My new favourite software

Not long ago, I did a round up of online project management software.  Since then I have discovered a great team collaboration tool.

It is not strictly project management software, but it is a great asset to any team collaborating on a small, informal project.  It is, effectively, an online Kanban board.  But it is a marvelously well executed one.

The software is Trello – available at https://trello.com/.  It was developed by Fog Creek Software.

Trello

It allows multiple users to be invited to contribute in real time to a shared workspace that seems to be hugely configurable. The two best ways to assess its capabilities are to watch the video on the homepage, and then to set up a free account.

You can set up as many boards (one is illustrated) as you want, and invite collaborators.  On each board, you can set up your lists (three shown). Then you add cards to each list and drag and drop them from one list to the next as the tack progresses.  Each card can also store a great wealth of information in the form of files, pictures, comments, checklists, labels and voting.

Pricing: It’s Free

I don’t know what their future pricing plans are, but when I set up an account, it was all free – all you can eat and no advertising.  I assumed they are figuring they will win some fans and some serious users by then – and they deserve to.  But no; here’s what they say on their blog:

Are you going to screw me later and make me pay for something I got hooked on?

No. You have my word that we will not give away our *free* service to
you as a trick and then later make you pay. First, we make good money
on our existing suite of products already, so we have no temptation to
change our minds. Also, that sort of trickery would cost us all of
the goodwill we’ve built up over the last 11 years of running this
company.

We do eventually plan to monetize the service when we have a bazillion
users, but it won’t be by charging you for what we’re offering now.
Think freemium, or app store models…

It is easy to use and very practical.  And, the iPhone/iPad app is great too.  I don’t know if there are apps for other mobile devices, but as long as the have a browser, you’re there.

Agile?

Finally, if you are into agile (which I’m not), here is what they say:

Is there a way to generate story points to use with my Agile team?

Kind of. I guess story points are an estimate of how long something will take to do. This falls into the idea of a custom property for a card that you’d like to have meaning. For example, if your Trello board was a Sales Leads board, you might want all your cards to have potential deal size $$$ on them. Right now we don’t want to cram Trello into any specific use, so something like this would have to be provided by a custom plugin (see the API question).

The “so what?”

I don’t know if Trello is any use to you, but my guess is it could be and my advice is to check it out straight away – it’s free: what’s to lose?  I love it.

Brilliant Project Leader Interview with Guerrilla Project Management

A couple of weeks ago I was interviewed by Samad Aidane for his excellent Guerrilla Project Management blog.  Samad was interviewing me about my latest book, Brilliant Project Leader.

Samad was a thoughtful and patient interviewer who had prepared well.  I enjoyed my conversation with him immensely and I think his work really shows in the resulting interview.

He has also edited the sound file carefully, so although it is a long interview, it is easy to listen to.

Extremely Wide Ranging

In the 45 minutes or so we were talking, Samad covered a phenomenally wide range of topics.  Here are some of the questions we discuss:

• What was the background for writing “Brilliant Project Leader” and what do you tell people who think there is already a successful book called “Brilliant Project Manager” so why book about Brilliant Project Leader?
• Mike’s first rule of teams: you get the team you deserve. What do you mean by this principle?
• You identify 4 essential components for leading project teams: The individual, the plan, the team, and the communication. Give us a brief overview of these components.
• One of the many things I like about the book is how you provide the essential leadership skills for each stage of the project. You talk about three key leadership skills for the definition stage: Managing upward, stakeholder management, and negotiation. Why are these skills critical for this stage?
• To help with negotiation, you provide the FARB Process for structuring arguments. Can you explain the process?
• You recommend to plan in milestones that will allow us to mark and celebrate success at regular and frequent intervals. Why is this important planning principle regardless of the methodology one uses?
• Securing commitment from our project team members can be extremely challenging and at times frustrating. Talk about your recommendation for how we can effectively secure commitment from our team members and especially about the “Jiminy Cricket Effect”
• Controlling changes to the original scope can generate intense emotional conflict. You describe the wrong way and the right way in dealing with requests for change. Can you give us your recommendations on the most effective way of dealing with changes to project scope?
• Communicating setbacks is one of the most challenging aspects of leading projects, especially for first time project managers. You recommend an effective approach for delivering bad news. What’s your approach?
• You emphasize the importance of giving feedback and you provide an effective way of having the conversation about feedback. Can you share with us your approach?
• You say that “In tough times, project management is not enough. People get scared and uncertain and need leadership to keep them working effectively” and you talk about two concepts: “structure of resistance” and “Timing and leadership”. Can you elaborate on these two concepts?
• I loved the Drama Triangle you describe in the section about project team leadership in tough times. Can you describe the Drama Triangle?
• I also loved the SCOPE process: the Five step process for mentally taking control of bad situations. Can you talk to us a little bit about this process?

Listen to the Interview at Guerrilla Project Management

The full interview is available for you to listen to – or download onto your portable device – at guerrillaprojectmanagement.com.

Team Creativity

How can you get a team to be more creative.  It takes all sorts, they say, but one sort is particularly valuable to creativity… as long as there are two of them.

Narcissists

Narcissists can be flamboyant, gregarious, even exhibitionist.  they range from charismatic and highly social individuals who can be charming and elegant, to people with narcissistic personality disorder, who show stunning grandiosity, demand attention, and are manipulative and quick to anger if they don’t receive the attention they demand.

Research at Cornell University, led by psychologist Jack Goncalo, working with Cornell Ph.D. student Sharon H. Kim and Stanford University Professor Francis J. Flynn, looked at how creative narcissists are.

Narcissists and Creativity

It is often believed that narcissists are highly creative, because their ideas are frequently adopted.  However, the researchers showed that this is not true and that narcissists are no more nor less creative than others.  They simply pitch their ideas better.

But…

If you have two narcissists on the team, then their natural competitiveness is disruptive in a good way, creating a highly creative atmosphere.  However, two narcissist is an ideal number, because if there are too many, the competitiveness over-rides the creativity, and can disrupt group processes so much that it becomes dysfunctional.

 

_________________

Resources

1. More information: Summary article in the Cornell Chronicle
2. The full facts: Original Paper hosted at the Cornell website (legitimate download)
3. How narcissistic are you? Online Narcissism Test

Second book on Project Management

The advance copies of Brilliant Project Leader arrived on Tuesday morning and they are looking excellent.

It will be published today, 17 November, and Amazon UK are promising availability from 23 November.

It has its own dedicated website at:

Brilliant Project Leader

“As with all Mike’s books, this provides a clear, concise and practical guide to project leadership.  This book has the ability to greatly enhance your effectiveness and capability as a project leader either through a few hours of reading or as a career reference guide.  It is a must read for all current or aspiring project leaders.”

Charles Vivian,
Head of Programme and Project Leadership,
Qedis – the UK’s #1 Management Consultancy to work for

Brilliant Project Leader is my second book about what is really my first love, professionally: Project Management.  It is entirely complementary to:

Risk Happens! Managing risk and avoiding failure in business projects

… which also has its own dedicated website at RiskHappens.co.uk.
Both websites have a large selection of free project and risk management templates
that you can download.

Fourth Book in the Brilliant Series

This is my fourth book in the Brilliant Series, two of which are in the Personal Development category, and two in Business.

I have a small dedicated website for each where you can look at the contents, review the books in the “Learn More” section,  and download the resources listed in the book.

Brilliant Business Books

• Brilliant Project Leader
• Brilliant Influence

Brilliant Personal Development Books

• Brilliant Time Management
• Brilliant Stress Management

More on Leadership and the Communication side of PM

My two Management Pocketbooks each contain relevant material for project managers:

• The Management Models Pocketbook
  contains models of leadership, motivation, team-working and getting things done, including the ultimate monitor and control process.  It is unusual in offering each model as its author described them, then interpreting and critiquing them.
• The Handling Resistance Pocketbook
  is essential reading for any PM who faces, will face or is worried you might face resistance during your project.  It offers a powerful model to interpret the resistance you get, and a vast array of techniques to counter it.

Falling off the Curve: Six Ways your Change Project can Fail

There are many different articulations of most models, and the Patterson-Connor Commitment Curve is no different.  What is different is that it is hard to be sure what the original looks like.

I like to read the original papers that present authors’ work in their own words, so I subscribe to a service called EBSCOhost that offers journal articles from a wide array of business journals. One of them is Training and Development, formally known as Training and Development Journal.  But sadly, when I select the article “Building Commitment to Organizational Change” by Daryl Connor and Robert Patterson, I get the message: “This database normally includes full text of articles available from this publication. However, this particular article is not included at the request of the rights holder.”

So I have to rely on third party representations.  Robert, Daryl, if you see this article, please do get in touch – I would love a copy of your original work.

I suppose that doesn’t matter, because I always feel free to modify a model according to my own experience and, judging by the variety of versions on the web, I am not alone.

The Original

Here is my version of what I believe to be the base model.

Patterson and Connor suggest a series of milestones along the process of change, that sit within three phases:

1. Preparation
2. Acceptance
3. Commitment

Modes of Failure

This model leads me to list six modes of failure, each arising from failure to achieve one of Patterson’s and Connor’s milestones.

Change projects fail when:

1. The promoting team fails to make meaningful contact with all of their stakeholders.  They do not engage them and properly consult, so failing to understand their needs, desires and expectations – setting themselves and their projects up for failure.
2. Having contacted stakeholders, change agents fail to create adequate awareness of the driving need for change or the real benefits of the selected solution .
3. Stakeholders may be aware of the change that is to take place, but fail to understand it fully – or worse, they misunderstand it.  This leads to scepticism, cynicism and rejection.
4. Stakeholders may understand the change, but they may not like it.  Negative perception may be illusory or real.  They may not like the change for spurious reasons linked to misunderstanding, emotional reasons linked to fear of change, or real reasons arising from genuine negative outcomes for them or for people they care about.
5. Despite positive perceptions, the change may be rejected prior to commitment.  This could be due to new constraints or priorities, or a failure of organisational will.
6. Adoption does not always lead to effective organisational change, where the new ways of working are institutionalised and made a “how things are”.  All sorts of failings – in the project and outside – can frustrate your ability to harvest real value from the change.

The “so what?”

The Patterson-Connor Commitment Curve is an excellent model of the stages of change.  However, for me, its greatest use is in understanding and predicting the modes of failure.  A lot of learning research shows we learn best from our failures, so I speculate that we may plan best when we identify failure modes and plan for them.  At the very least, this approach addresses planning fallacy (irrational belief that our plans are somehow “right”) head on!

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Building commitment to organizational change.
Conner, Daryl R.; Patterson, Robert W.
Training & Development Journal, Vol 36(4), Apr 1982, 18-30.

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