10 Reasons Your Team Hates You

Mike Figliuolo of thoughtLEADERS, LLC says workers often are less happy with their bosses than they let on. "If you don't start fixing some of these behaviors, you might end up with a mutiny on your hands," he writes. Here's Mike's list of 10 obstacles to a happy team.

1. You Don't Prioritize - If everything is important, the team can't focus on critical tasks.
   The Fix: Force yourself to rank each task, dividing them evenly between high medium, and low. Honor that list.
   
   
2. You Treat Them Like Employees - If you know nothing about your team as people, they know it.
   The fix: Take the time to learn some details. No faking this one.
   
   
3. You Don't Fight For Them - Then you don't stand up for people, you lose their trust.
   The Fix: Get someone that raise they deserve. Get that cool new project approved. Let them know.
   
   
4. You Don't Model Balance - You say weekends are precious for families, then bombard them with email on Sunday afternoon.
   The Fix: Take a day off -- or learn how to do "delayed send" so your messages won't go out until Monday morning.
   
   
5. You Never Relax - Negative or stressful energy transfers to others.
   The Fix: Let them know you're human. Laugh, when appropriate.
   
   
6. You Micromanage - They have no room to make decisions on their own.
   The Fix: Pick a few low risk projects; commit to doing nothing unless being asked for help.
   
   
7. You're A Suck-up - This shows a lack of spine -- and could mean you expect the same from them.
   The Fix: Try kicking up, and kissing down.
   
   
8. You Treat Them Like Mushrooms - In the dark, fed manure.
   The Fix: Share information within reason. You aren't 007.
   
   
9. You Don't Get Your Hands Dirty - You're great at assigning work. Doing work? Not so much.
   The Fix: Pick a smaller project and do it yourself.
   
   
10. You're Indecisive - Flip-flopping is not leadership.
    The Fix: Acknowledge you might make a mistake, but move ahead.
    

To read more from Mike, visit thoughtLEADERS, LLC.

The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs

This list of "7 Lessons from a Marketing Genius" was created by Carmine Gallo, author of The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs: How to Be Insanely Great in Front of Any Audience.



Plan in analog

1. Jobs prepares presentations in the world of pen and paper. He brainstorms, sketches and draws on whiteboards.
2. Exact messages are decided on for new products, and used consistently across all platforms: presentations, Web sites, advertisements, press releases, and even the banners than are unfurled after Jobs' keynote.

Create Twitter-friendly Headlines

1. Can you describe your product or service in 140 characters? Jobs offers a headline, or description, for every product; each fits in a Twitter post.
2. Introducing the MacBook Air in January, 2008, he said, "The world's thinnest notebook." More information was available, but you already knew a lot.

Introduce the Antagonist

1. In every classic story, the hero fights the villain. The same holds true for a Steve Jobs presentation.
2. Before he introduced the famous "1984" ad, Jobs said, "IBM wants it all." Apple would be the only company to stand in its way. A villain allows the audience to rally around the hero -- you, your ideas and your product.

Stick to the Rule of Three

1. The human brain can absorb three or four chunks of information at any one time. Too much information, people won't remember a thing. Every Steve Jobs presentation is divided into three parts.
2. On September 9, 2009, Jobs returned after a medical leave. He had three things to discuss: iPhone, iTunes and iPods.

Strive for Simplicity

1. Apple chief design architect Jonathan Ive said Apple's products eliminate clutter. The same philosophy applies to Apple's marketing and sales material.
2. Most of Steve Jobs' slides are visuals -- photographs or images. When are there words, they are astonishingly sparse. Steve Jobs tells the Apple story. The slides compliment the story.

Reveal a "Holy Smokes" Moment

1. People forget words and actions, but not how you made them feel. Jobs creates water-cooler moments that everyone talks about later. These show stoppers are completely scripted
2. Jobs unveiled the MacBook Air at Macworld 2008 by removing the computer from an inter-office envelope. Everyone who saw it, or read about it, remembered it.

Sell Dreams, Not Products

1. Great leaders cultivate a sense of mission among their employees and customers. Jobs says he wants to put a "dent in the universe." True evangelists are driven by a zeal to create new experiences.
2. Jobs, launching the iPod: "In our own small way we're going to make the world a better place." Most people saw a music player, Jobs saw a tool to enrich lives. Great products matter, but passion, enthusiasm and emotion will set you apart.

From: CIO Insight

Google aims for faster Web downloads with SPDY protocol

By Mikael Ricknäs | Nov 17, 2009 | ComputerWorld

Google is hoping to make Web pages download up to twice as quickly using SPDY, a new application-layer protocol it's experimenting with, the company said in a blog post.

It wants to improve on the performance of using HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) by minimizing latency. For the protocol to work, the browser and the web server have to be upgraded, but changes to Web pages are not needed, according to Google.

Google's lab tests of SPDY show an improvement in page load times compared to HTTP of between 27 percent and 60 percent, and between 39 percent and 55 percent when using SSL (Secure Sockets Layer), it said.

The company still needs to do a lot of work to evaluate the performance of SPDY in real-world conditions, the blog post said.

Google conducted the tests by downloading 25 of the "top 100" web sites ten times each over simulated home network connections, using a prototype Google Chrome browser and a Web server that it has developed.

SPDY uses a number of techniques to speed Web downloads, including allowing many concurrent HTTP requests across a single TCP session, prioritizing the requests, and using compression to reduce the number of packets and overall amount of data sent.

Google doesn't want to start from scratch with SPDY. The protocol still uses HTTP headers, but it overrides other parts of the protocol, such as connection management and data transfer formats.

"That Google is trying to improve download speeds is great, and the numbers are very promising," said Måns Jonasson, a web developer at IIS, which is responsible for the top-level Swedish Internet domain, .se.

For something like SPDY to work everyone has to be on board. The protocol won't become a success unless it's supported in both Internet Explorer and Firefox, according to Jonasson. It might be able to convince Mozilla to implement the protocol in Firefox, but convincing Microsoft will be difficult, he said.

"Microsoft seems to hate everything Google does," said Jonasson.

The source code for the prototype Google Chrome browser is available for download. The code for the server will be released as open source in the near future, it said.

That Google is opening up the code is good, but it also needs to approach standards organization IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force), Jonasson said.

Development efforts on other protocols to speed Web downloads, such as SCTP (Stream Control Transmission Protocol) and SST (Structured Stream Transport), have seen little activity in recent years.

Cloud computing: Simply SaaS renamed?

Is cloud computing just a renaming of SaaS (software as a service) in today's buzzword-prone IT landscape? After all, both involve accessing applications over the Internet, with those applications generally residing on third-party servers.

But industry executives cited subtle differences recently at the SIAA (Software & Information Industry Association) OnDemand 2009 conference in the US, during a panel session pertaining to cloud computing, business models, and the enterprise.

Panelists spoke of the cloud and SaaS as separate entities. Treb Ryan, CEO of cloud infrastructure provider OpSource, for example, stressed that "service levels of what we've seen in the cloud so far are far worse than [we have] seen from any SaaS provider."

Asked the differences between SaaS and cloud computing, Ryan and IBM's Dave Mitchell, director of strategy and emerging business for ISV and developer relations, cited nuanced differences.

"Some people view SaaS as a layer within cloud computing," Mitchell said. He also noted, "[SaaS is] really about delivering an application on a subscription model over the Internet."

"When you talk about cloud computing, cloud computing has to have significant real attributes around scalability and elasticity," said Mitchell. Not all SaaS solutions have the kind of elasticity associated with cloud computing, he said.

"Cloud as been largely defined as cloud infrastructure in the current market," featuring elasticity and offered by a vendor such as Amazon, Ryan said. A truly SaaS program, such as Salesforce or WebEx, is "designed to provide business applications within the cloud," said Ryan. Facebook is a social networking application in the cloud, he added.

"In terms of what is cloud and what is SaaS, in my opinion the big picture [is] who cares," said Tien Tzuo, founder and CEO of online billing services provider Zuora. The Internet is transformational and everyone is trying to figure out what it all means and take advantage of the global network, Tzuo said.

Getting to grips with cloud IT

Panelists also discussed key drivers of application services in the cloud.

"For all of the economic advantages and business advantages to what's going on in cloud and SaaS, we believe the real driving factor that's driving adoption of these platforms is really a generation of users entering the workforce who spent their entire [lives] on the Internet," said Ryan.

Great SaaS companies, said Mitchell, are separated from others through an efficient marketing and sales force, making customers part of the development process and focusing on renewals.

"You get the best ideas from users," he said.

Customer service is critical for SaaS providers, said Sanjay Popli, vice president of corporate strategy at LiveOps, which provides cloud-based contact center services. Customers, Popli said, "expect significant upgrades and changes on a regular basis."

"If you lower the entry barriers [via SaaS], remember, you're also lowering the exit barriers," he cautioned.

Earlier at the conference Thursday, Lars Dalgaard, founder and CEO of SuccessFactors, touted his company's efforts in SaaS. The company, which has 5.4 million users, offers on-demand applications to align businesses to strategies and seek maximum business results.

SuccessFactors has been built over the Web. "A lot of companies still are not comfortable with that, but that's really how we've driven it," Dalgaard said.

SaaS still has a way to grow, but "not too long from now, people aren't going to buy software any other way," said Dalgaard.

"It's a great market to be in SaaS right now. It's for real," he said.

SaaS vendors can win over customers with honesty

InfoWorld (US)

Popular Web 2.0 apps drive collaboration for enterprises

By John Brand, research director, Hydrasight: | Oct 30, 2009

About a third of enterprises already have enterprise Web 2.0 in place as collaborative tools in their respective companies, while many are seeing increased interest in new tools, research from IT industry analyst research firm Hydrasigh suggest.

The Singapore specific results reveal that there is just as much commitment and confusion around enterprise web 2.0 relative to other respondents. Though the country specific data in this particular study is scant, Singapore-based respondents revealed trends and thinking that are generally consistent with other Hydrasight research findings.

Specifically, organizations are fairly evenly split in thinking between believing that enterprise web 2.0 is more hype than reality, and that it is a must-have at some point. While the general feeling and approach of Singapore-based organizations is relatively consistent, Hydrasight also notes that differences do apply.

Consistent with other prior Hydrasight research, Singapore based organizations placed a higher emphasis on the knowledge management aspects of enterprise web 2.0 relative to Australian-based organizations. Hydrasight notes that Australian based organizations consistently tend to be considerably more cynical, simplistic and primarily driven by basic collaboration, information and records management requirements over those based in Singapore.

Singapore-based respondents also indicated that they have yet to implement enterprise web 2.0—but have a desire to do so. The differences in thinking may help to explain why Singapore-based respondents are slower in adopting the technology. Hydrasight observes that business case development and measuring the anticipated benefits of enterprise web 2.0 remains a barrier to adoption. By focusing on knowledge management aspects of the technology, Singapore-based respondents may be failing to convince the business of the anticipated benefits.

Data visualization also had greater appeal for Singapore-based respondents relative to other participants. Again, the sample is extremely small in this particular study. However, the alignment to other Hydrasight research suggests this is also a consistent difference with Singapore-based companies. Ultimately, Hydrasight observes that Singapore-based organizations have an enthusiasm and expectation of technology capabilities that is at the optimistic end of the scale. However, the business benefits remain hard to identify and to communicate to the business.

Social analytics rated poorly for adoption, again, indicating that organizations have yet to understand how best to use social analytics and the potential negative view it has in relation to personal privacy. This is somewhat ironic though as Singapore has traditionally been overly-optimistic with technical capabilities. This is one area where we would have expected to see more interest. Hydrasight expects that the low level of stated interest in social analytics is that it does (potentially) impinge on the freedoms and liberties of employees. It therefore can become viewed as a constraining technology, rather than an enabler.

Singapore based respondents cited challenges with technical complexity and the lack of maturity around enterprise web 2.0. This suggests that those organizations may have already had early experiences with the technology (based on their general enthusiasm as described previously) but have so far had little success in implementing it. Hydrasight observes that the successful adoption of enterprise web 2.0 is heavily dependent on the maturity of change management processes and practices within the organisation.

This includes social/cultural change but also change management from a technology perspective. Because enterprise web 2.0 is a continually evolving and adapting technology solution, organizations must be operationally excellent to be able manage the continuous (and relentless) process of technical and functional improvement demanded by users.

Ultimately, Hydrasight observes that, while Singapore-based organizations remain generally more optimistic with newer technologies than those in other Asia Pacific regions, enterprise web 2.0 represents a significant challenge based on the lack of clarity of business expectations and the inability to efficiently manage the technology. Hydrasight believes enterprise web 2.0 will therefore take some time to develop and mature in Singapore-based markets and that vendors will have an opportunity to exploit the immaturity of the market for at least the next 2-5 years.

via: www.enterpriseinnovation.net

Open Source: What Companies Are Deploying Now

Finding One
Linux Use is Rising
Of those using Linux, 67% commonly or ubiqutiously use it as a server operating system, but only 23% do as a desktop operating system.

Finding Two
Open Source Software is Becoming Entrenched in Small to Mid-size Businesses
Open source is not synonymous with Linux, and its use isn't limited to the Apache Web server and the Firefox browser. Many SMBs have deployed other kinds of open source software, including database systems, middleware and programming languages. This year, companies are spending, on average, more than half a million dollars to install and maintain open source systems, widening open source adoption to include virtualization software, wikis and business intelligence applications. But perhaps the most significant sign of the depth of open source adoption is that nearly half of SMBs have adopted a full-fledged open source architecture. Open source is not just a trend; it's a permanent presence.

Finding Three
Low Cost, Low Perceived Risk is Driving Open Source Adoption
For many SMBs, the opportunity for free or low-cost software is proving irresistable; very few say open source is proving to be a disappointment there. But the growth in open source would stall if the risks outweighed the gains. So it's important that the main concerns with open source aren't issues like quality, security, stability or legal challenges—problems over which CIOs have little control—but more manageable concerns like compatibility, user acceptance, vendor support and training. And since the experience with open source is proving so positive, vendor support is no longer as great an issue as it has been in previous years. There are no major obstacles to derail the Open Source Express.

Finding Four
Open Source is Redefining What it Means to Work in IT
Open source isn't just a kind of software, but a way of working. And developers and IT staff at small and mid-size companies are embracing that aspect of open source, too. Nearly all CIOs at SMBs allow their staff to participate in open source projects; many also follow the open source model to develop their own software. In general, however, SMBs don't collaborate with other companies in their industry to develop open source applications that might serve them all. That percentage will rise if larger, industry-leading corporations begin to do s0, and ask their partners and Tier 2 and Tier 3 suppliers to take part.

[via : http://www.cioinsight.com/]

How to Market the PMO within your Organization

As I meet with people involved with their Company?s Project Management Office Organization, I consistently hear questions about how to acquire buy-in from within the Enterprise for the services provided by the PMO. The frequency of this question indicates to me that other PMO Leaders might be seeking this answer. In the content that follows, I will present an approach that you may find useful. My intent is to help you get started. I do welcome your feedback.

At the risk of sounding philosophical, I suggest to you that every business, profit and non-profit alike, are unique in how they approach project delivery. Sure they may follow standard methods and policies and sure they may have credentialed and talented project management professionals leading the important project initiatives. We need to focus first on why your business is a business in the first place. It is usually because the business model is unique and/or mature enough to maintain a competitive advantage within the market space your company sells and/or provides services too. Current market conditions have a way of changing, influencing, dictating projects and people within any business model. We all know that when the market conditions are great, project work and the people working them, seem to have less stress than the opposite market model where market conditions are so tight that new product and service revenue opportunities have become significantly less frequent ? this is where we are today.

So how does a Project Management Office or a Project Office market their services in today?s business market environment? I suggest the answer lies in internal customer need for any help they can obtain towards improving project delivery and reducing costs associated with delivery time or what I label as the ?PMO Throughput Model?.

A PMO or Project Office must fall into one of two categories in terms of defining its mission. The categories are the Throughput and Cost Models. The ?PMO Throughput Model? focuses on raising visibility to the project delivery community so that awareness for bottlenecks can be more readily foreseen while simultaneously searching for intra/inter project acceleration opportunities to move projects forward ahead of the project plan. By pursuing the ?PMO Throughput Model? the PMO or Project Office can focus attention on those projects worthy of their help for the benefit of all.

The ?PMO Cost Model? emphasizes compliance to project budget. Typically within this model, any cost correlation to external project dependencies should been planned for in the beginning or provided for within change management during the course of the project.

Thus, who are the customers for the PMO/Project Office? Everyone! The PMO/Project Office Management and Staff are generally recognized as the experts for various project management components within the organization. If you are a member of the PMO/Project Office, how are you marketing your particular service today? Is there a common need? If not, there should be. I suggest you start by creating a market channel for yourself. But how and with what, becomes the next question?

Customers of the PMO/Project Office typically include the following people

1. Project Managers
2. Project Team Members
3. Project Sponsors
4. Project Stakeholders
5. Business Unit Leaders
6. Program Managers
7. Project Support Staff (DBAs, Operations Personnel, etc)
8. Executive Team

In creating a market channel for PMO/Project Office services, my general guidance is to initially provide consistent tactical information regarding the most important project work that involves as much of the target work force that the PMO/Project Office supports.

This information may be a simple monthly project portfolio report of important reported projects that reflects their current health in terms of color, Green for good, Yellow for caution and Red for Jeopardy. By disclosing the state of projects on a regular basis, all of the customers of the PMO/Project Office will begin to use this tool as a way to navigate their work around delivery opportunities and/or delivery threats to their work. As the Project Portfolio is reported over time, visibility for project opportunities to take action becomes more apparent to the project team and those outside the project team. Project progress that is visible to the overall workforce brings about pressure that the PMO can channel their services to help project teams take advantage of or steer clear of, thus raising the need of the PMO/Project Office.

Now I know I am oversimplifying how to set up this initial step, but I am assuming many of you are doing this today or at least have an idea how to proceed with this step. Some projects will deliver ahead of plan and some will fail. In fact, the Standish Group has reported that 70% of all IT projects fail in any given year. So a PMO/Project Office that has been organized to facilitate project delivery (?PMO Throughput Model?) should have a natural internal market to support. Let?s look deeper into how to support and nurture the internal business PMO market.

Figure 1 below illustrates that in most business, there is a strategy to enable the organization or the enterprise. This strategy is usually bound by time such as a fiscal year. These business strategies are usually dependent upon the supply side of the business to achieve the identified strategies. The supply side of the organization forms project teams to work on service/product areas that are part of the business strategy. As you review Figure 1, moving from the top left and down to the bottom, back up through the right side of the diagram, a continuous loop of feedback information is presented to the strategy owners ? those from the business side of the organization and those from the supply side of the organization. This process is normally monthly in the beginning and is required to support the ?PMO Throughput Model? effectively. How does this affect the Project Manager?

If you are a Project Manager, I am confident you can relate to what I am about to state. Project Management is a lonely job. Friendships among project managers and their teammates are often outside the lines of specific work relationships. After all, aren?t you informally measuring each other and protecting yourself from unwanted criticism? Protecting your job and your reputation. Friends don?t worry about these types of things. They help each other. If you have ever been involved in the final implementation stages of project delivery, you know what I am talking about. Nobody is looking to make friends! Everyone working the project is trying to complete their work so they can get out of the way and relax a little. Sure, teams can seem like everyone is a friend, but just wait. If project plans go awry, you can bet everyone remaining in the project will receive some share of the blame. So where can a PMO/Project Office help? A PMO/Project Office can be the best friend of a project team.

This can be accomplished with experienced mentors that project teams trust and have faith in, free from fear of negative management reaction to job performance. In this manner, the PMO/Project Office gains value in the eyes of the project team as a resource that can help out in disparate times.

If you are a project sponsor on a failing project, you may feel like you are very exposed for criticism. Here again, a PMO/Project Office through effective Sponsor Mentoring and Training can provide excellent insight ahead of potential problems. After all, where does a Sponsor go when their project is in trouble if not the PMO/Project Office? A PMO/Project Office can add significant value by educating Project Sponsors how to be a Sponsor. This should include training on roles and responsibilities in their relationship with the project delivery team.

The same beliefs are true for Project Stakeholders as was for Project Sponsors. Enabling the Project Manager to set role and responsibility expectations for Project Stakeholders can help reduce significant expectation gaps later on in the project. A PMO/Project Office can head some of this by providing Stakeholder training as a base course in project management.

Finally, the PMO/Project Office is now ready to begin raising visibility among Project Managers. The benefit of this effort from the PMO to the Project Managers is many. It is certain the Project Manager community will learn what is acceptable in reporting. It will be very important to them if they and their peers are reviewed in a common setting where project health is openly shared. This visibility will often motivate the Project Manager who was seen as ?Red? last time the group met to work hard to change their status towards ?Green?. In Figure 2, a three-step process is illustrated as a model of raising project health visibility. In implementing this model, the PMO starts with a group of selected Project Managers working to clean up data inconsistencies in reporting and project artifacts that may affect the risk perspective of their projects (Step 1). Depending upon the size of the group, 10-25 Project Managers, a PMO can raise the visibility of the collected projects within the Portfolio for members of Management (Step 2). In Step 2, Management Leaders must be able to defend why projects are performing in the manner they are to their internal business customers. Usually, these internal business customers come together to form a Governance Board or a Steering Committee (Step 3) to oversee shifting business needs that may impact the order of project work and resource assignments within the portfolio of projects. As the PMO establishes the Governance Board, several ad hoc meetings may take place to help mature the Governance Board processes before a regular routine is established.

The Governance Board will make adjustments over the course of time. These adjustments represent impact to the development plans for the business year. These changes must be reflected in project work and that involves the PMO. Output from Step 3 loops back to the project teams and thus you have a continuous loop of feedback for the PMO to oversee.

In summary, let?s reflect on what has been stated. So far we have discussed to build a PMO market within your organization, you will need some combination (or all) of the following elements:

1. Utilize a PMO Throughput Model that reflects project delivery status to the general workforce as a means to raise Risk visibility (Opportunities and Threats to delivery).
2. Provide Project Management Mentors through the PMO to the Project. Community to help less experienced Project Teams.
3. Project Sponsor and Stakeholder Training.
4. Conduct regular Project Manager Meetings in groups of approximately 10-25 to discuss overall project statuses from recent project reportings to the Project Portfolio (color-coded for measured Project Health).
5. Establish a Governance Board or Steering Committee of internal business leaders.
6. Meet with individually with Business Unit Leaders to review how their portion of the Project Portfolio is proceeding. In these conferences, you will learn where the PMO might add additional value.

There are many other techniques that can help you with building and implementing your marketing plan for the PMO and its services. Every PMO/Project Office should always be able to answer the question ?How does the PMO or Project Office define its value proposition?? This answer will most often come from the results of how well your marketing plan is implemented. If you do this well, the PMO or Project Office will find its special niche within the organization forever.

[By Steve Rolins, PMP, Chief Project Strategist, EPM Solutions, Inc. Steve@PMOUSA.com]