Seven Ways to Succeed as a Project Manager

• Learn to use project management tools effectively As you will see in Lessons 10, "Choosing Project Management Software," and 11, "A Sampling of Popular Programs," such a variety of wondrous project managing software tools exist today that it is foolhardy to proceed in a project of any type of complexity without having a rudimentary understanding of available software tools, if not an intermediate to advanced understanding of them. Project management tools today can be of such enormous aid that they can mean the difference between a project succeeding or failing.

• Be able to give and receive criticism Giving criticism effectively is not easy. There is a fine line between upsetting a team member's day and offering constructive feedback that will help the team member and help the project. Likewise, the ability to receive criticism is crucial for project managers.
  
  Tip: As the old saying goes, it is easy to avoid criticism: Say nothing, do nothing, and be nothing. If you are going to move mountains, you are going to have to accept a little flack.
  
  
• Be receptive to new procedures You don't know everything, and thank goodness. Team members, other project managers, and those who authorize the project to begin with can provide valuable input, including new directions and new procedures. Be open to them, because you just might find a way to slash $20,000 and three months off of your project cost.
  
  
• Manage your time well Speaking of time, if you personally are not organized, dawdle on low-level issues, and find yourself perpetually racing the clock, how are you going to manage your project, a project team, and achieve the desired outcome on time and on budget? My earlier book in this series, The 10-Minute Guide to Time Management will help you enormously in this area.
  
  
• Be effective at conducting meetings Meetings are a necessary evil in the event of completing projects, with the exception of solo projects. A good short text on this topic is Breakthrough Business Meetings by Robert Levasseur. This book covers the fundamentals of meetings in a succinct, enjoyable manner, and can make any project manager an effective meeting manager in relatively short order.
  
  
• Hone your decision-making skills As a project manager you won't have the luxury of sitting on the fence for very long in relation to issues crucial to the success of your project. Moreover, your staff looks to you for yes, no, left, and right decisions. If you waffle here and there, you are giving the signal that you are not really in control. As with other things in project management, decision-making is a skill that can be learned. However, the chances are high that you already have the decision-making capability that you need. It is why you were chosen to manage this project to begin with. It is also why you have been able to achieve what you have in your career up to this point.
  
  Tip: Trusting yourself is a vital component to effective project management.
  
  
• Maintain a sense of humor Stuff is going to go wrong, things are going to happen out of the blue, the weird and the wonderful are going to pass your way. You have to maintain a sense of humor so that you don't do damage to your health, to your team, to your organization, and to the project itself. Sometimes, not always, the best response to a breakdown is to simply let out a good laugh. Take a walk, stretch, renew yourself, and then come back and figure out what you are going to do next. Colin Powell, in his book My American Journey, remarked that in almost all circumstances, "things will look better in the morning."

Ignoring useless information aids memory: study

I have been suspecting this for a long time and now seems like there is an explanation for this. Ironically, I ran across of this information while browsing through useless information. This may also mean that if you are reading this entry – you are wasting your time, but anyways here is goes:

Filtering out useless information can help people increase their capacity to remember what is really important, researchers said on Wednesday. Scientists at the University of Oregon in the United States have demonstrated that awareness, or visual working memory, does not depend on extra storage space in the brain but on an ability to ignore what is irrelevant.

Full article is here:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051123/hl_nm/science_brain_dc;_ylt=ApkWWU8e8bPPIi96M3nJa78DW7oF;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl

2005 JavaOne Conference Speaker Awards Announced

Great Presentations: 2005 JavaOne Conference Speaker Awards Announced

Complexity; Software Architecture

This is a very much beaten up topic and often a cause of confusion. Software Architect is not totally unlike a traditional, structural Architect. I was biking to work today by a construction site; the guys were running around creating a foundation for a new high-rise. Before actual construction had ever begun, somebody had to come up with the vision, plan, process and prove of concept or model. There is nothing knew to it, every other industry does the same: electronics engineers, car designers etc. If house is build according to that plan and has problems – we know who is to blame.

Only a small fraction of software projects are successful. While there are many causes for this, in many cases the reason is lack of vision, experience, proven technical design (architecture) and prototype. Most people would be extremely frustrated if somebody would sell them a house which was not thought out before hand. It’s kind if ironic that we don’t have this high level of standard for the software. Many software projects are way more expensive then an average house.

I was reading a second edition of Code Complete by Steve McConnell and it’s got a chapter on Common Software Metaphors. Good metaphors are very useful for understanding better new problems and in our case learn to produce better quality software.

Here a very good description of the Software Architect role. Surprisingly (or ironically) it comes from Microsoft Solution Framework Agility slides.

The software architect’s main goal is to ensure success of the project by designing the foundations of the application. This includes defining both the organizational structure of the application and the physical structure of its deployment. In these endeavors, the architect’s goal is to reduce complexity by dividing the system into clean and simple partitions. The resulting architecture is extremely important because it not only dictates how the system will be built going forward, but also establishes whether the application will exhibit the many traits that are essential for a successful project. These include its usability, whether it is reliable and maintainable, whether it meets performance and security standards, and whether it can be evolved easily in the face of changing requirements.

I think complexity is the keyword here.

Market Share for Top Servers Across All Domains August 1995 - November 2005

The above digram is taken from http://news.netcraft.com/. This is really amazing: Apache has a pretty much steady growth from 1996 up to today