Season's greetings - New Year - What's ahead for 2010

Hi,

I wish everyone a very happy new year!

I just started wondering how the IT buiness world is going to look like in the year 2010 and beyond...what challenges lies ahead of us....how are we going to do better with less dollars....here is what it comes to my mind...

Top 5 challenges IT may need to deal with it in 2010 and beyod..

1. On-demand IT services (Software as a service) are going to play a major role in reducing IT costs. There will not be a traditional software licencing any more, more and more companies will adapt on-deamnd services. Some of the services in that direction are data center virtualization, cloud computing, green IT etc.

2. Lean Project Management will emerge as a new concept. The products have shorter lifecycles, and we have no time to go after a full-blown project management approach, instead project management will be a key enabler and planner to increase the efficiency and outcome of the products ontime at shorter periods have never seen before.

3. Virtual workforce, Paper less environment will contribute to the green revolution. Estimated roughly about 150 million Americans drive to their workplaces, imagine even if we cut-back by 20% on commute, the impact on the environment is phenominal

4.  Healthcare and life sciences will become a major target in revamping and making it affordable to the common public. There will be enormous amount of global competition for the drug makers to keep the costs low and R&D would become a major outsourcing segment in the industry

5. Niche IT services players will play a key role in the IT services market, it will be tough road ahead for global gaints to attract top talent due to their complex business structures. Top talent would need a lot of room for quick growth, and that puts the global gaints in a tough spot

Once again, I wish every one a very happy and prosperous new year

Sameer Penakalapati

How to be happy

How to be happy

How to keep team (employees) motivated? my own learnings and practices

There are thousands of books available on this topic, I am not trying to write another essay on it but sharing my own thoughts/readings/experiences

1. Relationship

It doesn't come easily, it takes time and effort to build a cordial relationship with the team. My own way of doing it is to strike a balance between work relationship and personal, and it determines a quality of leadership. Relationship strengthens if the leader's commitment to the team is fair, reasonable, friendly, respectful and most importantly the gratitude towards team contributions.

2. Fairness

Fair compensation, Opportunities for growth, Knowledge sharing, Goals alignment with Organization-Employee relation, Empower an employee with responsibility, Zero gravity towards favoritism and friendship. Look at the fairness factor in all these microscopically, if your gut-feel is good, then you are doing the right things. A leader must exhibit these traits with the team, you must see the team motivation sky rocketing and the productivity is unparalleled by any measures

3. Second home

I have seen personally in many organizations where employees feel terrible even thinking of going to work, why? Is it a fault of employee? No, it is something to do with the organizational culture. Work place is like a second home to employees, it's where they spend most of their time outside their home. Look at the global corporations like Google, Microsoft and many other in the recent decades, their employee morale and motivational measures are consistently higher due to their innovative ideas in motivating their employees. I personally believe in empowering employees at the workplace with appropriate checks & balances in place.

4. Gratitude

Most of them fail to recognize gratitude, a generous recognition towards employee contribution to the growth of an organization. In recent times, most organizations are quick to layoff employees for poor organizational performance but at the same time executives rack the hefty bonuses for the good performance of an organization, lack of fairness in sharing the gratitude appropriately. Gratitude is the biggest effective motivational factor of all, unfortunately most do not share it with their teams.

One instance I wanted to point out, once former President of India, Dr. Abdul Kalam was a chief program manager for PSLV program to launch a satellite to the moon. The satellite was launched, after a short it landed in Arabian sea. Then ISRO Chairman, Dr.Vikram Sarabhai called in for a press meeting and announced that he takes the responsibility of the program failure and he would ensure that next mission would be delivered successfully. After a year, ISRO launched another satellite, this time, it was a huge success. Again for the second mission, Dr.Abdul Kalam was a cheif program manager for the successfully launched satellite program. Second time, the press meeting was announced, Dr.Vikram Sarabhai was asked Dr.Abdul Kalam to go to the press to share the success with the nation. What do you learn from this incident, a leader must show gratitude towards team contributions and share the success with the team.

more to come...

******** Sharing is learing *************

How to thrive in a recession? 10 tips to keep your job in growth trajectory!

The current recession is tougher and longer compare to the 2002 recession. We are seeing companies either goes out of business or acquired by competitors. In either case, the negative impact on employment opportunities are inevitable, it leads to fewer jobs and much tougher competition.

How to survive? It may not be difficult but needs some level of discipline and planning required personally and professionally.

1. Organizations rely on people who are capable of delivering the set target goals with constraints, we must be ready to embrace those challenges

2. Ability to do multi-tasking and multi-skills are key for survival

3. Always remember the three key traits: Offer your Flexibility, Availability and Unconditional support to your colleagues, direct reports, supervisor(s) and to your organization

4. Keep innovate to increase your productivity. It can be a better process to get your work done at faster rate, or new technique to do multiple tasks at parallel to reduce time and cost

5. Knowledge is wealth, that’s what it matters to businesses. New skills open a window of new opportunities and new opportunities creates a new platform for the growth. Help yourself by adding one new skill per year; you can make your job a recession proof, I can bet on it.

6. When businesses run at tighter budgets, the speed and accuracy of your job is critical. Must be in a position to balance these by delivering projects on time, may be that’s the way to do all the time?

7. Show your enthusiasm, honesty, dedication, audacity, and professionalism. The businesses knew that the employees who possess these traits are asset to their organization; you will not let go even at difficult times.

8. Avoid late office arrivals, non-business phone calls, frequent breaks, and any non-productive tasks. In normal business circumstances, these can be subjective and may be tolerable to an extent but not when business is at difficult economic times

9. Believe in your contribution to the organization, take a great pride, keep high spirits and positive attitude. If you have these, you will stand out in your organization because you are different.

10. Take the ownership and help your colleagues, help your team, and help your organization in whatever form you can to increase the bottom-line for your organization. By doing so, you would be taking a great advantage of the recession and making your position much stronger in the organization.

What's new in PMBOK fourth edition?

PMI has a revised edition of PMBOK released on January 1st, 2009. The new book is a 4th edition of PMBOK (Project Management Body of Knowledge) and has a numerous changes to the knowledge areas.

PMI will have the current 3rd edition of PMBOK for the PMP exam until June 30th, 2009 and those who take the exam later must follow the 4th edition of PMBOK

My top picks to look at it in the 4th edition of PMBOK

#1 Consistency & Clarifications

PMI has provided enhanced version of the process diagrams across all the process areas. It is used a standardized version of the process description in all the process areas. PMI has provided a better data flow diagrams to clarify the input sources and output destination of each process

PMI has provided a better clarity between 'project charter' and 'scope statement' by eliminating the redundancy. The process of 'Preliminary Scope Statement' was completely removed, because the fair amounts of preliminary scope details were documented in the 'Project Charter' document.

PMI has combined ‘corrective action, preventive action, defect repair, and requested changes’ as part of the 'change requests' process. By doing so, PMI has attempted to remove the redundancy and at the same time increasing the clarity of each sub-categories

#2 Close Project or Phase:

PMI has changed the process from 'Close Project' to 'Close Project or Phase'. Many big projects are carried out by phases, so project manager need to ensure all the required closure activities completed for that phase before move to the next phase or a new project. I guess, PMI wanted to ensure the project manager considers all the closure activities for each phase or project before move to the next phase or project.

#3 Project Scope Management changes:

Scope planning was replaced with collect requirements. Who defines the project scope? Project stakeholders, right! Then why scope planning? Collect requirements is the process of defining and documenting stakeholder's interest.

The stakeholder register is used to identify those with interest in the project, so PMI completely eliminated the scope planning so the same information can be obtained from charter document, and stakeholder register.

#4 Manage project team:

It is the process of tracking the team member performance, providing feedback, resolving issues, and managing changes to optimize the project performance. The 4th edition of PMBOK moved this process from controlling to execution, since the activities are more proactive to assure the project performance. This is one of the most important parts of the project execution process. Team management involves a special emphasis on communication, conflict management, negotiation and leadership

To read more about this, refer PMBOK 4th edition, page# 236, section 9.4

#5 Stakeholder management in project communications

The new edition has given lot of emphasis on stakeholder management, two important changes identified in the 4th version of PMBOK, they are: 1. Identify stakeholders 2. Manage stakeholder expectations.

What is most important in project communications? Identify, collect, storage, retrieval, and distribute the project information to all the stakeholders. PMBOK has added a new process called ‘Identify Stakeholders’ in the communication management; it is primarily to ensure all the important stakeholders are intact required for the project.

How to identify stakeholders? As per PMI’s definition, it is the process of identifying all people or organizations impacted by the project, and documenting relevant information regarding their interests, involvement, and impact on project success.

PMI has also moved the process 'Manage stakeholder expectations' from controlling to execution phase, why? It is more appropriate to be in the execution phase so that the projects won't run out schedules, cost, and quality. It is more about doing upfront than later reporting or recording.

For more information, read the chapter #10, Project Communications Management plan.

#6 Project procurement management

PMI has consolidated the 6 procurement processes to 4 process areas (Plan, Conduct, Administer, and Close procurements). The processes 'Plan Purchase Acquisitions, and Plan Contracting' combined to Plan Procurements. The new process 'Plan Procurement' covers the process of documenting purchasing decisions, approaches, and identifying the potential sellers.

The other two processes that PMI has combined was 'Requesting seller responses, and select sellers' to 'Conduct Procurements'. It is the process of obtaining seller responses, selecting a seller, and awarding the contract.

In the current 4^th edition of PMBOK, PMI has made a lateral attempt to simplify the processes so that project managers and teams can better apply these principles to wide range of projects and industries.

#7 Interpersonal skills:

PMI has identified the 8 most important interpersonal skills required for a successful project manager, the follows:

Leadership, Team building, Motivation, Communication, Influencing, Decision Making, Political and cultural awareness, and Negotiation

I must ask every project manager go through those important traits of interpersonal skills and gauge yourself where you are....good luck....keep reading

Note: The source of this information is from the 4th edition of PMBOK, with my own narration of each change described above. Let me know what you think?

what do you think?

#1 - Imagining India - A must read book by 'Nandan Nelakani'

Whenever I visit Chennai, my favorite shop to hangout is Landmark (a book store) to browse latest books, music cd's, and dvd's. During my recent visit to India, I went to Landmark book store to review the book 'Imagining India' by Nandan Nelakeni. It didn't take me too long to realize that this is a must to have in my personal library.

I read most of the book, it was well researched and written on socio-economic changes since the India's independence. Nandan Nelakeni's ideas and analysis on many economic topics, political compositions, and current-future path to the India's growth is simply amazing. There are many great Indian authors wrote books on India's socio-political-economic progress for the past half-a-century, but somehow I felt Nandan has a great analysis and good insights than many other authors (limit this statement to my opinion).

If you want to know about India's progress for the last 50 years, this is one of the books you must read.

#2 - Battery Park, NY - what a street entertainment group (bunch of kids) can show you what selling is all about?

Recently, I took my parents to NYC for a visit, one of the plan was to take them to 'Statue of Liberty' in a ferry from Battery park. While my parents visiting a statue of liberty, I have decided to stay back in the park to take some break after a long drive from Rochester,NY

I was lying on a bench in the park; a small group of young kids arrived to the park and started to gather a crowd while performing some comedy and dance. Since they arrived to the park, I was keenly observing them as how are they going to attract the crowd? A leader of the entertainment group stood on a bench and whistled loudly to the crowd just getting-off the boat, while the other member of the entertainment group cracking jokes loudly while creating some interest to the crowd. While they see crowd slowly moving towards them, one-by-one started performing dance, show-talk, and throwing jokes on the crowd. After 10 minutes, I could see the crowd was about 250-300 people. The performance was about 30 minutes and was able to earn easily over $200 for the show (i guess the whole show was at about 45 minutes)

Then the crowd was dispersed and the performance group (kids) took a break for about 10 minutes before another ferryboat arrives. The group started to gather a crowd again. The sequence was exact same, perfected the script, the leader was very energetic and ease in engaging the crowd. To my surprise, another set of a crowd of over 200 people in just another 45 minutes from the last show. It was AMAZING.

To my observation, the formula for success was simple, perfected script, excellent team work, energy, and their passion for the crowd, that's it. I am sure if those kids get some education, they would be a killer sales team.

I am sure we all can take learning out of the story. We work in either sales or service organizations; our success depends on our teamwork, passion, practice, and knowledge.

- Sameer Penakalapati

How your kid(s) can make you a better project manager?

Don't get surprise by this statement, but it is true to the fact. I have two young kids one at the age of 6 years and another about 9 months at the time of writing this blog, phenomenal what you can learn from them. I am sure lots of other parents have similar experiences

Here are the comparative analysis as how kids can make you a better project manager

#1

I am always struck by a statement 'Kids do what you do, but kids don't do what you say', this is like mirror reflection of your habits/character. You should led by example to your team(s) at all the times.

#2

Kids have very short span of attention, the only way to get your message across to them by communicating effectively and talking to them regularly. Many studies says that, you need to spend at least few hours of time in a day with your kids to build strong relationship.

It is the same principle apply to your team, your positive relationship with your team(s), effective communication at every stage of project life cycle leads to a project success.

#3

How to handle kids acts, sometimes you may not like it! the best way to deal with it by explaining the consequences of continuing the negative acts. Similarly, you may come across negative behavior(s) of your team member(s), how to deal with it? Same formula applies as above,explain the impact to the project and the consequences of continuing or repetition in the future

#4

Reward for good work, for example, in my son's school the teacher sends a day report with a star each for good work and behavior. A student can earn two stars in a day and 10 stars in week for their good performance. I have told my son if he gets 10 stars in a week, he would earn an ice-cream of his choice at a local ice-cream shop, these days I could rarely find any thing less than 10 stars.

Similarly, project managers need to set the performance bench mark to the team members and or teams, the team (or individual team member) meeting or exceeding the benchmark must be rewarded appropriately.

#5

When I used to take my son to a shop when he was at 4+ years of age, he would ask me everything to buy from the first isle(row) to the last isle(row). So, I have started setting some basic expectations by telling 'importance of saving money', 'keeping limited choices', 'how to compromise' etc., now he understands better and matured

Similarly, setting clear goals and expectations of a team helps the project to succeed. We (PMs) should always keep two levels of expectations for a team, first should be a 'common set of expectations' that applies to any project or task in the organization and second to be a 'Project specific expectations'.

more to come in this article....

Sameer Penakalapati