A first experience with NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming)

A good friend introduced me to this concept by suggesting a give it an honest try. I'm in a good place with myself and decided to have at it. Leaving the session on Tue, I felt changes and the next day I noticed those same old, ugly thoughts that had plauged me in meetings, during interactions w/colleagues and bosses, and in home situations were a lots less stressful. It is truly from within that the NLP thing works, I get that. I have to believe and continue to see and act on the transformation, but honest to goodness, I thought this was hogwash at best going in. I had to be completely vulnerable and thankfully I did;).

John Grinder and Richard Bandler founded the NLP methodology, it appears, and I am soaking up bits of it this week from the Web.

My personal style of learning and adaptation has always been through reading, reading, reading, and reading some more....then writing it all down for absorption. I really see now how past experiences that have binding effects on me can be altered - not brainwashed, I guess - bu made to contain these new "resources" rather than the old junk. I guess I harvested out the old garbage and implanted anew. That's the best way I can describe this. The gal I worked with for those several hrs sure knows what she's doing and I appreciate that whole journey.

How do I blog about this stuff, this intimate stuff that's unfolding, and make it apply towards my goals of this blog? I'm starting to figure it out.

I'm halfway through Crucial Conversations...a great text. I'm actually listening to it in audio form. I am not a very good learner in this format, so we'll see. I like to see and feel the words on the page or in a document on my iPhone....nonetheless, this is another bit of homework I've given myself - this book, that is...

To want growth, you have to believe in yourself

I'm shockingly learning more about myself as I get into my new found kick (for those unaware, I've sought professional support, coaching, if you will to help my personal and professional power)...I had a very interesting experience last night that honestly helped unlock past emotions to really surface why I am a certain way - feelings and events that led to what I am today - an almost 40-somethin' character that realizes (luckily) that I need to change how I react to professional settings and how I can enrich my life as a father and husband.

It sounds kind of cooky, I'll admit, but I just have this sense of value, worth, security, and compassion that I couldn't explain a few days ago. I need to learn more about this thing (we'll call it for now), but I'll share more in the coming days. It's truly life changing - one building block at a time. But, I'm open, vulnerable, and willing to adopt change, spill my guts...I want to feel better about taking on new challenges in life, learning how better to negotiate with clients/peers, being a better role model for my young daughters, a better hubby, and advancing my career.

Is it an early midlife crisis, this life coaching desire? Nah. But, I'm thankful to those nearest me who believe in me and for me having the guts to believe in myself and reach out for external support. Pretty awesome discoveries so far.

Still seeking an old book called, I'm, OK, You're OK. I'm reading Crucial Conversations right now. Love & Logic will be next.

A novel idea! A novel about Project Management

I just finished (today) a terrific novel (of all things) called "The Deadline - A Novel About Project Management" by Tom DeMarco. It's a 1997 read that absolutely blows my mind. It considers basic principles of management in ways and in relationships I simply didn't consider before reading this 300 pg short book. The author illustrates in first person prose in real terms how to put simple change in place - and we're not talking about PMBOK 4 101 here....

The author gets into intimate details about where problems in projects (systems) reside, how to solve them, and more importantly for me, shows you how it's really done all within the confines of a myriad of characters, actions, and personalities. This book illustrates quite openly about how management involves four key things: heart, gut, soul, and nose...among many other great points that the main character collects throughout his tour of duty. I'll note those in a future blog post (I tend to take notes about my findings to paper since I don't memorize key points in books as easily). I know someone that sure can do this though...like a human journal, he is!

But for now, take my word that this book is as relevant as ever. Tom even has some keen insight in this era (some 14 yrs ago now) that is spot on with today's complexities building and deploying software. That Lahksa Hoolihan character is engraved in my head - engaging, cunning, and beautiful all in one;).

Taking myself from adequate to extraordinary

Alright gang...I finally bit the bullet, and I mean bit-down-hard.

I'm officially on a book kick and I've got self-motivation on the horizon where ever I look...So, I'm jumping in with both feet, with the following two goals solidly on the front burner.

• Number 1: Evaluate myself. Where/how can I achieve better results in my personal life and in my professional career? How can I learn more about the inner workings of really being a "Manager". I can only do this with some serious reading - not just books I've read, but a barrage of books on several different levels - books I wouldn't think of picking up one yr ago.
• Number 2: OK, so I finally self-admitted that I need a coach, a Life Coach. No..A Motivational Coach. Well, sort of. A Personality/Attitude Coach....Well, close, I suppose. A Leadership Coach...yes, that sounds closer, I think. Maybe counseling to help unlock my "strong adult" vs. my "child"...hmm, that sounds eery, like a need a shrink or something.......I don't know what this goal is exactly yet, but I know I need professional support, a real person able and willing to guide me on my journey, someone I see biweekly or more and someone I confide in for support.

I'm excited, nervous, slightly overwhelmed, but giddy like that first day back in Grad school in a Dynamics of Social Relationships course. Let's see where this takes me. I've already jetted through a great book and I'm seeking a life coach next week to see if it's the right angle for me...

Native screen snapshot recorder inside Windows 7

OK, so I was blown away this week by a feature inside of Windows 7 that frankly I had no idea existed...it's one of those hidden treasures that's not visible or start menu or searchable unless you use terms like, "snip", "steps", "recorder"...It's called Problem Steps Recorder. I've been using Windows 7 for 2 yrs now (or something close to that while on the beta program) and never realized it was there. That was definitely a RTFM dummy episode, but I'll survive.

Off topic...ok, so I'm a huge Microsoft OneNote fan, and I was looking for the native screen clipping tool that ships with Windows 7 for a colleague (BTW, that's called Snipping Tool). I don't use it because I love the functionality and clarity of capture provided by OneNote's capture utility and integration thereto.

OK, this utility, Problem Steps Recorder is now available on most legacy OS's as well: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?familyid=B72D3AC2-4352-4184-9992-E122DBB80883&displaylang=en

This thing lets you hit record, perform any array of steps on your desktop, add textual comments where ever you like, and press stop to generate a web archive (.mht file) compressed into a tidy zip. And this is an enterprise-ready solution as-is. Starting the web archive file spawns a detailed collection of image snaps and human readable commands performed during the session, not to mention an incredibly useful slideshow view, all in the browser. Microsoft got it right on this one! You can even define the granularity of screen snapshots captured and whether or not to include the screen image (for private data scenarios). Most important to me is that it's lightweight and fast.

With the Silverlight plugin, you can get a quick demo here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/dd320286

I can see huge advantages for QA resources creating an archive as needed to satisfy repro steps for the developer/designer resource...huge time saver, and with team foundation server 2010, this zip could be attributed to a bug item for posterity. I'm probably behind the 8-ball, but I'm stoked about this little gem and will be trying it out with my team.

Keeping the project whole

As a consultant, whether you're acting as a PM or otherwise part of the project team, it's your job to assure scope and effort are monitored. It's not always the responsibility of the project lead, or PM, to assure that tasks' hours are kept in check. Everyone contributes, and must participate in the regular evaluation of the spent budget and work remaining. The PM is absolutely accountable for the spend, but the project team is responsible for the spend.

In a public sector, the PM has to use extra caution because typically these funds are closely monitored and controlled by governing bodies. It's not always easy to generate a change order and there must be thoughtful audit trails applied to assure that these forks in the road can be addressed. It's not the fault of the consultant that change occurs, nor is it the fault of the customer. These things happen, and must be jointly observed, evaluated, and defined before such a path is selected.

In my experiences, the safest and cleanest way to assure minimal ambiguity around such scope changes is by way of a very complete and well constructed statement of work (SOW). You cannot assume that scope will work itself out in the project charter or by way of evaluation of each and every change instance; there must be clear boundaries applied at the contractual level to assure you have the means to keep a project's spend minimal, or at best "whole".

As I've preached for years, a good PM is also a very good legal writer. Whether he/she writes the SOW or works with account management to write the SOW, the PM cannot be absent of involvement here. After all, who's going to use this document? You are, the PM!! If I am going to asked to manage a project, I sure better be working closely with Sales/Acct Mgt to assure that it gets crafted in such a manner that I can definitively work within it to manage the project...

For instance, if we say that there will be requirements gathered from the user population by visiting several sites and that these requirements will define the design, and thereby implementation of such a solution to support all of those requirements inside the body of one SOW and around one cost structure, we're opening ourselves up for unplanned work, and most likely effort that exceeds estimates when dealing with a fixed price gig.

Working the customer to help them understand the project's structure, selecting a path to enlightenment, and assuring that there is sound evidence of this path, expectations, and boundaries living within the SOW, sounds like extra work. But, it will only make both parties satisfied because it will be clear that there is a vast unknown of requirements to gather. Out of these requirements, the customer can prioritize and select those requirements to go after and produce a design to support them. With a solid design and architecture, then the team can go about building it and the project spend has a far better probability of staying whole.

SOA what?? Part I

Been a while since posting to my blog...whow knows what SOA is? I can tell you that's it's a powerful set of methodologies that serve many benefits. Most obvious is the way in which information can be exposed and avaialble for consumption, consumption far beyond just storing data, but building solutions that integrate with this data sharing concept in the cloud.

Exchanging data, or the concept of the data exchange, is a very cool way of making your data available; in turn, a consumer of this data can do something useful (write an app that uses this data to solve a business imperative, for example) with it or simply be a subscriber of it.

The interesting dilemma for an organization today is not in the creation of such a data exchange - this is the rather simple part of hte equation. We can stand up data exchanges all day long that expose information - albeit, there is a tremendous need for clean data, so the backend must be able to support this or some large data scrubbing effort is probably needed. The difficult part is writing or extending a client solution to consume this data and do something useful with it - the "work". Understanding business processes in that client organization and how this newly exposed information can be used to solve them requires time and money. It's ever apparent that most organizations simply do not have existing records, documentation, goals, and needs well documented to understand where in the current processes these calls to the data exchanges could/should be made in order to solve the business problem. This is where the bulk of the effort and work lies, and this is where a skilled team is needed to consult and help strategize the how/where/when/why's of hooking up to a data exchange. This requires business analysis, domain expertise, data architects, and tight inclusion of those stakeholders exposing the data to the exchange and those stakeholders expecting to utilize this data to do work.

Moreover, think of the complexities involved. We need to determine the granularity of such an exchange - to what degree is a business capability exposed - is it super granular such that the message interface (xml) is very narrow allowing getting minute pieces of that data structure (age, birthdate, last violation, etc) or do we provide an aggregated exchange, but also bloat the size of the message interface. Here, we could establish a capability to Add a Debt Collection. This could involve associating a person, a debt type, a payment type, a debt amount, etc.

Summary for now...a data exchange is a good exmample of the SOA software strategy, but it requires much work during planning of the data to be exchanged, but most importantly, requires tight integration with consumers of such data structures and even more so a deep understanding of how current or future solutions need to be written to successfully consume these exchanges - pushing work out to the cloud, while also utilizing this data to solve business problems.

...so what does SOA really mean? More on that later...still unsure what the acronym stands for? Ok, it means Service Oriented Architecture. Come back for more discussion.