Articles of Interest to Business/Sales/Technical professionals

57 Things I've Learned Founding 3 Tech Companies - Jason Goldberg
http://www.businessinsider.com/57-things-ive-learned-founding-3-tech-companies-2011-8

30 lessons from life and career of NR Narayana Murthy (Infosys Founder)
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/quickiearticleshow/9656278.cms

Things to Avoid on a Plane - Simple stuff
http://www.symptomfind.com/health/disgusting-things-to-avoid-on-a-plane/

Manage Expectations - A road to a successful path

I have my own share of successes and failures while setting up expectations in real life at work or personal life, I wanted to share some of my observations that worked best setting upfront expectation and some that lead to failures due to lack of outlined expectations.

 

In a work life scenarios, we deal with colleagues, reports, supervisors, customers, vendors and so many others are directly or indirectly linked to your business life, everyone one of us have certain expectations on each other and it is more prevalent if you share a same group in the organization. Most of the times, we fail to set expectations that lead to wide room for guessing, every attempt should me made to set the expetation as what we are trying to acheive by taking up a task or activity or discussion before we get ourselves into an uncomfortable situation.


Often customers expect more, quite often you are in defensive mode trying to convince the customer to make it beleive that your's is the best deal. But in most scenarios, you come to the defensive mode after the work has began. No matter, how hard you do, you will not win the customer's mind and sometimes it may end the relation. But at the same time, if you had outlined the clear goals and objectives with defined SLAs, for the exact same effort, you would measure your performance against to the baseline that was agreed with the customer, if you are meeting or exceeding the baseline, you are a winner and you have a happy customer. The only difference here is, you had set the exepctation upfront, the difference is winning business.


Once I began started a new engagement with one of the customer in San Francisco (it was a brand-new relation), the deal was to manage transition all Visual Basic applications web enabled Domino platform. But the contract was loosely worded and it was perecived by the client that the deal was to complete the transition and do the support. It came to a total surprise to all of us, finally it wasn't a great experience to the client and relation was ended after the transition work was done. It was a great and expensive lesson learned by our team.


Most of it applies to the families and kids, families saved or divorced depends on how clear the exepctations were before their marraige and after kinds, it all the matter of sitting and talking and agreeing to certain things.


My piece of advise: Do not assume, set expectation, and set a road to successful path

Here is another useful article on the very same subject:

http://randaclay.com/how-to/want-to-be-successful-learn-to-manage-expectations/


Looking forward to know your views, ideas, and experiences..


Cheers
Sameer

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

Learnings from my Experience

Couple weeks back, I was reading an autobiography of Richard Branson 'Screw it..Let's do it', such an inspirational story, it's worth own it. His instictive approach to solve many challenges is a great wisdom to know.

This book provoked me to write some of my own learnings during my professional career

1. Trust is very important, but we must instigate a mechanism to audit for confirmation. We are in a real world where 'everything can be trusted-nothing can be trusted', the only disparity is a process or mechanism to be established to confirm the Trust.

'Trust alone is a blunder', you should 'Trust, but Verify'

2. Team without goals, Leader without empowerment, Management without vision, Organization without ethics - A sure way to disaster
I have seen/been told during my career as how these traits decipher to a great debacle

3. Fail to understand the business, most of the technical folks concentrate too much on technicality of the program but fail to understand the business need. What happens if a programmer write a software not knowing the business implication? Mr Platt is a computer science instructor from Harvard University extention school, says, the programs won't just fit for the use. Almost 70% of the projects don't meet the needs of the business at the first time, an independent survey unveils

4. Open communication - project teams and project leads need to keep the communication open with all the stakeholders (sponsor, designers, end users, project team, integration team etc.). The open communication will ensures the stakeholder needs carried in a project, else almost always the project gets derail in terms of cost and time

5. Conflict of interest - I have seen many cases where supervisor fails to draw a line between personal and business interests with the team members, in most of the cases these raise a red flag and may lead to a strain on the healthy relationships, it will have vivid impact on the project outome.

more to come...

Sameer Penakalapati

Financial Management for Project Managers

You may be wondering as why a project manager should have a knowledge about financial management, the reason, you should be in a position to make a decision to go with the project/approach or not depending on the economic value of a project outcome.

Let us say in a overly simplified example, you are managing a project with an expected revenue of a product/service is $100 but your total cost of the project is $105, will you do it? Of course not!

But in reality, it may not be this simple, you (project managers) should know some of common accounting standards to measure the project outcome with the project cost. Here are some of the key financial indicators you should be aware of.

1. Return On Investment (ROI)

• It is a concept for quantifying the value of an investment. In a simplest terms, it is the net profit of an investment divided by the net worth of the assets invested.
• It is often an investment that companies must make in advance of any return.
• In almost all the cases, you will be asked to produce a business case for any investment with some sort of measurable return

2. Net Present Value (NPV)

• It compares the value of a dollar (or any currency) today to the value of that same dollar in the future, taking inflation and returns into account
• For example, a businessman want to buy a retails store, first he should cacluate the future cash flows that store would generate and discount those cashflows into one lump-some amount as a present value, let us say $100,000. If the owner of the store willing to accept an offer at or less than $100,000 (NPV) the you should buy it else should not buy the store
• In simple terms, NPV is positive, the investment on a project is good else you should look for other better opportunities

3. Internal Rate of Return (IRR)

• The rate (interest rate) at which the project inflows (revenues) and project outflows (costs) are equal.
• You can think of IRR as the rate of growth a projected is expected to generate
• In a simple terms, you have two projects to choose from, Project A with an IRR of 25% and Project B with an IRR of 40%, opt a project always with higher IRR, in this case Project B

4. Payback Period

• Time taken to recover the cost of an investment
• In a mathamatical terms, Cost of Project divided by Annual Cash Flows
• For example, if a project costs $10,000 and is expected to return $2,000 annually, the payback period will be $10,000/$2,000, or five years
• In a simple terms, if Project A with payback period is 6 months and Project B with a payback period is 12 months, you should pick a project with less payback period, in this case Project A

5. Benefit-Cost Analysis

• It is a way of evaluating all of the potential costs and revenues that may be generated if the project is completed
• For example, prior taking on a new project, prudent managers will conduct a cost-benefit analysis. Let us say, benefit-cost analysis of Project A is 2.5 and Project B is 1.5, you should choose higher benefit-cost project, in this case Project A

6. Working Capital

• It is calculated as 'Current assets minus current liabilities'
• Also, It is the amount of money available to invest by a company

7. Discounted Cash Flow (DCF)

• A valuation method used to estimate the attractiveness of an investment opportunity
• Converting the future earnings to today's money
• In simple terms, the time value of money

8. Depreciation

• Assets lose value over time is called depreciation
• Two types: Straight line depreciation, Accelerated depreciation
• Straight line depreciation: The same amount of depreciation taken each year. For example, if you buy a car for $10,000 with a life time of 5 years then you take $2,000 as a depreciation each year
• Accelerated depreciation: It depreciates faster than straight line

more to come...stay tuned

Sameer Penakalapati

Tips for passing PMP exam

Here are some of the tips that helps you pass the PMP exam in the first attempt



1. Understand the flow of 5 process groups (Initiation, Planning, Execution, Monitoring&Control, Closing) - Refer PMBOK for this material



2. Knowledge on key concepts in 9 knowledge areas (Integration, Scope, Time, Cost, Quality, Procurement, Human Resource, Risk, and Communication) - Refer PMBOK, Rita Mulcahy, any other material.



3. Practice questions from Rita Mulcahy and other free/paid online material would be a great help for the preparation. You take a mock test for 4 hours and test your knowledge when you are close to the exam date, so that if any areas that you are not strong, you will have an opportunity to prepare for some time



4. Always Always do a group study, this will reduce more than 50% of your prep time



5. You have about 50% of the questions are situational based, so it will be hard to find a definite answer, what is the best way to answer them?

You can follow two important methods:

5.1. Elimination of choices: how can you eliminate two bad choices out of four? If you have gone through the material good enough then it would be VERY easy to elimite two wrong ones

5.2. Read the question: Out of the two choices, you can pick the correct choice by reading the question carefully

Following these two steps, almost always you can able to pick the correct answer.

6. Pay a special attention to Time, Cost, Integration, Risk management areas. The questions in these areas are almost direct and easy to answer.

7. Know these important concepts without any glare!

7.1 WBS (Work Breakdown Structure)

7.2 Stakeholders and their respective roles

7.3 Network diagramming methods, Critical Path, Lead/Lag

7.4 Types of Costs, Cost vs Budget, Cost calculations

7.5 COQ/COPQ

7.6 How processes are integrated? which process output becomes an input to next process? etc.

7.7 Type of organizations, Functional - Balanced - Projectized

7.8 Communication channels n(n-1)/2, Types of communication (Direct, Indirect, Written, Oral, Formal, and Informal) - you should know where to use what type of communication

7.9 Procurement types (Time & Material, Fixed Cost, Cost Plus Fixed Fee, Cost Plus Percentage etc.)

7.10 Team development, Acquiring a team

8. Spread your study time in three months, 1 hour each day (this shouldn't be difficult committment). It's probably a less than 20% of your TV time every day :-(

9. Best way remember PMI concepts, pick a sample project and do all the process steps. Do it as a group, you will have FUN and Learn

10. Follow the above 9 steps, you will get PMP certification

Happy Learning...

Sameer Penakalapati

Top 10 qualities of a Project Manager

You might have seen many online posts or seminars talking about how a project manager should be and his/her capabilities as a successful project manager. I have different perspective on it, and will also explain why.

Here is my list in the order of preference

1. Excellent Negotiator

Who is Project Manager? Manage the assigned resources at defined/un-defined constraints. How a PM can manage these, my point and many others felt that it all boils down to how well you negotiate with your team, stakeholders, vendords/external agencies to get to the bottom of the project need or task. I have seen many great project managers are successful negotiators, everything else is next.

2. Advisor

In a real world scenario, you have many constraints and challenges to meet stakeholder requirements so some PMs are successful and others are not? Do you know why? In general, if a requirement or a request from a stakeholder is far from acheivable, most PMs jump in and negotiate to change or remove the requirement from the list but not understanding the impact to the business. The good PMs discuss the need for the requirement by understanding the business need and asess the impact and works with Stakeholders to identify an alternte solution.

In the same way, act as an advisor to the team members on various issues

3. Excellent Communicator
If you want to be effective communicator, you need to understand the audience you are communicating and their roles in the organization. If you are communicating with senior management, then communication is short and dollarize the objective. At the same time, if you are communicating with the project teams, then you need to be more clear and precise on the assigned action items

4. Highest Ethical Standards

One should be able to possess highest ethical standards to be a great leader. Respect all the individuals, treat every one equal, loyal to the organization, respect data privacy & personal information, equal opportunity to the team, work for the team and to the organization

5. Team Player

This is the basic requirement of a Project Manager, and without it would not be PM. How in the earth can you manage the team if you are not a Team Player? How can you buy-in from the team even to get to the project on-track all the time? PM should recognize the fact that every member in the team is equally important to their respective roles, and play by the rules as set for the project or PMO(Project Management Office)

6. Business Savvy

Successful Project Managers know always the business need of doing their project, and how it impacts to the organizational goals. Knowing the business always helps the PM in steering the project to align with the set goals for the project. I encourage organizations to be more suceptible to idea of involving their PMs in key project decisions, it always uncover any risks and plan for managing it well in advance.

7. Problem Solver
It is a basic trait of a Project Manager. Virtually every project in this world may have some constraints to manage, a problem solver can always find a way to manage those constraints. A constraint can be a limited time, limited money, limited resources, limited knowledge, team conflicts and many others to manage, a problem solver know how to isolate the problem and steer the project towards the set goal.

8. Focus on target
As mentioned the constraints above, you still need to manage the project to deliver on-time and on-budget, this is not an easy task, you may have a lot of stress and pressure at times to get around a problem to keep the project stay on-track. A best project manager always stay focussed under all these circustances.

To explain it more eloquantly, here is a small story: Three students were practicing a rifle shooting in a forest, the important trait is a focus on a traget. So the guru (teacher) want to test their skills, he called on the students and showed them an apple tree and pointed them to the apple on the tip of the tree, asked the students to keep the rifle ready.

1.Guru asked the first student shooter, what are you seeing at the target?
First student replied: Apple, Tree, and Sky
2. Guru asked the second student shooter, what are you seeing at the traget?
Second student replied: Apple, and Tree
3. Guru asked the third student shooter, what are you seeing at the traget?
Third student replied: Apple only

Now you know, who are focussed on the traget, third student. The PM should always focus on the project outcome keeping everything out of the sight.

9. Competence

The project manager should be competent in all the three following domains: Project Management, Business, and any specific skill set required for a project. Being competent in all the above three domains, a PM can manage the project with any complexity.

10. Empathy
Empathy is nothing but understanding, what does it mean?

> Understanding the business
> Understanding the stakeholders
> Understanding the need for the project
> Understanding team issues
> Understanding risks
> Understanding project committment..like many other

one should be open minded in embracing the project key needs.

Happy Learning...

Sameer Penakalapati

Note: These are the opinons of the author, the applicability is at your own discretion.

Program Management Office - What you should know?

What is PMO (Program Management Office)?

According to Project Management Institute (PMI) , a group of related projects managed in a coordinated way to obtain benefits and control not available from managing them individually. PMO helps to coordinate these efforts with defined standards

Surprisingly most of the businesses doesn't understand the importantce of PMO and how it help businesses to grow. In a simple terms, PMO tracks the project progress and maps to the organizational goals.

Project Vs Program Management
The general process and terminology at program level is similar to the project level. However, the program management processes address issues at a higher level and involves less detailed project-level analysis.

Like project management processes, the program management processes require coordination with other functional groups in the organization as well as stakeholder management in general-but in broader context.


Types of PMO (Project Management Office)

Supportive PMO: It's common type of PMO exist in most organizations. The prupose of this PMO is to provide necessery support to project teams through audits, reviews, standard templates, coaching, mentoring, stakeholder management, administration and any other necessery support activities as required.
Controlling PMO: It provides all the support described in Support PMO structure in addtion it is also responsible for enforcing standards, audits, processes, risk, and governance
Directive PMO: This is not a common structure in many organizations but it's very effective in a project certric organizations. In project centric organization, every initiative will have a standardized project structure with defined goals and budget to manage and control the initiatives. In this type of organization, the PMO owns the project delivery includes stakeholder management, managing teams, controlling the risk and outcomes, and any other related tasks.

Selling PMO concept, especially in IT Services Industry
Traditionally PMO was looked at it as an organizational overhead which steers the policies and procedures largely useless. It's changing especially in the project based IT services industry, the project based engagements.
The following are the key decision points to discuss with your management to get buy-in
> Control project costs by standardizing the project resources
> Reduce the project run-overs by better managing the risks
> Better managed stakeholder expectations
> Leveraging the sucess across other projects in the organization
> Focused approach eliminates expensive mistakes like loosing a customer etc.

Phases of PMO life cycle
1. Initiate a program
2. Planning a program
3. Execute the program
4. Monitoring & Control the program
5. Improve PMO

Qualifications for a Program Manager
1. Ability to map project outcomes to organizational goals
2. Strong leadership skills to manage teams, stakeholders, and other external agencies
3. Should possess outstanding negotiation skills
4. Strong Verbal and Oral communications skills
5. Business know-how
6. Ability to manage all risks with stable focus on the outcome
7. Quick learner, problem solver, risk owner, and flexible
8. Champion of business and people
9. Minimum of a Bachelors degree's in any discipline, a MBA or formal training in PM is required

References:
1. Project Management Institute - Standards for Program Management
2. The Program Management Office - Craig J. Letavec

more to come.....

Happy Learning

Sameer Penakalapati
sameer.penakalapati@gmail.com

How to write business plans? A basic approach

With my 5 years of experience in writing business plans, I learned some of the basic parameters that make you ahead of others. Here is what you need to know

Do you have answers for these questions?

1. You may have an idea for a product or service, right? If so, is it unique of some sort?
2. Have you done any research for information or similar services that you are dreaming for?
3. How practical or capable to make it reality
4. How do you manage required funding? Have any thought about partners or equity funding or other sort of engagements to help you with this venture.

If you can answer yes.... Congratulations... please continue

Here is what you need for a solid business plan:

Business Plan components:
1. Write your Vision / Mission
2. Opportunity
3. Market Strategy
4. Business Strategy
5. Organization and Operations
6. Management
7. Core competencies and Challenges
8. Financials
9. Risks & Contingency Plan

Once you have all the information ready, you can present it in few different ways.

Executive Summary
It should be one page document with Vision/Mission, Opportunity, Strategy, Other financials information

Presentation / Reference manual

Arrange presentation in the order of business plan components above and also can provide hand-out with some specific details

If you need further information or help, write me at 'sameer.penakalapati@gmail.com'

I am not a sales guy, but here is why it matters?

Yes, true, I am not a sales guy so i don't need to sell...that's what you think?...then read, here is why it matters!.

Think about these situations....


1. To sell your idea to your boss, eventually you may get a bonus!
2. To sell your self (resume) to a potential employer
3. To sell your service or product to a new or existing client

and many more day-to-day job and life situations, hence some of the basics might help you to make a successful sale


1. A successful sale is to determine and quantify how a buyer could get benefit your idea/service, dollarize the benefit wherever possible

2. Determine how your sale increases buyer productivity, increase in productivity not only saves money but also reduces the development life cycle, which is a big selling mantra

3. Quantify a loss of not buying your product or service, plan a very calculated approach to prove your point, else it may be tough sale.

4. Make your sale pitch with 2-6 slide presentation. Hand-out can be provided to support the presentation with the details

5. At end of your sale pitch, ALWAYS ask for an oder. Many end sale without asking an order, you don' ask - you don't sell, always remember


more...keep watch my blog for more interesting topics


Cheers
Sameer Penakalapati
sameer.penakalapati@gmail.com

Why negotiation skills are so critical in personal and professional life? here is what you should know

Negotiation skills comes across every part of our life, negotiating with your kids, spouse, business, at work with your peers, your boss...you name it. But many fail to handle well, few points to know though this is a subject of its own to cover every situation.



1. Always go for 'win-win' negotiation, keeping everything neutral (emotions, egoism etc.)

2. Understand your fair interest and the interest of the person you are with negotiation

3. If you are a buyer and in negotiation with a seller on an offer/point of a discusion, always support with some benchmark or reference, it's easy for the negotiation

4. If both parties are not comfortable with the negotiation, take a time to come back later as it leaves both parties time to think

5. Avoid confrontation at any stage of negotiation

6. A good negotiation leaves a future merit for a business relationship, or even a good friedship

7. Keep your negotiation not more than half-an hour to an hour at a stretch, take a break, it gives some time to think through it before you reopen the discussion

8. Show your inerest to open for new ideas

9. Treat everyone involved in the negotiaton with great respect

10. Thank every one at the end of the negotiation, no matter if you made a deal or not

Are you midst of outsourcing your IT? or had a futile attempt? here uncover these facts

IT outsourcing is not new to the industry any more and it is matured than ever, but we still learn tragic stories and how companies go wrong with it so badly. I would like to offer few tips to uncover surprises which can save tons of money (few hundreds to millions of dollars)
1. Don't get into the trap of big/small outsourcing companies; look at their ability to deliver what you need.
2. The IT management (CIO/Directors/Managers) must communicate to their IT organization why and how outsourcing strategy is good for their company
3. Ask vendors about questions on attrition, skill development, hiring strategies, data protection, data privacy and many others may be unique to your business/industry.
4. Don't make your vendor selection factor alone based on low cost, but you should give equal importance on skills availability, expertise knowledge, responsiveness, flexibility, can-do attitude (be like your partner)
5. Do not sign-up for a big multi-year contract to start with, always try with low-risk, low-impact to business type projects typically a 3-6 months duration.
6. Setup a Vendor Management office to track the performance of the vendor(s) based on the Service Levels agreed in the contract. Make sure you also have a clause in the contract for penalty for not meeting service levels.
7. Always have minimum 2 outsourcing vendors to compete at your advantage in terms of price, quality, service, and to mitigate risk
8. When the relationship evolves with the vendor involving them in critical projects and support activities, keep your vendor management have an eye on vendor business (specifically their finances, key management changes, acquisitions etc.) to uncover surprises
and many more...if you need more information, write to me at sameer.penakalapati@google.com

Do you know what your customer is looking for?

Well, many people seems to have a trouble with it. My experience working with sales teams to senior management, many get excited to share what they are good but a little focus on what customer wants.

Here are some tips to avoid costly mistakes

1. Listen, Listen, Listen
2. Question to know their 3 most pain areas
3. Ask your customer, what needs to be done to make their job easier and more productive
4. Know your customer business, industry, and current challenges
5. Know your customer vision, and strategy
6. Align your product/service to their vision/strategy
7. Always dolarize the return on investment
8. Present case studies and references with ROI
9. Position yourself as an advisor not a salesperson
10. Show your willingness to help the customer

More will come......