Welcome to the world Angus LEWIS GOURDIE

Weighing in at a whopping 10lb 3 oz, Angus James Bentley LEWIS GOURDIE was born at home on Saturday 08 December.

George and Angus are well. Jemima and Beatrice are chuffed to bits to have a baby in the house and think having a brother is pretty cool too. Dad has been off on paternity leave and has been getting to grips to the role of Domestic Unit Manager – a tiring task further complicated by a left ankle that is feeling the cold.

As a family, we went out on the Friday to our first ever Pantomime; ‘Cinderella’ at the Theatre Royal in Brighton. We all loved it, especially the girls, and although George was uncomfortable throughout the performance, we figured that it would have been the case no matter where we were. Afterwards we went to dinner at a local restaurant, although George was slightly less keen than the rest of us. Luckily it was a gourmet burger joint, because when George returned from the washroom and said “I think my waters have just gone”, we said “can we get that to takeaway?!”.

In the end we caught a bus home, because we had come in that way and it was faster than getting a taxi. The girls ate their dinner on the bus and were quickly put through the bath and into bed. George was pretty mellow and was happy to spend the evening pottering around ‘tidying up’ etc. At 8:30pm I exercised my right to call Sue Rose, our independent midwife. We agreed that, rather than call her too late, she should come over when she was ready and she could stay in our spare room.

George was in the bath when Sue arrived after 9:30pm. Things were progressing slowly and steadily and I was told to “go away” when I stuck my head in the door (George likes to labour in private). We all went to bed by 11pm, leaving George to move around. Her noisy entry into the bedroom at 2am was a signal for me to wake up and get Sue up. Sue eventually came downstairs at around 2:45am and this seemed to give George ‘permission’ to crack on.

[Photo: George & Rob being checked out by wee Angus. Rob is topless, not because he was dancing around the fire in some hippy ritual, but because skin on skin contact is the best way to warm and regulate a baby's body temperature - sorry to disappoint on the hippy dancing thing...]

And then at 3:25am, little Angus launched himself into this world. Born in the (new) kitchen, we made our way through to the Sitting Room, resplendent with Christmas tree, Tirkish Rug on the floor (for winter) and the flames dancing over the coals of our gas fire. At 7am Jemima appeared on the stairs and cautiously came in to find her new brother. She then darted upstairs and dragged Beatrice downstairs with news of the much anticipated arrival.

Give Thanks....

Today our American cousins celebrate Thanksgiving Day. Being the naturally skeptical person that I am, I would normally be the first in line to poke the ritual with a stick.
However, on more than one occasion since moving to the UK, I have found myself in the company of friends. A group of self-made ex-pats with much to give thanks about. There was a time in a flat in London when we were all in a kitchen quaffing champagne - and we toasted the moment; let us celebrate the fact that we are all here drinking champagne and how lucky we are. Realise that 'but for the grace of God go I' and there is not as much difference between the person in the high-rise office and the homeless person on the street, as you might think.
This kicked off a tradition amongst some of us and the next year we went to the Mayflower pub on the banks of the Thames, at the place where the famous shipped tied up in London before heading to Plymouth and onto the New World - once again that year, we had much to give thanks for.
And then there was hosting an American work colleague and his visiting sister and brother-in-law for Thanksgiving. It didn't help that we started drinking at lunchtime, but we ended up having a hilarious Thanksgiving curry and enjoyed the Bon Hommie, ending up semi naked in our front room at 3am teaching an American how to do the Haka!

One thing I really enjoy doing is pouring water on those boastful conversations. The other day someone was recounting to a group of us stories about their boat (we're talking a 'big' boat) and how the couple on the neighboring berth owned some big company blah blah blah. When a break in the conversation came I jumped in "we were talking the other day about the time when you were the most down on your luck, when you were close to the bone financially - what are people's stories?" Even the big rich guy had a story of his university days, thrashing around in the bottom of a clapped out Robin Reliant looking for loose change to go into the supermarket to buy food. I found these conversations far more meaningful than the "guess where we're going for our holidays next year" emphatic communion people usually indulge in. It made people appreciate what they had and to be thankful for those things and not vulgar.

So to anyone anywhere with a drink in their hand, raise it high and give thanks.

The biggest threat to Project Management?

Despite the best efforts of Project Management guru's and the developers of Project Management systems to deliver truly global, streamlined and accurate means of managing increasingly complex projects, it would seem legislation throughout Europe it set to keep us in the dark ages.

I'm talking about the various forms of the Data Protection Act (DPA) throughout the states of Europe.

First of all let's look at a couple of the basic requirements we have in order to manage any project:
(1) the ability to communicate with team members and stakeholders; and
(2) the ability to track effort expended against effort budgeted;

(1) Project communication under DPA
So I discovered the other day from an appointed DPA officer. Most big companies run some kind of corporate address book typically in their email application. When you want to contact someone, you look them up and you probably at least an email address and a telephone number that you can use.
Did you know? That in the UK you are at liberty to ask your company to remove your entry from any such database? Therefore any such collection of project contact information should be approved by an appointed DPA officer and subject of a DPA audit? In other EU countries you are at liberty to "opt in" for your information to be held electronically, that is, the default position is that a company can not keep this information on you.
(2) Tracking effort expended on a project under DPA rules
All companies I have worked for have had some form of Time Entry System by which you record you breakdown of hours worked each week. This is typically where project cost codes are used to capture how much effort has been expended against your project and what labour charges will hit your project budget.
Did you know? Any member of your project team in the EU is at liberty to opt out of using this time recording system, thereby rendering your ability to accurately record the effort expended useless. This flies in the face of trying to accurately portray a projects position through tools, such as Earned Value, that are being touted by various PM methodologies.

So imagine the scenario...
You're the PM for a high value government project...
Your project team decide to opt out of (1) & (2) rendering your powerless to communicate across your team and unable to simply and accurately record, in a timely fashion, what work has been completed for what cost, on this huge government project.
How long would it take before the project went completely pear-shaped and some corporate officer was hauled in front of (in the UK) a Commons Select Committee to explain why this project was performing so badly?
And how well would it wash when the limitations of the DPA were brought home to roost?

Forget project insurance for Terrorism and acts of God, you can't insure against workers exercising ridiculous rights that would scupper the best efforts of the Project management fraternity overnight. Some would argue that the DPA has been around for a while and it hasn't caused the catastrophe you warn about - well thats true but find me a competent PM that gets away with evaluating risk by saying 'it hasn't happened yet'. Equally, in todays environment we are truly starting to require a global project management model, whereas previously we had only managed to achieve an aggregation of individual country projects. This move to develop and define systems that can operate across legislative boundaries as well as timezones needs to be able to remove the barriers to true global project management, if it is to succeed. Where today we are off-shoring and near-shoring more and more niche skills, we will find that in order to staff up multi-disciplinary project teams in the future, we will need to operate a global project management model that can easily communicate and collaborate using the latest tools.

Don't do this at home...

Well not your own home... especially if you have grown accustomed to luxuries like an indoor toilet, a clean kitchen and general basic living conditions. Although I wouldn't suggest you do it at anyone else's home either, especially if they are a good friend or a relative, actually doing it to a relative could be quite satisfying....

So... this little project soon became a big project, which was mainly because we didn't really know what we wanted up front and our tastes were always likely to evolve as the work progressed.

It was all managed from a large piece of kiddies drawing paper attached to the Kitchen wall (until we knocked the wall down). It roadmapped the dependancies we had between the various tasks, as well as a calendar of what was happening when. Co-ordinating the various tradesmen required was a fine art, expecially when they are in short supply in Brighton (forget IT become a plumber in Brighton instead!)

The before shots of kitchen....

#1: View from our hallway into our dark faux oak panelled galley kitchen

#2: Mandy, our Au Pair, burning something...

#3: Jemima and Beatrice in the Dining room adjacent to the Kitchen

Stage One - make a big mess

First we knocked out the wall between the Kitchen and Dining Room - which was god send in itself as it let so much light into a previously dark, narrow space.
Then we eBayed our kitchen... yep! Faced with a £250 charge for dumping our old kitchen (labour and skip), we sold it to a guy who needed a temporary kitchen in a cottage he was moving into (whilst planning permission for a kitchen extension was processed). He paid us £100 and came and took the whole lot away with a plan to re-use it. Result!!

Stage Two - Be indecisive!

After a lot of 'thinking' we finally got down to business and went ahead and ordered our Howdens kitchen. The installation seems to have gone well so far (nothing's fallen off the wall or come off in our hand!)

Stage Three - start doing the Bathroom BEFORE you've finished the Kitchen!

Apparently this was my fault but I believe it had something to do with "a Tradesmen in your house is worth ten in the yellow pages". Since we had our plasterer mate there we rolled into the bathroom. Nevermind that autumn was knocking on the door and we have had to use an outdoor loo for the last two months! Fingers crossed it all gets sorted tomorrow... Here's where we're currently at:

So we are rapidly approaching a deadline for getting everything completed, nothing like a pregnant woman to focus the mind! A bit of paint, a few light fittings, a plumbed in toliet and we're pretty much there. Hmmm think we could tackle the hallway next...

Anyway time for me to get back up a ladder

1000th visit!!!

Woohoo! I have clocked up over 1000 visits to my website today!!
Having been very busy recently with work, work projects, house projects, family, life, my @#&*% leg and alike, I haven't posted half as much as I would have liked.
So to let you know what I will post shortly here's a run down:

• Homeworking issues and tibdbits
• IT Risk Management
• Building works I have been wrestling with at home
  
• Green IT
• Updates on my 'Do it Tomorrow' personal productivity experiment
  
• Off-shored IT firms hot topics; and
• A review of a hot piece of software by Projity called 'Openproj'

So even after 1000 visits there's still lots to do... happy reading and thanks for staying interested.

Update on Do It Tomorrow - Part Two

The email solution I've been longing for...

Taking the principles of Do It Tomorrow (DIT), Mark Forster's great book on Time Management, I have successfully applied them to managing my email and use my email application effectively to assist me.

OK here's a quick five on the concepts:

• Day One - Declare a backlog and move the entire contents of your inbox into a special folder called "Backlog" - ensure your inbox is empty! [Tackle this backlog as your Current Initiative - the first thing you do each day is spend a few minutes chipping away at it]
  
• TURN OFF YOUR EMAIL NOTIFICATIONS! Its nothing but a distraction that you use to stop you working on what's in front of you. If you are in a service role then you might not have this luxury, but you just have to apply the triage process faster and keep moving - control your email, don't let it control you!
  
• If you follow the other concepts in DIT then you will get out of the habit of constantly scanning of your inbox, as you will know what you have to achieve each day. We often let our inbox determine our day and run us all over the park. I set my email to poll the server only every 15 minutes, rather than every 5.
• During the day you scan emails for things at are Immediate or Same-day actions, otherwise you leave the rest until tomorrow.
• You "Do" yesterday's email each day, to me this is doing one of three things
  - Delete it (Doesn't affect my life)
  - Archive it (Nice to know, might need it later)
  - Schedule it for action (I've got to do something with that!)
• The important thing is that you schedule it for action, don't dive into it then and there unless commonsense suggests the action can be best dealt with by a one line reply etc.
• Ensure you empty yesterday's email from your inbox - so you never had more than one day's worth of email in your inbox at the end of each day - wow!!.

So I use Lotus Notes (sigh...) but this can be easily applied to most decent email apps.

• I archive and delete constantly when I'm "doing" my email - it took me no time at all to develop the ability to triage an email in less than three seconds - I've only got three choices!
• I have an archive for each month - no massive taxonomy of folders for filing emails - email apps have simple search functions that work perfectly well. Knowing which month an email came in, I have no problem in finding emails again.
• I use the "Flag for Follow-up" feature on Lotus Notes when I need to schedule an email for action. I can set a date for follow-up - briefly consulting my Filofax for the next day with spare capacity. I also have the option to enter a brief note against the flag if there is something inspirational I want to do with it and might forget it later.
  
  
• Then I move the email out of my inbox (very important!) into the second folder I have "Processed for Action". I now can have an empty inbox.
• I can then look at my Follow-up list in Lotus Notes and have a list of emails for action today - fantastic!
  
  
• When I have finally actioned an email, I remove the flag with just one click. I then go through and clean up my "Processed for Action" folder by archiving anything that doesn't have a flag - a two second job.
• Its simple, elegant and most importantly - IT WORKS!!
  

Negotiating your next salary package - some real advice from an expert

I recently received a great insight from a master of career management, John Baker, Senior Vice President at Right Management.

My Question: Whats the best way to say you want to work from home in a job interview?

JB - Before raising your work/life concerns with the employer, you'd best be convinced that they are on your side. I'd hold the question until you know that you are the one they want. Then I'd raise it in an exploratory fashion, but load it with all your rationale from your previous assignments. My clients have their best negotiating success when we attend to both the content and timing of their requests.

RG - I'm also curious as to how to enter into a negotiation dialogue once an employer makes a job offer. In my experience the actual offer comes from someone lower down in HR with a "take it or leave it" attitude, or a suggestion that it will take a mountain of bureaucracy to change their standard terms.

JB - Getting to the negotiation discussion is a bit of a tricky transition, as you rightly sense. If your scenario holds true, then it's important to remember that the HR rep's presentation of the offer with Take It or Leave it attitude is simply that, attitude. To be fair, it's not just that they might be trying to attain your talent at the lowest possible cost (as is their corporate mandate), but that, in HR, they simply want to get the deal done, so they can be on to the next thing.

In fact, it's often the case that when HR and the hiring manager get to the offer stage, they start to fantisize that their work is over. They've done all the screening, the interviewing, the selection and they've chosen you! So, of course your continued engagement on questions about the job as well as questions about the offer itself represent a escalating inconvenience, and unnecessary delay.

Nevertheless, your right to pursue your request for adjustments to the offer is well understood among professionals, especially in your field.

The key steps to getting to a negotiation meeting are these:

1. Once the offer is delivered (frequently by phone call), express your appreciation and enthusiasm.
2. Gather any additional data about the offer that you may have been curious about, including details of the retirement, bonus, incentive and medical provisions, etc. The person delivering the offer may not have ready access to this level of detail, so you may need to establish how and when they might get that info to you. But remember, this is just you asking for more detail from them. DO NOT NEGOTIATE anything at this time.
3. Thank them for allowing you to pursue your questions, thank them once again for the offer, and ASK FOR SOME TIME to consider it more thoroughly. After all, this is an important decision for you, and you have some important people in your life to include in the news before you give your response, etc. How much time you ask for is largely dependent upon cultural and industry norms. In the US, you can always ask for 24 hours, but often you should ask for 2-3 days before responding.
4. ASK FOR AN APPOINTMENT to deliver your answer; in person, if possible. In other words, don't settle for just a time when you will call them back with your answer. You deserve a full discussion of the offer, and these things are always much more effective if conducted face to face.
   

It's during this appointment that you will conduct your negotiation session. And your question about flexibility and working from home might be one of several items on your list to raise with them at that time. The actual details of conducting the negotiation meeting is a much more lengthy topic. But remember, if you are successful in setting the appointment, then this is now your meeting. You will control the agenda and set the tone. They are simply providing you with the time you asked for, often thinking that you're just coming in to give them your answer. How you set the stage for this meeting and conduct the various elements of it can determine not only the immediate outcome, should you accept the offer, but also your professional standing with that employer for the duration of your tenure.

RG - Take that to the bank! Fantastic advice John thanks very much.

A fantastic book I always quote

This book by Frank and Ayesha Jones is simply an epiphany. [Forgive me for looking at this from a Professional Male point of view, with a stay at home wife and school age children - interpret as you need to]
It makes a critical set of observations about modern middle-classed lifestyles:

- You own a big house in the suburbs (because thats where big houses are), so you could get the big back yard for your children to play in safely and it cost a lot of money, so you have a big mortgage;
- You therefore have to spend a long time each day commuting to a suitably paid job to service said mortgage;
- Therefore you never see you kids because you're out the door before they are awake in the morning and they're in bed when you get home;
- Except on the weekends of course! But then you spend all weekend mowing the lawns in your big back yard and ensuring its upkeep;
- You also have a second car because you drive your car (with just you in it) to work all day and your wife needs one to run from the suburbs to where the good shops and schools are;
- Its all so expensive and that really adds stress to your lifestyle, so you try to deal with this by spending money on your kids, wife, yourself, but then that adds stress;

OK so you know the score and we probably don't all have ticks against every statement but some will.

So what do they suggest?
- You don't like the commute, so move closer to your job! Consider living in the inner city or wherever you can achieve a reduced commute so you see you kids in the morning and read them a story at night.
- You could obviously change jobs to find one that doesn't pose such a commuting problem. Ahh, but that could reduce your earnings and you have a mortgage;
- Downsize your house and reduce your mortgage! Why not? You spend the time you should be spending with your family looking after bricks, mortar and closely cropped lawns;
- So you consider moving into an inner city apartment - now you walk to work, out the door at 8:30am, walking your kids to school, at your desk at 9am and no need for two cars;
- Your kids don't have a backyard that you feel obliged to fill with expensive swings and slides etc - when there are perfectly good examples at your local park! You now have the time to take your kids to the park, when you were previously mowing lawns. They meet other children and learn to play together, rather than those vile rich kids that never have to share because they have one of every toy imaginable. OK so your wife gets down the park with the kids rather than stay imprisoned at home, looking after a home twice the size it needs to be. She meets other friends and develops a network of local friends and other mothers - I think this used to be called a "Community"... I remember those, and we wonder what made them disappear...
- OK so your kids might also spend more time indoors because you live in an apartment (or maybe a terraced house with a small backyard), but ask any child - they would rather spend time with Dad reading stories and doing jigsaws, than spending hours on their own in your big backyard.

OK so I have summarised a concept that was big enough to fill a book and there are probably many holes in my examples. But find your own truth in this concept and make your own groove - I think there is a lot of wisdom in the whole idea and it has lead me to question what I really want out of life - its lifestyle and its not as expensive as you think.

If anyone reads this and decides to toss in their job and run naked down the beach (with reference to Reginald Perrin) - please let me know. I might bump into you down at the park with your kids...

Check this out

Talk about being flexible in business! Amazing... keep watching until the end.
Credits to PMThink

http://view.break.com/368159 - Watch more free videos

Update on Do It Tomorrow - Part One

So I've been into "Do It Tomorrow" (DIT) for almost a month now.

What have I learnt?

• You get out of it what you put into it
• I have now cracked my email management issues!!
• I now know what a work diary is really for
• This is not a "read once" kind of book...

I bought a Filofax last year in response to having dropped one too many PDA's and wanting something that wouldn't reboot itself wiping clean all the pages. To be honest I was carrying this flash looking, leather bound thing around with me everywhere looking like a Mormon swinging a bible, but I wasn't really getting any great value out of it.

Well after reading DIT I finally feel I have harnessed the value of my filofax.

1. Each day in my diary has my daily routine listed on the bottom of the page. This includes the standard email, voicemail, paperwork and also some systems I need to check/input into daily. There are also some of my 'little and often' tasks that could do with a little attention each day.
   
2. All time-fixed arrangements (meetings, calls etc) get entered and become the things I have to work around to complete my daily list.
3. On the top of my page I have a double ruled margin to show my task diary for the day.
4. At the end of the previous day I draw a line under my task diary list and this becomes the space for any immediate and same-day tasks.
5. Not shown on the diagram, but I can work out how much 'Unscheduled' (aka free) time I have to tackle my jobs for the day. I can also estimate how much time each activity on my list should take and reconcile the two to see if I have enough time in the day to tackle all I have committed to. If not, then I need to slide things onto future dates.

So then as I go through the day I tick off things as I complete them. I sometimes pencil in big tasks to make sure I have a decent space for completing them. If at the end of the day I haven't completed something I put a circle, rather than a tick, against it to show that is missing the big tick.

But really, how has it gone?
Well I started strongly...
I found myself diving back into the book; initially to check things like "What does it mean when you 'DO' email?"; but then I was looking at the chapters around "Am I committed to doing this activity?" because I found I had too many things in my day and activities were starting to slip.
So far I have only declared my initial 'backlog' and am contemplating whether I ought to declare another one.
One of the difficulties I had was identifying my Current Initiatives (CI) - some of the things I had on my list of CI's were pipedreams at best and the moment I gave them some time in my day found that I wasn't really ready to bite off more than I could chew. I have found it an interesting exercise to say the least.
Overall I feel I really do have a system for dealing with my day and I am yet to fully master it.
One thing about DIT and my filofax - it really does need to be attached to my hip if I am to capture tasks and schedule them properly.

In Part Two I am going to rub people's noses in it by telling them how I have mastered email and will never again be ruled by such a cruel and heartless waste of time!

European ARPU boosted by mobile internet takeup

Interesting to see what this will do to the fortunes of the European mobile industry which has struggled since its glory days around five years ago.

Mobile data, specifically mobile internet take-up, is starting to have the desired effect on declining operator ARPU [Average Revenue Per User] in Western Europe, according to research firm Analysys.

Most European operators will struggle to halt the decline in voice ARPU, says the firm. However, progress in mobile internet should ensure total ARPU for the whole region grows by 10.2 pre cent over the next five years.

Will this drive your mobile device to be a phone in name only?

Read the full article here on www.telecoms.com

Extreme Telecommuting - Tim Ferriss meets Eco-warrior

Mark Ontkush has written another great article on the extended beauties of Telecommuting. One of my UK colleagues lives in Paris as her own choice - if she needs to get to London for an occassional meeting then a ferry ride or jumping on the Eurostar is an option (OK not 100% green but the idea of "not being in the office" not necessarily equaling "working from home" is well made). She recently took up a friends offer to house sit in Nice for two months - no one would have noticed where she was.

Read Mark's full blog entry
ecoIron - All these whirring boxes.: Extreme Telecommuting - It's Not What Dad Did
Here's the original CNN Money article

It smacks of a similar theme championed by Tim Ferriss in his book "The four hour work week". Tim runs his own company from wherever he happens to be in the world - outsourcing personal tasks where he can and cutting down on the daily office grind tasks.

At last a time management tool that actually works - goodbye "To Do" lists!

I'm a convert to Mark Forsters great book on Time Management "Do It Tomorrow".

Four days into it and I am instantly feeling the benefits and know that my work delivery has already improved.

What's the quick five about it?

• Key thing is to ensure your days have a beginning and an end - the best way to do this is to map out your day, the day before. Not rocket science so far...
• Anything that turns up on the day, unless its going to cause major problems - gets done tomorrow. Everything... Be strong... Everything!
• Turn off your email notifications because you'll look at todays emails - tomorrow [and I guarantee that going through a day's worth of emails in one hit in the morning, will take about one tenth of the time it usually takes you during the day]
• Focus on getting the list you put together yesterday, done today. Don't let anything else come between you and your goal.
• So you have got something that needs doing and you've put it in your diary to do in 3 days time - no sweat. You're 99% confident that you'll actually get it done on that day because you'll be working off a closed (not openended) list. People will actually cope with a 3 day leadtime because it will mean a 3 (not 4 or 5) day leadtime.

OK I could go on, but I have found it very liberating after just four days. Half the things that I thought were urgent and I only got to the next day - I didn't have people chasing me for after all. Actually the fact that I got to them the next day and completed them, meant that the turnaround was probably better than had they been added to an openended "to do" list!

Today being the end of the month, my monthly report was due. I actually got it in today! I've got to say that my boss is so used to chasing these the following week from myself and my peers - that mine turning up today would have caught him quite off guard.

One other big thing was, whe you start, take all your backlog and sling it in a folder where you don't have to look at it. Then everyday when you start the day - the first thing you do is spend some time working on your "Current Initiative", in this case the backlog. Open the file and spend a few minutes clearing it and then get on with the rest of your day and complete everything you set yourself - avoiding creating more backlog. In four days I cleared a months worth of unactioned email. The next thing will be to find something else to make my current initiative and start dealing with those ideas and aspirations that I always meant to get around to tackling one day.

I can't say much more than buy the book and give it a go yourself.

A darker side of Google is a good thing

Interesting article about the impact having a white (high light output) background on a site like Google might have on global power consumption. Very "Tipping Point" in suggesting a small change like this having a large impact on a global issue.

The online buzz over "going dark" began in earnest last January after Mark Ontkush, a self-described "green computing evangelist," wrote a blog post concerning environmentally friendly Web design. Ontkush claimed that if a popular site such as Google switched its home page background color from white to black, it could save hundreds of megawatt hours a year. He based his claim on the fact that certain types of monitors use less energy to display black than white screens. And according to the Environmental Protection Agency, cathode-ray-tube (CRT) monitors and even some flat-panel screens use less energy to display black or dark backgrounds.

Read the complete article or go to Mark Ontkush's great blog on Green Computing and Sustainable technology.

Try out Blackle - a google-based search engine that uses a dark background rather than a white one. Blackle does have its critics though, as many argue that dark screens consume more power on LCD monitors., only consuming less power with CRT monitors (which still make up 25% of the world's PC monitors).

Oh no my mind had gone web 2.0 - I'm dreaming in YouTube vision!!!

I don't believe it!
"Last night I had the strangest dream..." as the song goes.

So there I was kayaking down a fast, wide river with a group of people and we reached a bend in the river. As I reached the outside bank I saw a Jumbo Jet swoop in on a low approach over the bend.
As it hit the lowest point of its flypast (and I started to wonder if it would pull up in time) - the image froze and started buffering!! I couldn't believe it! I had to wait there in my dream whilst my unconscious videostream caught up. Well it eventually did pull up in time and continued its flypast - but I am starting to get seriously concerned about what Microsoft put in its last patch update....

US Subprime bath set to dampen global outsourcing market

Indian outsourcing firms nervously hope the US loan crisis does not deteriorate as the business of processing mortgages in their biggest market dries up and some clients keel over. Firms such as iGate Global Solutions and WNS that serviced American mortgage lenders are already feeling the impact of the crisis, which a US survey this week called the biggest short-term threat to the world's largest economy.

Read the full article

EDS ahead of IBM in UK S/ITS market, CSC 8th

"Electronic Data Systems (EDS), the giant American corporation founded by Ross "The Boss" Perot, has regained its top spot on Ovum's UK software and IT services (S/ITS) industry rankings, overtaking IBM.
...EDS had a UK turnover of £2.7bn, which put it ahead of IBM (£2.6bn) and Japan's Fujitsu (£1.6bn)... The rest of the top 10 is made up of France's Capgemini (£1.5bn), Capita (£1.3bn), BT (£1.3bn), Accenture (£1.2bn), CSC (£1.2bn), HP (£1.0bn) and Microsoft (£887m). Both Oracle (£668m) and SAP (£344m) were in the top 20."

Read the full story Guardian Blog August 17, 2007

Humbling homecoming for NZ Victoria Cross recipient

The Queen has been pleased to approve the following New Zealand Gallantry Awards:

VICTORIA CROSS FOR NEW ZEALAND (VC)

To receive the Victoria Cross for New Zealand:

Corporal Bill Henry APIATA (M181550)

1st New Zealand Special Air Service Group

Citation

Lance Corporal (now Corporal) Apiata was, in 2004, part of a New Zealand Special Air Service (NZSAS) Troop on patrol in Afghanistan, which laid up in defensive formation for the night. At approximately 0315 hours, the Troop was attacked by a group of about twenty enemy fighters, who had approached by stealth using the cover of undulating ground in pitch darkness. Rocket-propelled grenades struck two of the Troop’s vehicles, destroying one and immobilising the other. The opening strike was followed by dense and persistent machine gun and automatic rifle fire from close range. The attack then continued using further rocket-propelled grenades and machine gun and rifle fire. The initial attack was directed at the vehicle where Lance Corporal Apiata was stationed. He was blown off the bonnet by the impact of rocket propelled grenades striking the vehicle. He was dazed, but was not physically injured. The two other vehicle crew members had been wounded by shrapnel; one of them; Corporal A, was in a serious condition. Illuminated by the burning vehicle, and under sustained and accurate enemy fire directed at and around their position, the three soldiers immediately took what little cover was available. Corporal A was discovered to have sustained life-threatening wounds. The other two soldiers immediately began applying basic first aid. Lance Corporal Apiata assumed command of the situation, as he could see that his superior’s condition was deteriorating rapidly.

By this time, however, Lance Corporal Apiata’s exposed position, some seventy metres in front of the rest of the Troop, was coming under increasingly intense enemy fire. Corporal A was now suffering serious arterial bleeding and was lapsing in and out of consciousness.

Lance Corporal Apiata concluded that his comrade urgently required medical attention, or he would likely die. Pinned down by the enemy, in the direct line of fire between friend and foe, he also judged that there was almost no chance of such help reaching their position. As the enemy pressed its attack towards Lance Corporal Apiata’s position, and without thought of abandoning his colleague to save himself, he took a decision in the highest order of personal courage under fire. Knowing the risks involved in moving to open ground, Lance Corporal Apiata decided to carry Corporal A single-handedly to the relative safety of the main Troop position, which afforded better cover and where medical treatment could be given. He ordered his other colleague, Trooper T to make his own way back to the rear.

In total disregard of his own safety, Lance Corporal Apiata stood up and lifted his comrade bodily. He then carried him across the seventy metres of broken, rocky and fire swept ground, fully exposed in the glare of battle to heavy enemy fire and into the face of returning fire from the main Troop position. That neither he nor his colleague were hit is scarcely possible. Having delivered his wounded companion to relative shelter with the remainder of the patrol, Lance Corporal Apiata re-armed himself and rejoined the fight in counter-attack. By his actions, he removed the tactical complications of Corporal A's predicament from considerations of rescue.

The Troop could now concentrate entirely on prevailing in the battle itself. After an engagement lasting approximately twenty minutes, the assault was broken up and the numerically superior attackers were routed with significant casualties, with the Troop in pursuit. Lance Corporal Apiata had thereby contributed materially to the operational success of the engagement. A subsequent medical assessment confirmed that Corporal A would probably have died of blood loss and shock, had it not been for Lance Corporal Apiata’s selflessly courageous act in carrying him back to the main Troop lines, to receive the immediate treatment that he needed.

Please look at this slide show to try and understand what New Zealand soldiering/Ngati Tumatauenga is all about.

Estimating the proportions of a networks project - have a go!

Survey time!
How would you spread the labour effort across a typical, generic, vanilla-flavoured Networks project?
Now I know I know... no two networks projects are the same and there is a big difference between installing one firewall and deploying a whole global MPLS network. But I want people to generalise here and spread 100% of effort across the following project headings:

[Assume what you need to for the project headings]

1) Initiation

2) Discovery

3) Design

4) Development

5) Deployment

6) Handover to Ops

7) Closedown

8) Project Management [separate out the PM time here]
=100%

I plan to collate and let people know the results, so please have a go by leaving your estimate in the comments below.

Cheers
Rob

The Sh*tty First Draft

One of the best things I try to do to help me solve problems and be a creative thinker - is to give myself permission to screw up the first time I have a go at something.

Coherence and Brilliance come from Revision
Anne LaMott calls this her "Shitty First Draft", identifying that tight final versions come from really poor first and second drafts. She gives herself permission to take a hack at the first paragraph she needs to write and is happy to accept that its not going to be a masterpiece the first time round.

I think its really helpful to bear this in mind and not feel forced to have a perfect solution from the outset. So often I find people stalled, coming to me with project problems because the solution isn't there in front of them from the outset. Because they don't have the perfect solution, they are wielded to the spot, unwilling to just see where things take them.

My advice:
Just start walking and see where you end up.
Chances are it's probably a better place than where you were standing when you realised you first had the problem.

Is this just an OMG concept website or what?

Have you seen lulu.com?

Here's how it works

1. You write a book's-worth of something
2. You go to lulu.com and upload it
3. It converts it into a .pdf file and asks you whether you want hardback or paperback etc. You choose/make a cover design
4. You are now a published author - you can order one copy or 5,000!

I was speechless once I'd been taken through the concept.
My next thought was to pay $15 a time for a book shelf of empty books with my name and photo on the back cover just to try and impress the pants off people.

So no longer do you have to try and convince an editor of the merits of your dissertation on Peruvian Tree Slugs - just go forth and be published! Now the more astute will also see a warning sign starting to flicker on and off. Yes, you have now dispensed with the services of an Editor - those difficult people that actually help turn your book into something other people might find worth reading. They also ensure it has been properly proof read by someone other than Bill Gates III.

That aside I still love the concept and it also covers music CD's and DVD's too.

So whats the best Project Management software package?

This is an all too familiar questions I often see asked. In fact it popped up on LinkedIn Q&A the other day and I couldn't resist diving in with two feet, especially when I saw all these people running off and naming this and that.

Here's how it went:

Question: What is the best project management software out there for a novice and considering that financial/budgeting tracking is not important?

My Answer:
To be honest I often find that I can do all the basics of Project Management by just using MSExcel.

Please bear in mind that 'back in the day' our forefathers built dams, skyscrapers, railways, managing these projects using... paper!

So I have upgraded from Paper 1.0 to MSExcel and find that for the sake of putting a simple schedule down and ensuring that a small number of resources are correctly allocated; it does it all nicely. I have can and do use MSProject to a relatively advanced level quite regularly and have also used Primavera as well.

But to be honest, by the time you set up all the parameters, unpick the things that the software wants to do automatically for you and then find that not everyone on the project has the right software to read it - you could have actually spent all that time working on delivering the project. This type of software is a classic time waster for a novice and my advice if you do go down the specialist software route, is to start out whiteboarding/writing down the project plan before you enter it into the software.

I have only really witnessed the power of PM software come into its own on typically multi-million dollar programmes running over 12 months with teams of over 70 personnel. What I also observed with these types of programmes is that there are few people who need that powerful overview and computational capabilities, so everyone else breaks the programme down into little manageable chunks that can be easily run on... a Excel spreadsheet!

Hope this helps.

They liked my answer and rated it the best *blush*, arguably against a bunch of people wanting to recommend OTT packages that would befuddle a novice, or even seasoned PM!
Now don't get me wrong, Project Management is an evolving technical skill and needs to be treated as such. I am certainly an advocate of adopting a rigorous technical approach to Project Reporting (such as metrics and Earned Value etc), as well as an analytical approach to Risk Management
- but PM's really need to grasp the first principles of these disciplines before they engage software to do it for them.

I am often reminded of the Officer in charge of Logistics for the entire British Land Forces during the Gulf War - this man needed to ensure that every soldier got his bullets, beans and bayonet. He ran the entire Logistics Battle successfully from the back of just four Landrovers.

Now if he can do that, I think we can get by with a few simple Project Management tools, can't we?.

Lessons Learned - great idea, but its in the wrong place!

Why do we teach project managers to include the Lessons Learned (LL) review in the Close Down phase of their project?
and
Why do PM's then seldom conduct LL reviews?

Simply; its in the wrong place.

Yes, semantically we can only learn the lessons of history once they have happened, but I argue we should be teaching PM's to include the Lessons Learned review in the Initiation phase of their project, AT THE START.

The reasons for this approach are two-fold:
(1) The raison d'etre of LL reviews is that the lessons can be applied to future projects, but do we ever formally capture this in our project methodologies? Yeah its there somewhere, but is often only given lip-service. But ask any PM "When do you conduct your LL review on a project?" and they'll fire back "during the Close Down phase!". The emphasis is in the wrong place. So simply put, if we put the LL review in the initiation phase of the project, the whole point of doing them will be realised. OK, so the format probably needs to change and we need to consider that project teams quickly disband after a project finishes, so we need to capture their experiences when they are fresh. However in todays Web 2.0 environment, call-it-what-you-will, the ability to contact people and extract information from them has never been easier. However, in fairness I still see the LL review being conducted at the end of the project too, but I foresee that they will be conducted more readily, if we change the emphasis of when we do them.
(2) To enlarge on this point; if the PM's actively conduct LL reviews at the start of their projects, they will vividly see the benefits of this activity. Ergo, they will also see the benefit in providing the Lessons Learned after their own project finishes and the whole process will become more self-sustaining. Let's face it, any who has ever conducted a Delivery/Quality Assurance review, or sat on a Governance Board, will know that happy projects that have run successfully and dire failures are they only two where LL reviews are typically mandated. All the projects in the middle ground that struggle and take up most of people's bandwidth, often get closed in a hurry as people run for the door into another similar project to repeat the cycle.

Challenge everything, accept nothing, improve something.

Someone asked: What are your thoughts on MPLS?

"This appears to be the next generation of communications. There are numerous applications that can take advantage of this latest technology in being able to prioritize data packets by assigning labels to them. Of course, it's early days, so what are your thoughts?"

My reply:I would say that MPLS is the 'Now' (not the Next) Generation of backbone technology. In Europe and AsiaPAC it is already the technology of choice for most new WAN implementations and the number one service offering from most Global telco's, not to mention the main focus of Vendors.
I have been involved in MPLS WAN rollouts for 5 years now in the UK and Europe.
My only caution would be to not forget to compare the business cases for MPLS and competing legacy technologies when considering a change. Often the Service Providers push customers into MPLS because it is fashionable and the margins are better for them as they can bundle multiple services with it (Data and VOIP plus enhanced network monitoring tools etc). Whether MPLS 'costs in' for a customer will depend on (a) existing and future bandwidth requirements; (b) the need to flex bandwidth on demand; (c) geographical spread of WAN (distance from the exchange and regulatory restrictions).
I have had clients who have been halfway through the rollout of an MPLS WAN only to realise that they are going to spend more (not less) on a technology that they won't really benefit from. Also clients have ditched MPLS when they realised that they could double their existing ATM bandwidth cheaper and faster in some locations, rather than deploy MPLS.
Overall though, with (a) the refresh of network infrastructure now better built into operating budgets and (b) the realisation that things like VOIP and convergence of legacy and current data networks are no longer a leap of faith, as well as (c) the removal of premiums for MPLS services - it is truly becoming the default technology for todays Wide Area Networks.
British Telecom as well as all the other UK, European and US Telcos I can think of, all deploy MPLS as their carrier backbone technology. It is highly likely that if you buy ATM in some locations today it will be encapsulated over MPLS anyway!

Aligning enterprise PM skills with Capability Maturity Model (CMM)

In the ongoing endeavour to raise the standard in PM Practitioner capability across Professional Services, we hit upon the concept of using the Capability Maturity Model from Application Process Design to define project management capabilities at the Enterprise level:

[Some abbreviations: PS - Professional Services, SME - Subject Matter Expert, TPG - Technical Project Group, TPT - Technical Project Type; Many TPT's could be managed under a TPG of PM's]

1. Level 1 - Initial Limited knowledge of PM experience versus technical project type. Mainly anecdotal, local, unqualified knowledge. No organisational knowledge repository.
2. Level 2 - Repeatable Initial limited lists created for active TPG's only, based on TPG lead knowledge and assessment of PS database. Likely number of trusted practitioners ~20 per TPG. Limited information on the size and nature of projects managed, or the PM's track record/success. Data mainly used to create initial practitioner network to promote knowledge sharing, and identify a few potential SMEs.
3. Level 3 – Defined Individual consultation and increase in practitioner numbers. Data now being used to align staff to projects based on technical capability (smart resourcing).Still aligned to TPGs only.
4. Level 4 – Managed Assessment of individuals plus broadening to other non-TPG TPTs. Ability for staff to maintain own experience data - implies PS-wide database/web site.
5. Level 5 - Optimised Mature data with all TPTs covered. Project success/reference data included. Data used routinely in staff assignments, career planning and development, recruitment planning. Steady State.

What's with all the flying terminology?

If you have read my previous posts on the new niche allocation of project management skills, you would have already heard me talk about "Take-off" and "Landing" Pilots, as well as "Inflight Attendants".
Well having just returned from two weeks vacation in (not so) sunny Brittany, I have coined myself another aeronautical term...

I'm having an "Off The Radar" day.

I knew that there would be an inevitable backlog of 'Things' waiting for me to read and action or delete upon my return; an unfortunate product of the Information Age (see four hour work week). I also knew that when I got back, for a day at least, I could stay incognito as people would be thinking I was managing someone else's project. I even went to Lifehacker and had a look at some of their tips for time management and increasing your productivity.
So I decided to stay Off The Radar (OTR) for a day or so and catch up on all this 'stuff'.
How liberating!
I actually sat down and read all those emails that had been skimmed over and sorted out (a) what was really important, (b) which ones were time sensitive and no longer relevant [were they actually relevant in the first place?], and (c) which ones looked good in my trash can. By 3pm I had 250 emails in my trash can, with about 12 emails that actually needed my time. By the time I logged off, I had a couple I was actually looking forward to completing the next day.
I even looked at my professional development and training programme and put a few webinars in my diary that I was always letting pass me by.

I seriously recommend the merits of an OTR day to allow yourself time to catch up on all that personal admin that always takes second place to project work.

So nows it off to fly my next sortie... umm I mean project.

Tally Ho!

Affluenza and the four hour work week

Following on from what I had seen about Affluenza, a book talking about the lack of satisfaction we get from modern have-it-all lifestyles, I have come across an interview with Tim Ferriss, the author of 'the Four hour Work Week'.

His book talks around two significant concepts:
(a) If big corporates can outsource their low end tasks to the sub-continent, why can't we do that on a personal level? He mentioned some of the companies that offer remote PA services - Your Man in India, Brickwork and Get Friday are a few examples; and
(b) What does your ideal lifestyle actually cost you? Tim Ferriss has a number of calculators that enable you to tally up what that perfect lifestyle would cost you and then break that down to a daily cost. It turns out that your ideal lifestyle may not cost as much as you think and you don't have to wait until your retirement to realise your dreams.

Having just experienced a week of being bombarded by emails, I really see where Tim Ferriss is coming from. I liked his Out of Office auto-reply:
"Due to my high workload at the moment, I am only checking emails twice a day. I will get to your email eventually, but if it is urgent then please call me on my mobile 07xxxxxxxxxx"

The fact was that few people wanted to send him emails he wasn't going to instantly read and even fewer actually thought their issue was urgent enough to bother calling him on his mobile. As you can imagine he is not a big fan of Blackberries, and upon due consideration, neither am I.

Another one on the way!

Yes, we are pleased to announce that we are expecting our third child in December. My wife, George, went to the midwife and heard a little heartbeat.

I just hope the poor little fella isn't born with a limp!

Injury update: "Got ta keep on walking..."

It is six months today since my spectacular luge accident and it sees me half way through what will probably be a twelve month period of rehabilitation. The medical experts think that it will take this amount of time to achieve the full range of movement now available in my ankle - they choose their words very carefully and state that you seldom regain 100% movement when a joint suffers a trauma such as this. So what I will and won't be able to do long term will be determined by me during my rehab.
Walking without a limp is probable
Running is dubious; running for a bus is possible, but 'running' running unlikely - so cross doing a marathon off my list.
Before I can start to jog I need to be able to hop on my bad foot - easier said than done. The mind is willing but the leg refuses to budge. Standing on my toes is the immediate goal, with hopping, and then eventually jogging.
So the fear of not being able to do all that I did before is a great motivating factor at the moment.
I have no interest in being a victim.
I am getting out for a ride a few times a week and notice little improvements in my ability each time I hop on my bike. At least when I'm riding I look normal like everyone else.
I have also become the worst person to ask about my rehab. I'm like a Hamster in a wheel: ask me how I'm going and I'll say I'm doing great, 100mph and prepared to take on anything; the reality is somewhat different if you ask my wife. But I make no apology for that, as I need to have a positive attitude and be prepared to 'have a go'.

Maybe this is my marathon?

Project Managers and Take-off & Landing Pilots

Back in the days when you were allowed in the cockpit of a passenger airliner to meet the pilots; there used to be a well used gag where one pilot would explain his job was to fly the aircraft at take-off and it was his colleagues job to land the aircraft. At that point his co-pilot would turn to him and say "But I'm a take-off pilot too, not a landing pilot!" "What! Then who's going to land it then!?"
This analogy has got good mileage in our project environment in recent weeks, as we grapple with project resourcing. I hold a supernumary role as the LAN WAN Technical Project Group (TPG) Lead. One of my responibilities is to maintain a list of LAN WAN 'Practitioners' who could be deployed on high value projects.
Where our previous Networks project management group managed to achieve good results was to cast aside the heuristic that a PM really needs to be assigned through out the lifecycle of a project. We found that we were better able to target high-value skills by assigning senior resources as "Take-off Pilots", establishing the beachhead on an account, undertaking the scoping and estimating phase of the project/programme and getting the package of work into a recognisable form. Once this was established, then their role might evolve to being the Programme Manager of the work or they could be lifted out and replaced with a more junior resource that could deliver the project once the rudimentary framework was in place (aka the "Landing Pilot").
Having been the Take-Off Pilot PM/Programme Manager more than once myself, I found this an exciting way to work, as often the biggest hurdles were faced in the initial stages of the project and once things were in a Steady State, well, it got a bit boring to be honest. There is also an opportunity to retain this senior resource in a Governance role as the project continues through the lifecycle; so they retain close contact with the incumbent PM and any big issues which crop up.

The Holy Trinity of Networks: The Tin, the Service-wrap and the Design

I found myself in a situation the other day having to deliver an ad hoc brief on progress with a project I am running. Many years and many service providers later, it is a poorly designed and operated network.

Fair play to my technical colleagues, as they have sought to design a standards-based solution that is not beholden to any one single vendor and allows the widest possible technology roadmap for the client. However the incumbent's product, both hardware and OS, is dogged with problems and limitations, which in order to progress things along has meant that we have been forced to compromise at every turn.

So I had to broach the subject about needing to be look at a Vendor who we know we can do the 'business'. What I came up with was the best way of cataloging the current Vendor's shortcomings and what we felt were critical success criteria for us to recommend a Network Solution:

• The Tin - the hardware must meet the needs of the client and service provider in terms of business case and fitness for purpose (a naughty term but meant here to mean stability etc)
• The Service Wrap - the whole show that the Vendor puts around the pieces of tin they sell you. Pre-Sales, after sales technical support, new releases of firmware/software etc. Design support and general willingness to go the extra mile for you.
• The Design - what principles are we designing this network against and does the solution uphold them? Open Standards, Standards-based solutions, Resilience, Fast Convergance times, Scalability, Single-vendor vs Multi-vendor environments etc

It actually conveyed the point well and also found use as a framework for the technical team that were so busy testing every possible configuration, they couldn't tell me why they were testing specific scenarios. One example, was testing something that they could get to work, but was an unsupported feature from this troublesome vendor. It upheld the Design principles, but I told them if we can't have the Service-wrap with this solution, then it is not worth testing - they thought about it and had to agree.

So I think I will continue to push this 'Networks Trinity' on this project a little longer as a way of restoring some order in the thought processes of all involved.

Wok Wifi: The low cost solution to Wifi range issues

Maybe one of my greatest engineering feats, when we moved into our new house I instantly lined up the garden shed (already with power) as my Home Office. After lining the interior and moving in my desk and book case I was ready for business. My connection to the outside world was to be my mobile and a wifi connection to broadband inside the main house. As I was looking to take working from home seriously, I was concerned that my 54Mb.sec 802.11g wireless LAN, could only manage 1Mb/sec 'most' of the time - this would never do.

I was referred to a website of a New Zealand technology college lecturer and his low cost wifi solutions, harnessing the parabolic dishes we come across everyday.



So take:
- one £10 steel wok,
- a 3m USB cable,
- a USB wifi dongle; and
- some brute strength to bang a hole in the bottom of the wok.

and hey presto





18-24Mb/sec all day everyday!!