Dear PM Advisor. February 4th, 2013

Dear PM Advisor,

What is a 'Work Package?' Different people within my organization call it different things. Is it a part of an activity or a big collection of activities within the Work Breakdown Structure?

Two Minds in Brooklyn, New York.

Dear Two Minds,

The Project Management Institute has made a change in the last few years on its definition of a Work Package. The levels of a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) used to be titled this from top to bottom:

Level 1: Project Name
Level 2: Tracks
Level 3: Deliverables
Level 4: Tasks
Level 5: Sub-tasks
Level 6: Work Packages

Now that they want you to conduct the Work Breakdown Structure and then define activities as a second step, here are the new levels:


Level 1: Project Name
Level 2: Tracks
Level 3: Deliverables
Level 4: Work Packages

Then you break down the Work Packages during Activity Definition into Activities. PMI doesn't want these activities showing up on the WBS so they define the Work Package as the lowest level on the WBS.

I'm not sure why they did this. But that's the way the PMI now wants it so, if you want to pass your PMP test, you need to know this terminology.

I still do my WBS the old fashioned way as shown above and do it in one shot unless the project is huge and needs to be broken down by different groups. Here's the method I use.

Good luck,

PM Advisor.

Send your questions to bfieggen@gmail.com

Al Qaeda in Mali

I would find it amusing to hear of barely educated Madrassah boys from Al-Qaeda telling the Islamic scholars of Timbuktu that they knew better what Islam was all about if it weren't for the destruction these savages caused. Fortunately, tens of thousands of priceless scrolls and documents were spirited away to protection before they were destroyed.

Too bad the people of Timbuktu had to endure Shariah law at the hands of these interlopers. This NY Times article details some of the hardships the residents had to face until they were liberated by French soldiers. Beatings of women who showed their faces, amputation of thieves' hands, executions.

Ripples from the Arab Spring are still hitting Saharan Africa in ways that frighten me. Which country will next feel the crushing blow of Hezbollah-financed hordes? Morocco?

$35 computer

Anybody remember the movie "Computer wore tennis shoes?" In this movie the computer lent to the school for their computer training was a room-sized mainframe. By the time I went to high school, the computer we were lucky enough to have was about the size of a PC but so expensive we all had to share it.

Look at how far we have come. Raspberry Pi makes a credit-card sized computer that costs only $35. They have sold one million of these units to schools for teaching computer science students.

Read this NY Times article for more details. The power is turned on by plugging in the cable. The memory is supplied by a camera-style S card. And most people spring an extra ten bucks for the plastic protective case. But it does its job quite well and, most importantly, can teach kids how to use computers for very little money.

Dear PM Advisor January 28, 2013

Dear PM Advisor,

Is it necessary for me to name all my tasks uniquely? I have a lot of similar deliverables in my project that require the same tasks. Can't I just copy and paste the tasks within my Gantt chart? You can still look up at the name of the deliverable to see what the task is referring to.

Ditto in Kalamazoo, MI. 

Dear Ditto,

The greatest thing about a computer is the ability to copy and paste. For a lousy typist like me, any chance I get to copy and past, I'll take it. And I love copying and pasting tasks along with their resources, dependencies and durations.

But when I'm done with that, I'll copy the deliverable and paste its name at the end of each task name to make each one unique. Why?

As a project manager, I use some of the higher functions of MS-Project. Filtering, setting up custom views, sending out MS-Project e-mails. Some of these functions strip the task from its deliverable so when you performs these functions it becomes difficult to see which task you are actually talking about.

I was recently shown a function where you add a text column that you use to identify certain tasks as milestones. Then you filter on these and all of your milestones of similar type end up lined up together. The next logical step for me would have been to export this to Excel to allow me to determine what percentage of each milestone was complete. I could have done that but I couldn't go the next step and figure out which were complete and which weren't because all the tasks were called the same due to cutting and pasting.

So do yourself a favor and get in the habit of naming each task uniquely. It's a good habit and lets others use your Gantt chart for cool things.

Good luck,

PM Advisor

Send me your questions at bfieggen@gmail.com

Fifty-second excerpt from 'Twelve Towers'

All arrows homed in on these men. As they approached, it became clear that they were carrying a large wooden beam from one of the buildings. One, then two of the men fell from the group but that seemed to increase the speed at which the battering ram was being brought to bear. Gwilym hurled a huge rock as the ten remaining raiders passed under the wall and crashed into the gate. The rock crushed the heads of two of the foremost men near the front, causing those behind to trip over their bodies. The ram did crash against the gates but with much less speed. Under the gates the men were drenched with boiling water from the murder holes above, then riddled with arrows. Gwilym tried to lean over the parapet to throw more rocks at them but found the angle too difficult. He realized that moving the tower to project beyond the walls was a good idea. It needed to be done with all the towers. Unfortunately, his new tower looked over the river, not the town, so it couldn’t be used. Gwilym raced down to the courtyard to face the raiders. The ram battered three more times on the gates, each time with less power. The gates gave a little each time but held firm and finally the noise stopped and a cheer arose from the townsfolk.

All was quiet for a few hours as more goods were transferred from the town to the boats. Then a group was seen shuffling towards the gates. When they approached it was seen to be a group of eight residents of the surrounding areas, prodded along by spears from the twenty marauders intermingled with them. Their hands were bound and feet were hobbled. Gwilym’s stomach turned over on recognizing the smith and his young family among the captives. The smith’s face bled from a deep gash.

“Hold your fire or we kill them before your eyes!” warned the man who appeared to be in the lead. “Looks like your folk didn’t all escape! How much ransom will you pay for the life of this old woman?”

He held his knife to the throat of an old lady and the smith’s wife shrieked in terror. “We’re already dead dear, just remember that,” said the old lady to her daughter.

The leader flicked his wrist and, blood spurting from her throat, the woman fell to the ground. “You were right there, you old witch! But you, my dear, are not dead yet.” He pulled the smith’s wife from the crowd and showed her to the stunned townsfolk. The woman couldn’t take her eyes off her dying mother.

“The hag was right. She was dead already. But this girl is not. I’ve taken a fancy to her and I think I’ll use her on the long journey home.”

At these words the smith struggled and was bashed to the ground by the marauders behind him.

“So I have a proposal for you. I’m sure you have a lot of gold and silver hidden in that castle. And since you won’t let us come in and take it, I’ll sell you these people in exchange. The old woman wasn’t going to bring much of a price. But what about this baby?”

He snatched the child out of the hands of the smith’s wife who screamed as he held it by the ankle. The baby, shocked awake by this treatment, set up a loud wail.

“We’ll pay a lot less for it if it’s maltreated!” Gwilym was as surprised as anyone around him as he shouted out these words.

“Ahh!” said the leader, righting the baby and curling it

How's that Arab Spring working out?

Two years ago when I first posted about the Arab Spring, I was dubious of its chances for success. The choices I laid out were a crushing by the dictatorships or a switch-over to the Muslim theocracies like Iran. I had doubts that a true democracy would come to pass.  I think we can see that my prediction was correct. Egypt has converted to a theocracy that is sponsoring Muslim uprisings around the region. They have been implicated in the Benghazi embassy attack, the Algerian oil refinery massacre and the Malian takeover.

Syrians are still fighting off their dictator with mixed success. Algeria and Tunisia are playing with Muslim theocracies. Will there ever be such a thing as an Arab democracy? I don't think I'll see one in my lifetime.

Real people or Screen people

I just recently read two excellent books that dealt with the trend of people spending time on the Internet or texting in preference to real conversations with people.

The first one, Feed, took a fictional approach to the topic with teenagers having the Internet literally fed into their brains at all times and how their lives differed from ours, especially when the feed malfunctioned and they were back to 'normal.'

Lots of great teen speak that the author picked up by eavesdropping on kids in the mall and extrapolating into the future.

The second one, 'Alone Together' was a non-fiction book written by an MIT Artificial Intelligence professor and it showed the types of experiments being performed that showed the trend towards people preferring robot company and moving away from face to face or even phone conversations in preference of texting and other 'controlled' conversations.

In this one the author answered the question I've always struggled with: Why do teenagers prefer to text than call? It always seemed a step backward in technology to the time of the telegraph before the telephone was invented. Her explanation is that teenagers are intimidated by the immediacy and lack of control found in a phone call and prefer to be able to massage their words before sending them. 

The books got me thinking, what should we do, if anything, about these trends? Should we try to head them off? I'm all in favor of the increased efficiency brought to us by mobile technology and the Internet. Being able to complete a business deal while driving to another customer. Finding the restaurant where you want to eat and read reviews by other diners while someone else is driving to town. Then clicking on directions and the menu. These are all great advantages. 

I know there are all kinds of rules about Internet safety and not texting while driving. This post won't deal with those issues. I'm just going to concentrate on social interactions with the presence of screens. What is polite and what is not. I'm thinking about rules we've imposed at home and what rules we should perhaps add to this list. 

The rules are not designed to impose my old-fashioned set of norms on my children. Instead, I am keenly interested in raising my children to fit into future society. If they don’t learn how to have a phone or face-to-face conversation as children, what are they going to do when they go for an interview, try to sell their product to a customer, meet their future in-laws?

Multitasking is a skill that can work in certain situations like when you are using different parts of your brain to accomplish different tasks. All of us can walk while having a conversation, eat while listening to music, even play simple video games like Brickbreaker while listening to a book on tape. But young people think they can multitask with the same area of the brain. This has been tested repeatedly and found to be a fallacy. You cannot effectively text someone while having a conversation with another person. You can’t do your homework efficiently and correctly while maintaining seven different chat sessions and listening to loud music. If you think you are one of these rare exceptions who can do that, submit yourself to testing and you’ll be surprised.

What follows is my first draft of a set of rules. Please comment with your impressions of these rules and any additions you would make.

Screen rules

1.  Live people are more important than people communicating to you via screens.
2. No screens at the dinner table unless your family allowed TV there 20 years ago.
3. If  something comes up in a conversation where the answer can be found by checking a screen, ask permission first.
4. When spending time one-on-one with someone and your phone interrupts, answering demotes the real person in importance to the one on the screen. (That’s OK if it’s your mother or your boss, not OK if it’s just another friend.)
5. If you’re in a group and the conversation can go on without you while you check the screen, that may be OK but be subtle.
6. No screens while attending religious services, a concert, a show or a movie.  You can always tell people ‘gtg’ for a couple of hours and get back to them when you leave the area.
7. No screens while attending a lecture unless the lecturer asks you to look something up as part of the class.
8. Enjoy your time when in a special event. No need to look at it through your camera.

This last one is a personal pet peeve. Remember the opening ceremony of the Olympics? All these athletes were at the pinnacle of their career. They march into the stadium in front of billions of people and what are they mostly doing? Rather than enjoying themselves, they are recording the crowd and fellow athletes on their cell-phone cameras! People! Have your buddy at home record the show and post it on your Facebook page. Enjoy the moment! You deserve it!

What are your thoughts? I'd love to see some additions to this and we can come up with the '10 communication commandments.'