Thought of the day : Day 4

Opportunities come always with challenges , issues and crises embedded and coupled tightly within it.
If you cannot take up a new challenge you cannot get the opportunity.
If you have never faced a crisis in life , you have not learnt life.
So , be brave face them and go ahead with opportunities.

Thought of the Day : Thought 2

Thought of the Day : Thought 1

The Clock of Life

The clock of life is wound but once,

And no man has the power

To tell just when the hands will stop

At late or early hour.

To lose one’s wealth is sad indeed,

To lose one’s health is more,

To lose one’s soul is such a loss

That no man can restore.

The present only is our own,

So live, love, toil with a will,

Place no faith in “Tomorrow,”

For the Clock may then be still.

by Robert H. Smith,

copyright 1932, 1982

Power of infinite

Life is infinite

So are all its possibilities

Nature is infinite

so is knowledge

Joy is infinite

 so is Serenity

We are just a part of infinity...express the infinites in you.

TIPS TO BE A SUUCCESSFUL LEADER AND MAKE THE PROJECT SUCCESSFUL

Tip 1: Set the goal  

The first task we need to take is to set the goal that we want to achieve.

Tip 2: Divide and Conquer

Divide the goal into small accomplishable tasks and set the target for each of them.

Each and every task should be a SMART task

.

Tip 3: Follow-up and Follow-through

After setting the tasks, you should never forget to follow-up daily and follow-through them till their completion.

Following doesn’t mean that you don’t trust but it essentially means” trust but verify”. It will help keep everyone out of harm’s way.

Tip 4: See the goals

A project will span at least more than 15 days. In these 15 days problems will definitely pop-up.

 Resources can become sick, requirements are missed, incompatible technology is used, and systems can go down etc…etc

These problems should not set you back, you need to see through the problems on to the goal. Take preventive and corrective measures , your final target is your GOAL.

Tip 5: Never miss details

Make sure that while you focus on the big picture , your goals you are not missing out the details.

Making sure you know all the details about a particular project , about a particular problem will definitely help you and your team to sail through the difficult times easily.

Never miss the details. Not even a single day.

Tip 6: Don’t ASS-U-ME

Never rely on assumptions.

If there are any assumptions, put them on paper , get it signed off and make it requirement.

You can’t assume that just because someone said a deliverable is complete…that it is.

Tip 7: Freedom of speech.

Speak to your managers, to your team and to your customers, whenever required, wherever required.

Ask Questions, get things clarified.

Keeping silent will take every one into a fierce fight towards the end.

So, speak-up.

Avoid ambiguity, avoid confusions and speak.

Let your members speak their concerns to you. Take at least an hour, every alternate day to make sure you know what difficulties or problems each one is facing.

Tip 8: Accept you don’t know

If you don’t know, you don’t know. There is nothing to be scared off.

But whenever you don’t know, try to research and get the knowledge.

In today’s world knowledge is free. But it requires time and commitment. So, commit yourself to your lack of knowledge/understanding. And make sure you get the knowledge, make sure you understand.

As a leader, if you have ambiguity prevailing you, your team and the project is going to suffer.

Tip 9: Catch them doing right.

Make sure you appreciate your team members, whenever they have accomplished a task.

Recognize them in public, it helps boosting their self-esteem and increasing their productivity.

More than catching a person doing something wrong, it’s more important to catch them doing something right.

Tip 10: Keep a mirror with you.

Keep a mirror not just to see your appearance but to check on your attitude, towards others, towards the project, towards the organization and also towards yourself.

Be humble, respect others and be decisive.

Lessons from life and from Project - part 1

8 years...2920 days...70080 hours...4204800 minutes
I have breathed software engineering. It taught me a lot about software,hardware,networking , still more about project management , lot about leadership, has honed my soft skills and increased my understanding about life.

The biggest lesson that I learnt is we need to strike off certain words from our lives. Only when you rub these words off the board you see the light , you see SUCCESS.
And one of these words is....failure.

There is one and only one option SUCCESS.There is nothing called failure. Rather there is no option called failure.
excerpt from book Information Technology Project Management by Kathe Schwalbe

Won't Utter Failure , Won't See Failure , Won't Hear Failure.

Recently I read an article called Failure is not an option.

I am reiterating a few lines from this article:

Two important things that seem to be true of every successful start-up.

1. There is no hard and fast rule about what you need to do to be successful.  It is generally a mix of hard work, opportunity, and a touch of good luck.

2. Failure always begins with the words “I will try to…” 

But at some point in the history of every successful company, the word “try” just seems to disappear.  

I’ve been using that word “trying” for years to mean that I will eventually get there; that I’m a humble man and it’s not right to be too confident; and that only a crazy person can be so certain of a result.  But the word itself has connotations of failure.  The word “try” suggests that failure may be an option.  It suggests that excuses may be imminent.  It implies that once the circumstances change, I no longer am responsible for the outcome.  However, not using the word “try” doesn’t imply certainty of success, it implies certainty of action

I will echo the words of Thomas Edison, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work. “

Find your ways that work but eliminating the ways that won't work.

Good Bless and Good night.

Critical Path : Why is it Important

What is critical path?

Critical path method is a process that :

CPM includes:

Why is critical path so important?

Using these values, CPM usually calculates the longest path of planned activities to the end of the project, and the earliest and latest points that each activity can start and finish without making the project longer. This process determines which activities are "critical" (i.e., on the longest path) and which have "total float" (i.e., can be delayed without making the project longer).

The critical path consists of the longest sequence of activities from project start to end that should be started and completed exactly as scheduled to ensure the project is completed by a certain date in the future. The activities on the critical path must be very closely managed. If jobs on the critical path slip, immediate action should be taken to get the project back on schedule. Otherwise, completion of the whole project will slip. Imagine that you have a project that will take 300 days to complete. If the first activity on the critical path is one day late, the project will take 301 days to complete, unless another activity on the critical path can be completed one day earlier. So the critical path is simply all the tasks that determine the end date in your project schedule.

There can be more than one critical path in one project, so that several paths run in parallel. For instance, in our case, “choose a picture” and “hang the picture,” as well as “buy the screws,” “screw in the screws” and “hang the picture” form other task sequences that also are important for us to complete the project.

The critical path may contain all the important activities on the project, or it may not. In fact, sometimes the activities on the critical path are not the most important parts of the project. At the same time, there will be tasks that are not on the critical path, but still determine your project’s success. Understanding the critical path involves determining which activities are critical to complete on time. But other activities, lying outside of critical path, also may be very important and require extra diligence and focus.

How to find the critical path?

Step 1: Identify the activities
Step 2: Sequence the activities
Step 3 : Draw a network diagram
Step 4:Estimate completion time for each activity
Step 5:Identify the longest path
Step 6: Update the CPM diagram as the project progresses

Example

Let’s take a simple, real-life project: hanging a picture on the wall. What should you do to complete this mini-project successfully? First, we need to define and list all the tasks that have to be done, so that the whole project is completed.

Choose a place on the wall

Buy the screws

Choose the picture

Drill a hole

Screw in the screws

Hang the picture

When we think of these tasks, we realize that some of them cannot start before the others are finished. That is, some tasks are dependent on the others.

When we think of these tasks, we realize that some of them cannot start before the others are finished. That is, some tasks are dependent on the others.

The actions “drill a hole,” “screw in the screws” and “hang the picture” form a sequence of tasks that must be performed in a specific order, one right after the other, to ensure a successful result. Such tasks are called “sequential” activities.

So these three tasks, together with the start of our project (“choosing a place on the wall”) in our example, are the most important critical steps that must be taken to arrive at the proper solution to our problem. These actions will be placed on your critical path for this project. So the essential concept behind Critical Path Analysis is that you cannot start some activities until the others are finished. These activities need to be completed in a sequence, with each stage being more-or-less completed before the next stage can begin.

Now.let us create the schedule for this, it looks something like:

Limitations

• CPM is not suitable if projects cannot be broken down into discrete activities with known completion times. For example, on a new project, activity durations may be hard to estimate.
• Critics note that it takes too much time to identify all activities and inter-relate them to get multiple project paths. This causes user frustration ahead of the project.
• PM stops working in practical situations in which employees are often re-allocated across projects and activities. This reallocation changes activity completion time and disrupts the CPM plan.
• Identifying a single critical path is difficult when there are parallel paths with similar durations. Project teams may disagree on which path to choose or which activities are more critical than others.

Management Puzzle -Solve It

I am briefing here my understanding on the topic "Solving the Management Puzzle"  which I learnt during the first two days of NuLead workshop 14th and 15th Jan 2012.

'Solving the management puzzle' , the topic itself is a little different , why are people considering management as a puzzle? Till now the definitions of management which I studied always used to start with 'Management is a science of...' OR as 'Management is art of ...'. Even during semester exams also we used to get question 'Is Management a Science or an Art?'And now 'Management is a puzzle...!!!'


Before going through the topic I sat and thought , "What a puzzle is?"

Isn't a  puzzle is something which leaves you confused and thinking , you cannot understand from where to start and how to proceed...right!!!And once you start, you can put one clue at a time and slowly you notice that you have solved the puzzle. Yippee!!!

Isn't management the same thing...before you start managing anything ,lets take the example of managing a business which is going in loss...you are so confused...what to start , from where to start,how to proceed...??? And once you get one clue ...you will be able to get the business to the right track.


Generally we ask questions to get clue, Questions like:

What is the purpose of this project?  

What is my role?

How can we know we are doing a good job?

What do our customers want from us?

How can we do what we do 80 percent faster?

How can we meet an increased demand for our service while our budgets are shrinking?

Once, you start asking the right questions , you are on the right track to solve the puzzle.

"Agreed.management if considered as a puzzle, its easy and interesting to solve. But now the question is puzzle when solved individually is a success...when done in a team...at times it fails.And many of the projects are a failure may be because the project manager or the seniors know the track right but when it comes to team thing are a hoch-poch...a puddle."

"Right.Very often it happens that the team fails to deliver...the reason? The team is not LEAD properly."

"LEAD...but I thought we are going to say MANAGE, after all we are talking about management.Right? "

"Okay, lets first look at what is difference between MANAGE and LEAD."

What I feel is a manager is he who manages the day-to-day activities of the team.May be managing the team to DO THE THING RIGHT. but  a leader ,leads the team to DO THE RIGHT THING and tells  WHAT THE RIGHT THING IS ,HOW TO DO THE RIGHT THING, motivates them TO DO THE RIGHT THING and helps them to KEEP DOING THE RIGHT THING.

"Okay.So I can solve the management puzzle by LEADING the team and not by simply MANAGING the team."

"What do I need, to be a good leader?"

Its simple you just need to understand the characteristics of a good leader and imbibe those in you by practice and by working on them.

Following are few characteristics of a leader.

• A leader shows commitment towards  building  a team .
• A leader leads by example.
• A leader never plays favorites.
• Is future-oriented and thinks of long-term goals while giving importance to short term goals.
• A leader is decisive and never hesitates to take decisions by his own.
• Encourages responsible risk taking.
• A leader always welcomes changes.
• Are emotionally mature.
• Have good technical knowledge.
• Leaders are people builders.
• Leader are good communicators.

Following tables describes the differences between a manager and a leader

Subject	Leader	Manager
Essence	Change	Stability
Focus	Leading people	Managing work
Have	Followers	Subordinates
Horizon	Long-term	Short-term
Seeks	Vision	Objectives
Approach	Sets direction	Plans detail
Decision	Facilitates	Makes
Power Personal	Charisma	Formal authority
Appeal to	Heart	Head
Energy	Passion	Control
Dynamic	Proactive	Reactive
Persuasion	Sell	Tell
Style	Transformational	Transactional
Likes	Striving	Action
Wants	Achievement	Results
Risk	Takes	Minimizes
Rules	Breaks	Makes
Conflict	Uses	Avoids
Direction	New Roads	Existing roads
Truth	Seeks	Establishes
Concern	What is right	Being right
Credit	Gives	Takes
Blame	Takes	Blames

NOTES:

Check out following link for a beautiful poem on LEADER vs MANAGER
http://managementbyobjectives-ayub.blogspot.in/2012/03/leader-vs-manager-poem.html

Rules to Success 1-3

Rule 1#

Kal , Aaj Aur Kal.

 Learn from Past , work perfectly in Present and make sure you are aware and prepared for future.

Past Teaches you a lot keep a time daily to think on what went wrong...keep a note of wrong.

knowing what went wrong is far too important than knowing what went right.

 Rule 2#

Information Drives

Be informed about what’s happening around you , information is blood that keeps you alive

But you should not rely on only one source of information

Neither being too informed is good

Rule 3#

Speak Up, Speak Out

Speak up , speak up when you don't like something...the one at the other end might even don't know that you don't like it. Be straight forward and courteous also at the same time.

Speaking up is not at all bad manner...but half heatedly listening or doing something is.

At times, we just keep quiet and allow things to happen. But then the rule should be spoken up.

 Read following article which helps understand what problems we unnecessarily put ourselves onto when we choose not to speak out.

http://www.forbes.com/2010/11/10/bullying-conflict-approval-forbes-woman-leadership-polite.html