7 - Fishing Solution (Just saying....)

There are always those situations when the business might require  a solution to cater to one of their short-term goals, but as a consultant you need to make a call to analyze this requirement and make sure it's not going to be solution which is going to be in place for a short-time only and has to be completely redesigned later on again once new technology or business requirement changes, I call these "Fishing solutions" because it more or less like "Catch & Release fishing" , it's not as much fun in a business context.

6 - Best time for meetings (Just saying...)

Studies show that the more productive meetings are the ones which are held in the morning  simply because the participants can be done with the meeting and can go ahead with working on their daily tasks, rather than having to think about a meeting  later in the day and having to schedule other tasks around that meeting.

Some people say they want to focus on the key tasks that come up in the morning of the work day and hence prefer to do meetings later in the day. Well,  if they are key tasks shouldn't it require more focus, wouldn't it be wiser to get the meeting out of the way and then turn your absolute focus to those key tasks without having to break for a meeting later,  just saying...

5 - Own Agenda (Just saying...)

Don't get too stressed out when you know the client is acting is a way that doesn't seem quite right to what the project wants them to do, everyone have their own agenda that they are working towards, sooner or later they will get back on board because they will have to once they realize that the business's agenda is more important than theirs.  However just make sure that the project doesn't get completely derail off , because that's not going to help the project agenda,  just saying.....

4 - Good enough Users (Just saying...)

Those end-users who are happy with "good enough" to get the job done are the ones who move on much faster to other tasks which in turn makes them more productive and better "cost-per-task valuable employees" in the organization, just saying....

Line 'em up and Knock 'em down in 2015 !!

Go hard this year, in your next New Year celebration have a reason to party like crazy about a successful year just gone by !!

The below tips might  come in handy to make it count this year, all applies equally.

• Be agile, prepare yourself for change and be able to respond to it. This is crucial for personal survival as well as surviving and thriving in a business landscape.

• It’s all about the user, make the user experience fantastic and they’ll stick with you. Think CUSTOMER!!

• If you are looking for resources for what you want, go places looking for it, remember the more you stick at home and look for resources at your immediate vicinity, your competitors are all over the place grabbing the best one !! It’s called Globalresourcetrotting!!

• Up skill yourself on generalized skill and then target specialised skills.

• Make everything available on the web, open up yourself and your products to the world; the web is your market!!

• Dont always expect everything to happen under your feet, decentralise and get the best out of what you need. Remember a Ship that doesn’t sail too far off the shore doesn’t sail too far!! – A true entrepreneur should be able to delegate tasks and venture into new areas.

• Give out material that is relevant to your product, advertise intelligently, get away from the norms, get away from old school thinking....dare to do something new, something different.

• Learn from your own growth, if it has worked previously...go with it, don’t break the cycle, whether its growth or decline, you can’t change it, everything repeats itself in cycles.

• Network, network, network, people would only hire you when they know you. In a skills-for-hire economy, your network is how you find the opportunities. 

Last but not the least, BE A BABY! Yeah that’s right, studies found that babies learn at an exponential rate, simply because everything is new to them and they are curious about everything!! 

Start that off with yourself, question yourself, ask why, experience something new.... take a swing at life before it has one at you!!

All the best, make this YEAR really count!!

Happy New Year 2015 - Lets get started !!

Wishing all my readers the very best of everything in 2015 !!

 Make this year count, get started on doing everything that you've been putting off last year.

3 - Clean sheet consulting (Just saying...)

Sometimes when inheriting half-completed tasks from someone else who has left the office, it's easier to start off from scratch where you know it wouldn't take long to build the same thing from scratch. Simply because in the long-run it'll save you more time & effort from having to dig up the design to explain how & why the initial solution was done that way and in a worst case scenario if the solution falls over it's much more effort to rectify something you didn't put together, just saying.

2 - Just talking about data (Just saying...)

Have you been in those discussions where everyone is talking about how to capture data using various methods but not really about  the actual business decisions that the data can be used for ? Would have helped to also discuss the final outcome, just saying...

Just saying...

Here we go, my kick off  of a "Just saying... series", where I'll like to share my thoughts on a few things, for e.g. common sense, which is not very common these day not with all the educated pundits around, just saying...

1 - Information Cemetery (Just saying...)

Every time I come across stacks of paper and files on senior management desk, I feel that the load of information in which the next great business idea could be in, but unfortunately it's not laid out in a format that will help with a decision being made. Thats like a little "information cemetery" on a desk, just saying...

"Freeze the base" - Important of a Scope Baseline Plan

In most projects, one thing that generally hits the project manager hard is to define whats in the projects Scope and what’s not. This is by far one of the most important plans since it determines the work involved, the resources required, budget required for these resources, the final project deliverables and signoffs required to close the project. Given all these you need to make sure all the elements that make up a scope baseline are addressed at the earliest and communicated to the stakeholders of the project.

Drawing up a Scope Baseline.

The 3 most important documents that should be part of a Scope baseline are:

1. Work Breakdown Structure - The WBS defines each deliverable and further decomposes in deliverable into smaller work packages.
2. WBS Dictionary - The WBS Dictionary contains the actual detailed description of the work required, and is often a very detailed and technical description of each work package.
3. Scope Statement -The Project Scope Statement includes the product scope description and the project deliverable, and it also defines the product user acceptance criteria.

Once the deliverables are confirmed in the scope statement, they need to be developed into a work breakdown structure (WBS) of all the deliverables in the project. The scope baseline includes all the deliverables produced on the project, and therefore identifies all the work to be done. The following should form part of the scope baseline plan:

• All the activities and individual tasks that need to be done to achieve the deliverable identified.
• The resource required for each of the tasks identified. Likely resource constraints, their involvement and ability to execute each task in the available time frame.
• Part of the time management plan e.g. time required for the tasks identified.
• Estimated cost of resources for each tasks based on some notional unit of calculation.
• A complete schedule linking all tasks, resources and time estimates. With start and end dates clearly laid out.
• Identified dependant tasks and their involvement in the critical path.
• Setup a cost baseline which should include a time based budget as well, i.e. a milestone based budget gateway taking into account the cost of resources and cost of time taken to complete the tasks in the WBS dictionary.

With all the above in a scope baseline plan it’s easier to control the momentum of the projects progress.  However, there is always a likelihood that Scope changes are required as the project goes forward, that’s because not everything can be determined upfront, so educate your project sponsors of the likely area a scope creep could occur and always plan to keep some project budget available for these scope additions, after all, these could end up being project deliverables that are an absolute must to achieve the company’s objectives.

I’ll like to think that every Project is like a “Skier” sliding down a “base of snow“which can be thought of as the Scope, if you have a good frozen base, then you will most likely cruise through the project deliverables and close the project successfully, but if not, then get ready for a wobbly ride ahead !!

Hope this helps. Drop me your queries & comments on ssurenlk@msn.com