allPM Newsletter Co-publisher, Judy Umlas

Let me get straight to the point: Did you know that you can earn PDU’s (Professional Development Units®) from PMI® for writing an article on Project Management for a professional publication, such as allPM.com, of course? Check out this link for details. So, if that isn’t incentive enough, what about the idea of reaching close to 16,000 allPM.com members in 90 different countries with your expertise, your best practices, your lessons learned? Or if you need further wheedling or cajoling, how about the idea of getting your name in allPM.com "lights"? Anyway, we love getting your article submissions, are very selective but due to the high quality of many of them, we use at least one or two in every newsletter. This month we have "Project Management Helping to Save the Whales" – an unusual topic and an unusual story, complete with photographs! Thanks, Tom Witkin for submitting it and for putting up with our only slightly painful editing process.

This month, our theme has been "Service Management," and we have a very thoughtful and helpful article by Anne Foley, PMP and Six Sigma Master Black Belt about truly focusing on the customer. She states that when customers buy a drill, what they are really buying is the hole that the drill makes, and this concept creates some interesting observations on customer focused project management.

Co-Publisher Frank Saladis has a great Leadership Checklist this month for all of you, and has invited you to submit your own to him. Any really unique and excellent one will win an allPM prize! So send ’em in! Also, Frank’s Leadership series "The Leader Within, Developing Positive Leadership in Your Organization", is being held on May 19 from 10:00 am to 5:00 pm. It’s live and on line, and all you need is your computer and your interest in this worthwhile subject! And don’t forget that allPM.com members get a $20 discount! Don’t miss out -- this course is worth 6 PDUs. Click here for more information and to register (use discount code LSallPM).

Speaking of prizes, we are holding a contest for our 20,000th member (we are now at 15,547)! Don’t slow down the process of becoming a member just to get close to the prize, though – there are too many good benefits to wait for that, and they are all free. Once again, as we did for our 10,000th member, we are giving away great prizes such as an autographed copy of Dr. Kerzner’s 8th Edition bestselling Project Management text book, Project Management: A Systems Approach to Planning, Scheduling and Controlling, a free seat to the eLearning seminar, Kerzner on Best Practices in Project Management and a bunch of other goodies. We are also offering lunch with Co-Pubs Frank and Judy and a two-night stay in New York City, in contest sponsor IIL’s corporate apartment. You would have to get to New York City on your own, though, if you win. Now that prize will be a lot of fun – for all of us!

This month we also have an intriguing article on "Agile Project Management" by Siva Sankara, PMP. Our Spotlight on Government article, "Gathering Business Requirements Through Focus Groups" by David Kohrell, PMP, focuses on the Rational Unified Process (RUP) in a real world setting of a public sector project.

Through our partnership with PMI’s GovSIG, we are launching the Government Forum on allPM.com on May 1, and it will be moderated by Lee Lichtenwalner, head of that group. Please visit, pose your questions, and help each other with answers, as you already do in a great way on the other Forums! Thanks in advance for your participation.

It was exactly a year ago – last April -- that I made my (in)famous reference to T.S. Eliot’s poem, The Wasteland and its opening line, "April is the cruelest month." I wasn’t rude enough to say that none of you had probably ever heard of it, but I did go so far as to say that most of you probably don’t like poetry (that PM’s have that rep), and that I would eat my words if you wrote in and told me your favorite poem. Well, a good number not only made me wrong by telling me your favorites, but you wrote your own poems that were wonderful take-offs, for the most part, on famous ones. We also got some totally original PM Haikus! Wow! Please pass the salt so I can eat my words! Well this month, we have a terrific PM Poem by Bob Mittelsdorf, PMP called "All the World’s a Project," with his apologies to William Shakespeare. I invite and advise you to read it! So please keep submitting your poems – they are such a lot of fun.

Something else I am proud of and want to call your attention to: the whole host of templates that allPM offers at no charge. Our templates editor is "Template Tom" (aka Tom Welch, PMP), and he tells a bit about his own template usage, recommendations and favorite templates on our site, in this edition of allPM Today. Check out his article as well as the templates themselves. If you have some templates you think would benefit our members, please send them to us!

So things are really cooking here, for a change, and we – as always – love to hear what’s cooking with you. Enjoy the signs of new life that are emerging, and have a wonderful Spring. "See you" next month!

Judy Umlas
Judy.Umlas@allPM.com

From the Co-publisher's Desk- Frank P. Saladis, PMP

If you are looking for best practices, innovative approaches, or just need to "brush up" on your project management skills and knowledge, allPM.com is just the ticket for you. Here we have a collection of articles, tips, surveys, and even poetry from an excellent network of professionals, custom designed to meet your project management needs. One of the value adding features of allPM.com is the opportunity for you to submit an article for our readers. We focus on tools and tips, insight, and lessons learned. What better source for that information than from you, the practitioner. As Judy says in her letter, you can reach nearly 16,000 readers of allPM.com and share your knowledge, maybe even invite some debate. The important thing to remember is the contribution you make to the profession of project management. As you can see in this month’s issue we feature an article about "Project Management helping to Save the Whales". This just proves that project management is in practice in just about everything we, as people, are involved with.

Service management, the theme for the month, is an area that truly utilizes project management skills, tools and techniques. An example of service management would be a "wedding planner". I know it’s not what would immediately come to mind when we mention service management but think about the project management expertise required to produce the "perfect wedding". It’s a great example of a person or an organization supplying a much needed service (at least I think so). Excellent customer service, something we all expect to experience when we purchase a product or service is discussed in an article by Anne Foley, PMP. Her focus is on the results of the tools we buy. We expect good (more specifically excellent) results when we use the tools we have purchased but there is more to it than just buying and plugging it in.

allPM.com has something for every project manager, so read on and, as always, let us know what you think. We can and will continue to raise the bar through your suggestions and ideas.

Frank P. Saladis, PMP
Frank.Saladis@allpm.com

April Poll Results

What criteria does your company use to reward project completion?

A. On time, on budget, within scope 17.07 % (7)
B. Customer satisfaction, high quality 31.71 % (13)
C. My organization does not offer project rewards 51.22 % (21)

Total votes: 41

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May's poll question is: Does your company formally document and manage knowledge such as "lessons learned" on projects?

A. Yes - department level
B. Yes - enterprise level
C. No - ad hoc only

If you have not already done so, please stop by allPM.com and add
your opinion today.

allPM Today Tips Feature
Top Ten Practical Tips in MS Project 2000, by Eric Uyttewaal, PMP

In my previous tip, I explained how you could have MS Project solve ALL your over-allocations. However, this often led to schedules that run too far into the future. You can develop another scenario with many over-allocations leveled out while staying within the project deadline. For this scenario you need to set a Deadline date (only works with constraints, not with deadlines) on the project end milestone by double clicking on the milestone and clicking the Advanced page tab. Then you choose Tools, Resource Leveling, and you select the option Clear leveling values before leveling and Level Only within Available Slack, then click the button Level Now. You can now check to see if other solutions can be found for the work overloads that MS Project could not resolve within the deadline of the project. For example, you can explore if you can recruit extra people. This scenario will tell you how realistic the deadline date is. For this scenario to work, you cannot have many hard schedule constraints in your schedule. You can go back to the scenario without leveling that you started with by choosing Tools, Resource Leveling and clicking the Clear Leveling button.

SUBMITTED TO MPUG, Jan 2002

Eric Uyttewaal (BS, Engineering; MS, Business Administration; PMP) is Director, Microsoft Project Certificaton, International Institute for Learning, Inc and author of "Dynamic Scheduling with Microsoft Project ® 2000." This tip appeared in the 3/2001 MPUG eZine. 

Intermediate Excel Tip: A first look at VBA

Written by: Bob Umlas

Okay, you’ve worked with Excel for some time now, you’ve heard about VBA (Visual Basic for Applications), or programming, or Macros, but what is it, exactly? Or even approximately?

We can start with a small example. Suppose you frequently change formulas to their values. This is usually a multi-step process, even though pretty straightforward. You select the cell(s), Use edit/copy, then go back to edit and click Paste Special…, then select "Values" from the choices, then click OK, and finally perhaps you press the esc key to get out of copy mode (the scrolling marquee is still showing). You can to it all with either one simple keystroke or perhaps a new button on the toolbar. It’s done with programming, or using VBA.

VBA is Visual Basic, a "standalone" program, hosted inside an application. Excel has it, Word and Powerpoint have it, and other Microsoft applications have it as well. As a matter of fact, you can’t get these programs without it!

Featured Article: Customer Focused Project Management

Written by: Anne Foley, PMP

We’ve all heard that the best way to start a new business is to find a need and fill it. The stories of entrepreneurs who have built successful businesses from this concept are legendary and entertaining to hear. Many of us have found ourselves wondering "why didn’t I think of that?"

But then we go back to our roles within our established companies and completely forget this very simple concept. For some reason, understanding what our customer "truly" needs does not seem important. After all, we’re the experts, so we certainly know what the customer needs better than they do. We’ll just build it and they will come.

This might have worked for Kevin Costner but this isn't Hollywood. There are too many stories of unsuccessful companies that built it and no one came. Understanding the needs of your customers is critically important to success. Especially if your business provides services.

Anne Foley (PMP) is a Master Black Belt and PMP. She is the director of Six Sigma with the International Institute for Learning, Inc.
Anne.Foley@iil.com

Spotlight on Government Article: Gathering Business Requirements Through Focus Groups

Written by: David Kohrell, MA, PMP®, MSFP®

Overview
The Rational Unified Process has emerged in the last several years to become a leading methodology for managing software projects. RUP unifies the activities of four phases (Inception, Elaboration, Construction and Transition) across eight disciplines:

• Business Modeling
• Requirements
• Analysis and Design
• Implementation
• Testing
• Deployment
• Configuration and Change Management
• Project Management

Several questions arise as use of RUP continues and grows. Is RUP agile or heavy? Can it be applied to short-term as well as long-term projects? How does it work in the real world? The answer to the first two questions depends greatly on how the third question is addressed – in terms of the real life approach. This article focuses on a real world setting of a public sector project.

Project Facts
The project is Nebraska’s Workforce Development, Unemployment Insurance Benefit System Modernization project. The project phase addressed is the inception phase and the disciplines are business modeling and requirements. This phase occurred from September 22 through November 21, 2003 or sixty days from a blank slate to a validated set of requirements.

David Kohrell, PMP, MSFP is the president of Technology As Promised, LLC, and a professor with Bellevue University in Omaha, Nebraska. He also serves as the President for the PMI Mid-Nebraska Chapter (2002-04). In Technology As Promised LLC (www.aspromised.com), he has created a company focused on developing technology leaders and leading technology into organizations. He has managed projects and delivered training for vibrant organizations such as the City of Omaha, ConAgra, FiServ, Gallup, LRS (Levi, Ray and Shoup) and the State of Nebraska.

PM Poem: All The World's A Project

Written by: Bob Mittelsdorf, PMP

With apologies to William Shakespeare

All the world's a project,

And all the men and women merely stakeholders;

They have their needs and their requirements;

And one project in its time has many parts,

Its acts being seven stages. At first the infant need,

Elusive and changing in the sponsor's arms;

Positive Leadership In Project Management: Creating Your Personal Leadership Check List

Written by: Frank P. Saladis, PMP

There are probably hundreds of ways in which you can assess your personal leadership qualities. You can simply ask someone for feedback, you can participate in a 360 degree feedback process, or just look at the results your team is producing. Whatever method you use, chances are you will find some areas for improvement. To be very straightforward and clear, leaders should continuously be looking for areas in which they can improve how they work with people, lead teams and influence their organization. Improvement should be part of every leader’s personal plan which can include such items as finding new ways of doing something, developing a better method of team motivation, learning something new, reading a book about leadership (there are plenty to choose from), or scheduling a few informal meetings with employees or business associates.

If you ask around your organization or within your personal network of contacts, you will find that many people define leadership in much the same way – traits like "good communicator, easy to work with, has a vision, is organized and more. But these are qualities that are on the surface. We need to dig a little deeper to see what it takes to be truly effective leader. It can be a little difficult to do this without a framework to start from. It is understood that every organization will define leadership differently based on organizational culture, type of business, geographic location and other factors, but I believe there are some common elements below the surface that we can build on. Here is a Leadership Checklist to help get you started:

When is a Risk not a Risk? – Part 1

Written by: © 2004 Dr David Hillson, PMP FAPM
david@risk-doctor.com

One of the most common failings in the risk management process is for the risk identification step to identify things which are not risks. Clearly if this early stage of the risk process fails, subsequent steps will be doomed and risk management cannot be effective. It is therefore essential to ensure that risk identification identifies risks.

Many people when they try to identify risks get confused between risk and uncertainty. Risk is not the same as uncertainty, so how are the two related? The key is to realise that risk can only be defined in relation to objectives. The simplest definition of risk is "uncertainty that matters", and it matters because it can affect one or more objectives. Risk cannot exist in a vacuum, and we need to define what is "at risk", i.e. what objectives would be affected if the risk occurred.

A more complete definition of risk would therefore be "an uncertainty that if it occurs could affect one or more objectives". This recognises the fact that there are other uncertainties that are irrelevant in terms of objectives, and these should be excluded from the risk process. For example if we are conducting an IT project in India, the uncertainty about whether it might be raining in London is irrelevant – who cares? But if our project involves redeveloping the Queen’s gardens at Buckingham Palace, the possibility of rain in London is not just an uncertainty – it matters. In one case the rain is merely an irrelevant uncertainty, but in the other it is a risk.

Checklists for Reference and Review

Written by: Tom Welch, PMP (aka "Template Tom")

Given the many tasks project managers perform -- leadership, communications, and collaboration -- it is often nice to have a checklist to refer to during a normal but turbulent business day. That's why I created the 23 checklists published under the Templates section of allPM.Com.

I use these checklists plus many others daily.

The original checklists were created while I was on assignment with Price Waterhouse Coopers and was asked to brief the local office on project management practices. Since then, I often use these same checklist when mentoring project managers or as a "quick and dirty" review of a specific topic.

My favorite checklists are:

• Project Manager's Roadmap
• Accelerators That Work
• Project Rescue Basics
• Stakeholder Analysis -- Steps, Actors & Factors

Tom Welch, PMP is a project management practitioner and first-tier Fortune 500 and Big 4 alumnus. He has a strong track record managing technology-based programs, products, and projects, end to end. You can email Tom at TW78216@yahoo.com

Agile Project Management

Written by: Sivasailam Sankara, PMP

* A recent search at Yahoo on Agile Project Management gets 594,000 hits.
* Leading magazines like Software Development, Application Development Trends, CIO Magazine & IEEE Software are publishing articles on Agile Project Management
* Editors of Newsletters [including this one] and software magazines are dedicating a section to Agile processes

Why is there so much interest in this new methodology?
Businesses continue to change at a rapid pace. We are in the midst of a chaotic business environment. The organizations rely on software, to be competitive and be successful. Well, it's good news for technology / software professionals. It is only to be expected that customers want the projects to be delivered as promised, on time and meeting or exceeding the quality expectations.

In order to deliver any project well, as a project manager, you need to have a methodology or a process in place. According to Merriam Webster, a methodology is a body of methods, rules, and postulates employed by a discipline: a particular procedure or set of procedures.

Sivasailam Sankara [Siva] is a certified Project Management Professional. Siva has over 20 years of experience in the information technology arena. He has successfully led several technology solution delivery efforts. He has worked for Newspaper, Textile, Pharmaceutical, Manufacturing industries & public sector. He loves sharing his ideas and training. Currently, he provides leadership to technology architecture, integration & infrastructure initiatives for his client. He is very passionate about Enterprise Application Integration and Agile Project Management. He has a Masters Degree in Public Administration. He is Deputy Director - Membership for PMI - Government Specific Interest Group. He is Past VP - Technology with PMI - Mid Nebraska Chapter.
Siva can be reached at sivapmp@yahoo.com

Project Management Helping to Save the Whales

Written by: Tom Witkin

In the fall of 2002, Ocean Alliance, a thirty-three-year-old whale and ocean conservation organization, was taking on water. No, their 93-foot research vessel, Odyssey, hadn't sprung a leak. Worse. The Boston-area nonprofit faced dicey business problems: declining corporate philanthropy, competition from other conservation-related nonprofits, and an overly ambitious strategy. Six months later, through the help of local MBAs donating their time, the hull was riding a little higher in the water.

Much of the credit goes to Community Consulting Teams Boston (CCT). CCT brings together volunteer MBAs to provide pro-bono management advice and consulting to socially-conscious, Boston-area nonprofits. Ocean Alliance approached Community Consulting Teams Boston (CCT) to help them bring into focus an image that had grown fuzzy. Management of the conservation group sensed that the public, the scientific community, and prospective sources of funding were no longer sure what they were actually doing to "save the whales" and their ocean environment.

In a down economy, which saw overall corporate giving drop over twelve percent in 2001 (according to The United Way), that lack of a strong "brand," made donors "scarcer than a northern right whale," said Patrick Woods, the organization's Director of Development. Contributions to Ocean Alliance dropped nearly twenty-three percent over the same period, though foundation grants rose substantially.

Tom Witkin is founder and president of The SpeedWork Company. For the past eighteen years -- much of it with Market Contact Software, a sales and marketing consulting and applications integration firm -- he has worked to understand, re-engineer, and enable common sense business processes through software. Tom is a Stanford MBA and a veteran of consultancies McKinsey & Company and Booz, Allen & Hamilton, and high techs Texas Instruments and Lotus Development. Outside of work, he keeps busy as drummer for Straight 'Burban, a jazz ensemble, flight instructing in gliders and airplanes, and coaching soccer and Little League.