Make your project assumptions visible

Have you ever been on a project and no problems surfaced to make your job difficult? If you answered yes, someone hid the problems from you. For those of us with actual project experience, problems with projects are inevitable. Without the ability to see into the future with perfect accuracy, no one can anticipate every obstacle and challenge that will arise from even the most well planned project. Here are a few common problem scenarios:

A task takes twice as long or costs three times as much as we planned. Why? Because the person who estimated that task had an assumption about their workload while estimating which turned out to be false.

The entire project runs into crisis because the research data was faulty. Or, the time to develop a solution was unrealistic. Key documents required to execute later steps in the project turn out to have poorer quality than assumed.

The effect of poor assumptions on project quality is usually negative. If deadlines and budget cannot be increased, the only remaining project variable - the scope and quality of the product - is reduced.

So how can you prevent these problems from affecting project or product quality? If you can’t hire someone to travel forwards in time and report back what happened, you are left with only one option: Good assumption management.

An assumption is something taken for granted, or accepted as true without proof.¹

¹ American Heritage College Dictionary. Third Edition Houghton Mifflin Company

During the project planning session, assumptions are rampant. When the project manager asks the team, “What are the tasks required to complete this deliverable?” the team members make assumptions like, “given this is that same type of project as I was in last year, given the regulations haven’t changed, and given our internal systems are the same as last time…” and then answer with a series of tasks.

When the project manager asks a team member, “How long will this task take?” the team member assumes, “given that I’m available 50% of my time to work on this project, and given that I am not on vacation or sick that week…” and then provides a duration.

Almost never are these assumptions stated out loud. And during all the talk surrounding the planning of the project, lots of assumptions are thrown around but rarely captured for posterity. When that part of the project goes into crisis, some people may remember the discussion, but few will remember the actual outcome of that discussion.

Below is a simple method to capture and apply assumptions to the Project Management Planning of any project.

Document your assumptions.

Before the project planning session gets under way, label a separate flipchart sheet with the title: “Issues/Risks/Assumptions.” The Project Manager must

We need to stop buying Middle East Oil

In this recent article, the NY Times showed how we are becoming less dependent on foreign oil but its not fast enough for me.

By SETH W. FEASTER | Sources: Energy Information Administration; Bloomberg

As the graph above points out, we only curb our thirst for oil when the price goes up. Look what happens when I add the date 9/11/2001 to the above graph:

How many Saudi 911 hijackers were financed by us buying Saudi Oil which was then used to fund Pakistani madrassas dedicated to the overthrow of the US? How much Iranian oil money is going into buying nuclear technology? Finally we're boycotting this Iranian oil but China is picking up the slack.

By SETH W. FEASTER | Sources: Energy Information Administration; Bloomberg

I'd love to see the same energy put into rejecting 'blood oil' as is currently being put into 'blood diamonds'. I, for one, will pay an extra dollar a gallon for gas if I can be assured that none of it was bought from the Middle East. I'll buy it from Alaska, the Gulf, Mexico, Canada, even Venezuela but I don't want to continue funding the sworn enemies of the freedoms championed by the US.

Who will join me in paying extra for 'blood-free oil?'

Koran burning vs. massacre

Well, I gave it two sets of Friday prayers but there still have been no protests for the massacre of 16 civilians in Afghanistan approximating anything of those protests over the accidental burning of some Korans. After only a couple of weeks after the Koran burning incident, the nationwide rioting left at least 29 Afghans and 6 American soldiers dead.


But when an American soldier deliberately targets civilians, including children, it seems to be greeted with a collective yawn. What's up with that? 

Finally I read this article which seems to explain the problem:

When mullah Abdul Rahim Shah Ghaa thinks back to the day in February when a couple of Afghan employees at a U.S.-run detention center outside of Kabul yanked five partially burned Korans out of a trash incinerator, he shudders with anger and revulsion. “It is like a knife to my heart,” says the head of the provincial religious council. The March 11 slaying of 16 Afghan civilians by a lone U.S Army staff sergeant named Robert Bales in Kandahar province, however, has left less of a scar. “Of course we condemn that act,” he says. “But it was only 16 people. Even if it were 1,000 people, it wouldn’t compare to harming one word of the Koran. If someone insults our holy book, it means that they insult our faith, our religion and everything that we have.”

By contrast, attacks on the Koran, whether accidental, as happened in February, or deliberate, as when a Florida pastor burned a Koran a year ago, are relatively rare. (As the result of the 2011 incident, protesters in the northern Afghan city of Mazar-i-Sharif stormed a U.N. office, killing seven foreigners in addition to four protesters.) And Afghans want to keep it that way. “It’s our red line,” says university student Basir Abdul. “If we don’t protest the burning of the Koran today, tomorrow the foreigners will enter our houses and rape our women.” Besides, he says, he doesn’t know anyone in Panjwai, “so the killings don’t affect me. But the Koran belongs to everyone.” In a country riven by tribal loyalties, Islam transcends ethnic identity. It’s the one thing all Afghans can agree upon.

The history of Islam is one of defending the faith, says Shah Ghaa. The Koran is not merely a book or just the word of God but a symbol of sacrifice akin to the Christian crucifix. Afghans see themselves as an integral part of Islam’s historic struggle against tyranny. “Since the time of the Prophet, there has been war to keep our religion alive,” says Shah Ghaa. An estimated 2 million Afghans died during the anti-Soviet jihad, he says. “Why? Because we had to defend our religion. Insulting the Koran is like insulting everyone who died in that struggle.”

Maybe this explains why there is such a cultural divide between our two countries. Americans will complain about an artist painting holy Christian images with elephant dung without deadly protests but you better not kill our children. On the other hand, Muslims will kill for any depiction of the prophet or insult to their Koran but deaths of children can be bought off with blood money.

Notice that the Obama administration recently paid the blood money:

My only remaining question is: Why was one of the protesters holding a Koran in his left hand? I thought that was strictly taboo.

Read more in this article:

Karma defeats Survivor Leader

Anyone who watched the latest season of Survivor must have formed an opinion of Colton. I'm sure mine is not the minority opinion: Mean, manipulative, selfish, lazy, whiny, I could go on. A self-proclaimed gay Republican who indeed has black people in his life: his Housekeeper.

I couldn't understand how anyone would allow themselves to be manipulated by this jerk. He's the kind of person I write off at first impression and never deal with other than to oust them from my life at the earliest opportunity.

This last episode showed him bonding with the evil woman on his tribe: Alicia
It was sickening watching these two bully the next person they had in their sights. Christina at least fought back and worked to drive a wedge between those being manipulated by Colton and the head. She probably would have convinced the other men to vote off Alicia.

But then, Karma struck with lovely force. Probably for overuse of the hair gel that has allowed his locks to remain salon-fresh after fifteen days in the jungle, he was struck by an acute case of Appendicitis and had to be medically evacuated out of there.

And in a final, selfish move, he took the immunity idol with him, refusing to even give it to Alicia, the one ally he had remaining in the game.

Please, Survivor producers, don't bring him back in some kind of an all-stars game. He just makes us sick to watch. Seeing him get dunked in a challenge and bawling for help was the only fun I had this season so far.

But this kind of payback is to be expected when you are a bad leader. It happened once in my career and I loved it. I was interviewing for my first job out of college and working as a night janitor to pay the rent.

New York Corruption

Reading an article like this makes me crazy. This is one of the main reasons I hate living in New Jersey. Here I am, paying enormous property taxes and high prices for consumer goods, just so that relatives of KNOWN CRIMINALS get $400,000 a year no-show jobs on the waterfront and in the state and county government offices. When asked about what these people do they shrug and say, “Influence”!

Here we are, in the 21st century, in a modern country and we still pay mobsters to keep the unions from striking on the waterfronts! We pay off the unions by paying THREE people to operate a crane that can only be operated by one, allowing people to milk overtime so they can “work” 27 hours a day.

My only hope is that these stupid mobsters kill the golden goose so that the work moves out of their control to docks elsewhere in the US. But are these other docks any any less tainted by their thieving influence?

Kony

After seeing mentions of this video in the news, I was somewhat curious. But then my eleven year-old son was looking over my shoulder as I posted on Sunday and asked where I got my ideas for posts. I told him I read things in the paper, saw them on TV or the Internet. He then asked why I hadn't posted about Kony yet. So I watched the video and decided I also should take action.

Watch the video and try to keep a dry eye.

Sub-Saharan Africa is such a big mess with warlords and religious wars, failed states and piracy, rebels and armies committing atrocities, that it makes me just want to throw up my arms and wash my hands of the entire continent. After all, "What can I do?"

Well, this video answers that question quite succinctly. Force the US government to assist in the arrest of the number one war criminal at large. By the end of 2012. And he outlines the specific steps to achieve this end. They are steps that my children are willing to make. Why shouldn't I make them also?

Now there has been some negative publicity about this movement so let's spend a little time addressing it.
Sure, one of the founders was caught running around naked in San Diego but that was attributed to exhaustion and stress from the criticism. (And it did look like a nice, sunny day...)
There have been complaints that his approach is too simplistic for this complicated region and that the government Kony is fighting uses similar tactics. That's OK by me. Start at the top, capture criminal # 1 and then work our way down the list. DO NOT get involved in African politics.

I, for one, am looking forward to seeing what the world looks like on the morning of April 21, 2012. Who's with me?

Thirty-first excerpt from 'Twelve Towers'

She unwrapped a harp. As Gwilym walked out the tavern door, she started up a song. Her voice was clear and sharp.

The tower seemed as though it would be finished quite a bit early, because of this excellent team that had been forged through careful planning and serendipitous events. But the various problems that always plague a project reared their ugly heads. One was that a boat owner insisted on removing his boat from the stream to the river after the arch supports were in his way. Gwilym argued with the captain but to no avail. The captain insisted that he must deliver his cargo that week and could not wait until the arch supports were removed. He was not one of the boat-owners originally told about the bridge plans so he escalated his argument to the mayor of the town who forced Gwilym to help the man. Gwilym was forced to divert his men for two days to haul the boat out of the stream and over the arch, lowering it back down to the river on the other side.

As a result of these problems, Gwilym was struggling to place the capstone the day before Beltane. The runes on this stone seemed to match those on the previous two, even though this stone was original to the tower. He didn’t have the river jade to place under it and was about to use some granite when Merlin entered the jobsite with Grainne in tow. He bowed to them both, shook Merlin’s hand and kissed Grainne’s.

Merlin addressed him. “Another wonderful job, Gwilym and finished right on time. Almost as though the Goddess decreed that you place the final stones on Beltane.”

“Yes,” agreed Gwilym. “It’s quite the coincidence. Do you have any more of that river jade, Merlin? It worked well on the last two towers and I was hoping for some more on this one.”

Merlin nodded to a box behind him in the cart.

“Where did you get them, Merlin? They are quite fine and smooth and so strong. They can’t have been cheap.”

“Have you ever seen me use money, Gwilym?” was Merlin’s reply and this stopped Gwilym while he recollected all his memories of Merlin. No. He’d never seen the man even appear to hold money. ‘Strange indeed,’ he thought.

“I’d like to arrange a private audience with the lady Grainne when you can spare her, sir.”

Merlin replied, “When she is through with her duties, I’m sure she’ll find you.”

“No, sir,” Gwilym said. I’d like to speak with her sometime today, not tonight. And I’d like to talk with her over a meal, rather than on the job-site if possible.” He blushed, remembering his previous two encounters and wondering how much about them was known to Merlin.

“The lady speaks for herself, Gwilym” said Merlin.

Gwilym turned to meet Grainne’s frank look and asked her, “Could we have dinner in the tavern together? I have some questions for you.”

Grainne paused for a moment, considering, then said, “Yes. I’ll meet you there at Midday.”

Gwilym took the river jade and set about placing them under his capstone. The men were cleaning up the job-site for tomorrow’s ceremony with Sir Kay and were almost finished. He would send them home after dinner he decided. Let them celebrate as a team for a while.

Gwilym washed up and entered the tavern, finding Grainne already seated at a table. All the men in the tavern were staring at her hungrily. He sat down and ordered food to be brought. Bread, cheese and mushrooms plus some carrots and milk. They both ate heartily.

“Should I expect you at the top of the tower again tonight?” he asked.

“Of course you should, Gwilym. I want you as my Beltane lover again,” she replied.

“This is getting to be quite a pattern. Would you tell me what it’s all about. These capstones have some power and meaning and we seem to be consecrating them each Beltane. Add to that the river-jade that must separate them from the rest of the tower. There is certainly some old magic being done here.”

“All will be explained in good time, Gwilym. Are you not enjoying yourself?”

“I’ll not deny that I am enjoying myself. You felt my enjoyment as well as I. But there are consequences of these acts. Was it my child you were suckling last year?”

Grainne looked down and replied, “The Goddess gives children