comes to making calls. But a flip phone that never fails to make calls is a higher quality product than an i-phone that has a few glitches in this function.

Make sure the Quality Director is not adding features or gold-plating the product. You signed up for x, y and z and he lacks the authority to unilaterally increase any of these project constraints simply because he wants to increase the grade of the product.

Good luck,

PM advisor.

Send your questions to Bruce@RoundTablePM.com

Eighty-fourth excerpt from 'Twelve Towers'

          Once they were out of sight of Dale, Gwilym and Grainne held a hasty discussion. “The roads are no longer safe,” said Gwilym. “That Dale might tell him which way we went after all. He is scared of the knight. We have to hope we have at least a day before Palomides hears where we are. By then, we need to be off these main roads and traveling along open country to Glastonbury. We should be safe once we arrive there.”

          “These carts won’t be much good in the open country. Too many hills, valleys and rivers. Do you know the country here?” asked Grainne.

          “I know the main roads. They cut through forests on our way here. I don’t know if there are secondary tracks through them.”

          “I know the forests. If you can get us to the forests, I can keep us safe,” said Grainne.

          A few hours later they saw a track leading off the main road that showed promise of being more than just a farmer’s drive. They took this and then began an odyssey of tracking their way back and forth across the countryside, through farms and hamlets, around rivers and forests, up and down hills, fording small streams, backtracking around the occasional steep valleys but always heading generally west.

          Whenever they approached a settlement or even a farm, Gwilym would hide under covers in the back of the cart. His face was on the coin and he didn’t want to attract attention to their group. The sight of a beautiful woman alone in a cart attracted different attention and Bleddyn would sometimes have to stand and draw his bow to discourage the lewd advances.

          They traveled this way for a week, making slow progress toward their destination. Then they reached the edge of a great forest, one that was known to all as a dangerous place, pierced by only one Roman road from east to west and another from north to south. There were other trails reputed to be stalked by bandits. It would take two days to pass through the forest using the main roads. People spent the night at the crossroads where there was a small settlement and a contingent of the king’s soldiers. This was the place Gwilym had stayed on his trip from Huish to Airmyn.

          “Palomides may wait for us there,” said Gwilym to Grainne.

          “That’s good,” said Grainne.

          “Why?”

          “Then we can take the Roman road almost to the crossroads, skirt around it and return to the road later.”

          Gwilym thought about this and but was concerned about the logic. “But that’s only if he knows we must come this way. He doesn’t know our destination. No. Thinking about it more, I think he’ll place some trusted henchman there while he continues patrolling the roads to find us.”

          “No-one has seen you since Edithvale. How will he find us?”

          “At Edithvale they saw who I was traveling with. He’ll be spreading the word about you, the boys and the two carts. He probably went down the road that Dale pointed until he reached a settlement and asked there. He would have found out we didn’t come through. Then he would have gone back to the fork and done the same thing down the other road. We didn’t pass through any settlement before we went off the road. If he’s a good tracker he would have gone back to the fork and started making circles on his horse, stopping at every farm and asking about us. Eventually he would have come to places that had seen us and figured out our direction.”

          “Where is he now then?”

          Gwilym thought hard for a while in silence. “He may have figured out by now which direction we are traveling and that we must pass through this forest. The forest is the neck of the bottle. We either go through it on the road or around it. It will be easy for him to post a few sentries at some points around it looking for us to skirt it and one at the crossroads to catch us there. He hates to stand still so he will be patrolling the roads and outskirts.”

          “Then we are in danger here. We can only be safe taking one of the old tracks through it.”

          “That’s dangerous. They’re a haven for bandits.”

          Grainne pointed at the trees. “That’s an oak forest. I can protect us there.”

          “Do you know any paths wide enough for these carts?”

          Grainne looked at the carts. “With a little work, probably. Follow me, Bleddyn!” she yelled behind her and crossed the last bit of open field and plunged the horses into the dark. 

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

What kind of leader allows his passengers to drown?

While nautical leadership doesn't have to mean going down with your ship, at a minimum, it means ensuring that your passengers and crew are safe before you leave a sinking ship.

Captain Lee Jun-seok ordered hundreds of passengers to remain in their seats while the ferry sunk, meanwhile slinking off himself along with his crew. Here is is, third from the right, making it safely onto a coast guard vessel while hundreds of teenaged passengers are drowning behind him.

We can put him in the same boat, (pun intended) with Concordia captain Francesco Schettino, who slammed his ship into the rocks, drowning 32 passengers while he fled to safety.

Who did the right thing most recently? How about Sully, who made two trips through his sinking plane to ensure there were no passengers aboard before getting out onto the wing? This was after making an unprecedented no-engine landing on the Hudson River. That's the kind of leadership we need in captains.

What's the common link here? We can't say Navy guys stink and Air Force guys don't though there are plenty who would fight over that statement. Nationalities don't matter. Maybe it's the fact that the two ship captains knew they messed up and tried to escape while Sully was still in rescue mode.

PMO Creation - Week 9

We held our first official Steering Committee meeting this Friday with good results. Below was the Agenda:

1. Cancel Complete Projects
2. Add New Projects
3. Reprioritize Existing Projects
4. Change Control
5. Resourcing
6. Complete Executive Briefing

Most of the team was there. I was only missing Medical and part of Operations. 

Sarah had pasted the latest Priority List on the walls with numbered Post-its next to each project title ready to be moved. 

1. We cancelled a couple of projects that were not really projects, just deliverables within other projects. 
2. Then our CEO asked us to add a couple of projects that stemmed from new customer orders. We figured out the priority of these by holding the post-it next to the top projects and asking: "Is this more important than this one...this one...etc."
3. Then we looked over the list and decided that a couple of projects needed their priorities adjusted. But not as many as I expected. I'm used to more fluidity at this early stage.
4. Mike showed off our Change Control System. We made some suggestions for improving it and he took notes.
5. Sarah showed off the resourcing spreadsheet. This is almost ready to go. Sarah will update this with a few changes and send it out to the team to fill out for all their people.
6. I completed the Executive Briefing and everyone felt like the time was well spent. 

Simple invention to reduce hockey injuries

I love simple ideas with a big impact. Here's one that strives to reduce debilitating injuries in hockey caused by people slamming or being slammed into the boards without warning. Tom Smith invented a simple warning line that paints the last 40 inches of a hockey rink bright orange to give a player warning that a solid object is close.

Having suffered two severe spinal injuries himself, he now walks with crutches but wants to prevent future children from the paralysis and injuries that are all too common in this sport.

His 'Look-Up Line' costs $550 to install in a rink, 1000 times less than his own medical bills for six months.

June 6th, USA Hockey will vote on a measure to require this in all rinks. Let's hope it passes.

Dear PM Advisor - April 14, 2014

Dear PM Advisor,

What's the point of breaking projects up into many life cycle phases? It seems to add bureaucracy and stall projects. 

Streamlined in Atlanta

Dear Streamlined,

Let's look at the extreme ends of your argument to find the right amount of phases.

If there were no phases at all, that would mean that every project that was thought of would be planned and executed and enter the operating environment, regardless of how good or bad an idea it was. Too may bad ideas would enter the operating environment.

If there were seventeen phases, you would spend all your time fulfilling the requirements to pass that gate and projects would take forever.

So there must be some happy medium. I have found five phases to work well.

1. In the first phase, an idea is presented to management for consideration. Spend half an hour documenting your idea and, if it sounds good, you are awarded a sponsor and a couple more people to examine the idea further.
2. Phase Two has 2 - 3 people examining this idea and looking at options. Maybe spend 8 hours total seeing if it's still a good idea. If it is, assign another 3 - 5 folks to narrow it down the options.
3. Phase Three narrows down the options to one and figures out how to complete it. This might take a few weeks on a large project and up to 200 hours of effort.
4. Phase Four plans the whole project with the full team. Twelve people for 2 - 4 days of effort plus some time polishing it all up.
5. Phase Five executes the project.

Using this phased approach over time will make projects work more efficiently as you get better over time.

Good luck,

PM Advisor

Send your questions to Bruce@RoundTablePM.com