"Don't worry about people stealing an idea. If it's original, you will have to ram it down their throats." - Howard Aiken
Lately I’ve been fascinated by a book, Creativity in Business, based on the famous course in the Stanford University MBA program by that name. In fact I’ve been carrying it with me non-stop for the past couple of months and practicing the numerous creativity exercises recommended at every opportunity.
While I find most business books repetitive, every chapter of this book is full of fascinating stories, examples, useful insights and exercises to help the reader master each important concept. But the reason I’m particularly fascinated by this book is because it makes me feel less weird about the crazy stuff I do in workshops with my clients.
The topics and exercises in Creativity in Business aren’t the sort of thing that most people expect to find in a corporate environment. Included are discussions of quantum mechanics, Rupert Sheldrake’s morphogenic fields, Nobel prize winner Ilya Prigogine’s dissipative structures theory, as well as topics like visualization, drawing mandalas, and even the use of tarot cards. I’m a physicist by education, so I was delighted to run across references to some of my favorite modern physics theories. I’ve used many of these approaches in my own work – I am a big fan of self-organizing systems (see previous article on ProjectConnections.com), I make a collage as part of my annual business planning process, and I once found a missing piece of equipment using tarot cards. But I’d feel a bit sheepish about admitting this in a crowd of engineers or senior executives. And I certainly never expected to find a collection of such edgy new age thinking in a business book from a Stanford University professor! In fact, if it hadn’t been written by professors of a prestigious university like Stanford I think most people would regard this book with a great deal of skepticism. Many probably still will. But I strongly believe that Creativity in Business, written over 20 years ago by Michael Ray and Rochelle Myers, contains many valuable tools for project leaders.
The core message in this book is that there is a “creative force” or “essence” available to each and every individual that can dramatically improve business results. But that force can only be unleashed when we dare to trust our intuition and risk the derision of the obsessively left-brained, analytical thinkers among us, including our own inner critic.
Every company I consult with considers innovation an essential ingredient in success. Creativity is the root of innovation, and this book is a very practical guide to increasing creativity in ourselves and others. But it requires a suspension of disbelief, and a willingness to venture beyond what can be explained by deductive reasoning alone – a belief in the possibility that you can know something without knowing how you know it.
The Nine Creativity Heuristics
The book is structured around nine “heuristics” - experiential strategies intended to awaken the reader to their “creative source”. Here are a few of my favorites. I hope you’ll read the whole book to explore all nine.
#1 - Surrender
This is the first – and my favorite – of the strategies. It is summarized as “If at first you don’t succeed . . . surrender.” Now, I’m a control freak, and the last person people who know me well would expect to advocate surrendering. It sounds like giving up, and I hate even the thought of that. Me, I’ll wrestle a crocodile to the ground if it’s gonna increase the chances of project success, but surrender?
In this case “surrender” means to trust in the creative process and continue on the journey without knowing how every detail will unfold or how it will turn out. It’s the opposite of precise planning and strong-willed determination. After years of project management discipline, including consciously forcing events down a particular path and to a particular outcome, surrender doesn’t come easily to me. But as a result of this book I’ve been experimenting with this approach in my business leadership workshops. Naturally I create elaborate plans for each workshop, and clients frequently demand a detailed timeline. But I am totally prepared to depart from those plans to respond to serendipity, opportunities, and even mistakes. If actual events depart from my plan I ask “What does this make possible?” Rather than trying to push the river, I notice where it wants to flow and then go there instead.
I can imagine the howling of those responsible for delivering a specific set of requirements by a fixed date. Don’t worry, this tool isn’t necessarily for those situations (although I’m open to the possibility it could help). It’s for when you need creative breakthroughs, new ideas, and the wisdom to tackle seemingly impossible challenges.
Fear kills creativity. Learning to trust your creative essence, and the creative process itself, will give you the confidence to begin a task that initially seems very difficult, or even impossible. Of course as I stand in the midst of 45 people from 16 different countries ready to surrender to what’s possible beyond my detailed plans I most definitely feel fear. My inner critic goes on loudspeaker, jabbering away about the likelihood of making a complete fool of myself, and how the entire workshop could very well end up a complete disaster. Rather than yielding to that, I imagine that I’m leaping off a cliff and learning to fly on the way down. There’s no turning back, and I just have to trust that I’ll grow wings. Once I commit 100% to the creative process – once I surrender - I am free to do my best work, and invite others to contribute their very best as well. Somehow magic happens. It just works.
It’s difficult to put this into a Gantt chart! It’s the old “and then a miracle occurs” task in project scheduling jokes. It’s scary, but it works. Every time. Weird, huh?
#2 - Replace the “Voice of Judgment” (VOJ) with Curiosity
Plenty of research has proven that negative people seem smarter. And don’t we all feel pressure to appear smarter to assure our position in the cosmic pecking order? Well, bad news – negativity is the enemy of creativity! I was consulting with an engineering group at a Fortune 500 company a while back when one director told this story: “My first month here I had lots of creative ideas and I shared them openly. People discouraged me. My second month here I had a few new ideas and shared them with a couple of colleagues. They told me why they weren’t feasible. My third month here I had no ideas.”
If you are in a typical work environment you’ll be able to relate very well to this story. How many ideas would you suggest if you knew that the first response would be discouragement from your peers? And it’s not just discouraging comments that diminish creativity. In her article “How to Kill Creativity”, Harvard Business School professor Teresa Amabile has said that working towards perfectly legitimate business imperatives such as productivity and control is also systematically crushing creativity. In short, she recommends that the first step toward increased creativity is to stop killing ideas.
Sadly we don’t even need discouraging colleagues to kill our creativity – our own VOJ will happily oblige. Creativity in Business recommends an all-out attack on the barriers to our own creativity, including our own inner critic, judgment from others, and the collective judgment of social norms of our organizations. I’ve found that simply becoming aware of the stream of negative judgment emanating from others, my environment and myself has given me more courage to persist in my creativity. Creativity is messy. The creative process is risky, and we’re all naturally hesitant to risk failure, or appearing silly. But being uncomfortable is simply part of the process of being creative. Focus instead on being intensely curious about what will unfold once the volume of the VOJ is turned way down.
#3 - Pay Attention
In my experience the one word that characterizes much of human behavior in the workplace is “unconscious”. Human beings easily fall into routines that our powerful brains efficiently relegate to our unconscious mind. Unfortunately being efficient isn’t the only - or most important - goal of work. Being effective is far more desirable. “Pay Attention” is about noticing what is happening on a conscious level so that we can become aware of the ocean of opportunities in which we’re swimming. It’s also about listening deeply to others for other perspectives that we lack.
“Listening generously” has been an important part of every workshop I teach since I first learned of the importance of listening from Barbara Fittipaldi, president of the Center for New Futures, in 1995. Barbara helped me realize that, smart as I was, I knew only a fraction of what could be known about the universe. If I want access to the 99.9999999% that I don’t know I have to listen with an intensity most people use only when speaking. That kind of listening has been transformative for my projects. I personally feel it has been the secret to success in my most challenging projects.
Creativity in Business suggests a number of intriguing exercises to develop our ability to “pay attention”, including gazing into the eyes of a colleague for 2 minutes without blinking, making up imaginary translations to Egyptian hieroglyphics, and visualizing your head as the world. Yes, really.
Yes, There’s More!
If you haven’t given up on all of this creativity mumbo jumbo after reading about the first three heuristics, there are six more you can explore, which I paraphrase as:
· Ask “Stupid” Questions
· Do Only What’s Easy, Effortless, and Enjoyable
· Don’t Think About It
· Yes or No - Make a Decision
· Be Who You Are
· Practice Detachment
I do hope that you’ll be curious enough to not only read this book, but also do as I have and practice each of the exercises it contains. Personally I’ve found it useful to have the paperback with me when I run into someone who shrinks from some creative experience. For example, in the middle of one of the many crazy workshop exercises I wave it about and shout “I know you might feel a little silly doing this, but the exercises in THIS book from Stanford University are even weirder!” Although difficult to explain, the impact of this book on my work has been profound. I would even say “magical” . . . but that would be so weird! Let me know what you experience.
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Announcing the Next EL SIG Meeting,February 16 [Robert Lasater]
The next meeting of the Engineering Leadership SIG will be held on February 16 in SAP Building 2 (3412 Hillview Avenue, Palo Alto, CA), starting at 7:00 PM. Doors open at 6:30 PM. The main presentation will be a talk by EL SIG co-chair Sam Hahn on Collaborative Interactions
Title:
The Atomic Structure of Collaborative Interactions
WIIFM:
Please come with some (1-3) instances of when a delegation or collaboration went sour, or didn't turn out as expected. What pain was experienced? What could've prevented that pain?
Speaker:
During the day, Sam is mild-mannered VP of Engineering at eGain Communications Corporation (since late 1997). His path to eGain traces back to Purisma, Siebel, Sales.com, DocuMagix, ESL, and TRW.
For the rest of his active life, Sam is an aficionado and disciple of Doug Engelbart's vision of scalable collaboration for planetary sustainability, and is a self-admitted collaborapologist - someone who studies collaboration (blog site: collaborapologist.com). Since meeting Doug and his team in the early 90's, Sam has been studying why teams work well, why teams don't work well, applying those ideas, and has been attempting to create a framework of collaboration that can eventually replace Robert's Rules of Order. The "ASCI" ideas are a key component of this new framework.
Talk Details:
Sam will introduce a model for collaborative interactions and propose that it be a basis upon which you deepen appreciation for the components of interaction among people and team members. The state model suggests insights that can be leveraged for how to conduct teamwork more smoothly, with fewer speed bumps, less pain, and more celebration
Snacks and Beverage Sponsor:
Nearsoft
Ongoing Management Sponsor:
Project Connections is our EL SIG Management Sponsor.
ProjectConnections.com is dedicated to practically and affordably supporting individuals as they do their jobs day-to-day and helping them grow their management abilities and careers. We also provide management development and support resources to organizations, through group subscriptions, methodology content licenses, on-demand virtual training programs, virtual coaching, and more - all to help managers improve how critical project work gets done, and to help grow the capabilities of everyone on their staffs and teams.
Attendance Verification Available :
Please ask an SDForum registration personnel at the event if you need an attendance verification form for professional development and certification purpose.
Agenda:
6:15 - 6:30 Early arrival recommended!
6:30 - 7:00 Registration / Checkin
6:30 - 7:00 Enjoy cheese, fruit, snacks, pizza, soda and networking
6:31 - 6:59 Engineering Leadership Peer-2-Peer Roundtable
7:00 - 7:10 Introduction and opening announcements
7:10 - 8:20 Keynote and Q&A
8:20 - 8:30 Closing announcements
8:30 - 8:45 Informal networking and followup Q&A
8:45 - 8:50 Clean up
8:50 - 9:00 Clear the room & have a safe trip home!
Cost: $20 at the door for non-SDForum members, No charge for SDForum members
BOOK SWAP - Every month! Bring books to share.
JOB SWAP - Check out our Yahoo! Group here: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/SDForum_EL_SIG_JobSwap/
PEER-to-PEER Roundtable - Every month! Join us to share insights and advice with peers each month prior to the 7 PM event.
Title:
The Atomic Structure of Collaborative Interactions
WIIFM:
Please come with some (1-3) instances of when a delegation or collaboration went sour, or didn't turn out as expected. What pain was experienced? What could've prevented that pain?
Speaker:
During the day, Sam is mild-mannered VP of Engineering at eGain Communications Corporation (since late 1997). His path to eGain traces back to Purisma, Siebel, Sales.com, DocuMagix, ESL, and TRW.
For the rest of his active life, Sam is an aficionado and disciple of Doug Engelbart's vision of scalable collaboration for planetary sustainability, and is a self-admitted collaborapologist - someone who studies collaboration (blog site: collaborapologist.com). Since meeting Doug and his team in the early 90's, Sam has been studying why teams work well, why teams don't work well, applying those ideas, and has been attempting to create a framework of collaboration that can eventually replace Robert's Rules of Order. The "ASCI" ideas are a key component of this new framework.
Talk Details:
Sam will introduce a model for collaborative interactions and propose that it be a basis upon which you deepen appreciation for the components of interaction among people and team members. The state model suggests insights that can be leveraged for how to conduct teamwork more smoothly, with fewer speed bumps, less pain, and more celebration
Snacks and Beverage Sponsor:
Nearsoft
Ongoing Management Sponsor:
Project Connections is our EL SIG Management Sponsor.
ProjectConnections.com is dedicated to practically and affordably supporting individuals as they do their jobs day-to-day and helping them grow their management abilities and careers. We also provide management development and support resources to organizations, through group subscriptions, methodology content licenses, on-demand virtual training programs, virtual coaching, and more - all to help managers improve how critical project work gets done, and to help grow the capabilities of everyone on their staffs and teams.
Attendance Verification Available :
Please ask an SDForum registration personnel at the event if you need an attendance verification form for professional development and certification purpose.
Agenda:
6:15 - 6:30 Early arrival recommended!
6:30 - 7:00 Registration / Checkin
6:30 - 7:00 Enjoy cheese, fruit, snacks, pizza, soda and networking
6:31 - 6:59 Engineering Leadership Peer-2-Peer Roundtable
7:00 - 7:10 Introduction and opening announcements
7:10 - 8:20 Keynote and Q&A
8:20 - 8:30 Closing announcements
8:30 - 8:45 Informal networking and followup Q&A
8:45 - 8:50 Clean up
8:50 - 9:00 Clear the room & have a safe trip home!
Cost: $20 at the door for non-SDForum members, No charge for SDForum members
BOOK SWAP - Every month! Bring books to share.
JOB SWAP - Check out our Yahoo! Group here: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/SDForum_EL_SIG_JobSwap/
PEER-to-PEER Roundtable - Every month! Join us to share insights and advice with peers each month prior to the 7 PM event.
Thursday, January 12, 2012
No EL SIG Event This Month (January 2012)
SVForum has scheduled an open house to celebrate multiple achievements:
* new CEO - Chris Gill
* joining with SVASE (Silicon Valley Academy of Startup Entrepreneurs)
* Welcome party for SVASE members
This event will occur on January 19, which is normally our "3rd Thursday" night for ELSIG. Since this is an event that is important to SVForum (and therefore ELSIG), we recommend that our membership attend this Open House in force, rather than diluting the ELSIG community across 2 separate events on the same night. This would also allow ELSIG chairs and core team to attend the open house and meet and welcome our new SVASE partners and members, rather than be conspicuously absent - we want SVASE members to join ELSIG! We want to support these SVForum developments.
Please therefore note that we will NOT hold our regular monthly meeting on January 19 at SAP, and we encourage all ELSIG attendees (and potential attendees) to attend this SVForum open house.
Location:
SVForum
Sobrato Center for Nonprofits-Redwood Shores
350 Twin Dolphin Drive, Large Conference Room
Redwood City, CA 94065
Please register (members of SVForum and SVASE, only): http://www.svforum.org/welcome-party
Space is limited to 250 people, so I recommend you register early!
See you there! We're back in February with the regular program!
* new CEO - Chris Gill
* joining with SVASE (Silicon Valley Academy of Startup Entrepreneurs)
* Welcome party for SVASE members
This event will occur on January 19, which is normally our "3rd Thursday" night for ELSIG. Since this is an event that is important to SVForum (and therefore ELSIG), we recommend that our membership attend this Open House in force, rather than diluting the ELSIG community across 2 separate events on the same night. This would also allow ELSIG chairs and core team to attend the open house and meet and welcome our new SVASE partners and members, rather than be conspicuously absent - we want SVASE members to join ELSIG! We want to support these SVForum developments.
Please therefore note that we will NOT hold our regular monthly meeting on January 19 at SAP, and we encourage all ELSIG attendees (and potential attendees) to attend this SVForum open house.
Location:
SVForum
Sobrato Center for Nonprofits-Redwood Shores
350 Twin Dolphin Drive, Large Conference Room
Redwood City, CA 94065
Please register (members of SVForum and SVASE, only): http://www.svforum.org/welcome-party
Space is limited to 250 people, so I recommend you register early!
See you there! We're back in February with the regular program!
Thursday, December 8, 2011
EL SIG Holiday Party, December 15 [Robert Lasater]
EL SIG will be hosting a Holiday Party on December 15 in SAP Building 2 (3412 Hillview Avenue, Palo Alto, CA). Doors open at 6:30 PM.
Another year is coming to an end. As we look back on another year rich in relationships and EL SIG event memories we'd like to invite you to join us for our last event of 2012. Our fabulous December event sponsors, Project Connections, Agile Learning Labs, and Tom Delora, have contributed to cover the cost of our holiday party and EL SIG Community Feedback Exercise.
Ongoing Management Sponsor:
Project Connections is our EL SIG Management Sponsor.
ProjectConnections.com is dedicated to practically and affordably supporting individuals as they do their jobs day-to-day and helping them grow their management abilities and careers. We also provide management development and support resources to organizations, through group subscriptions, methodology content licenses, on-demand virtual training programs, virtual coaching, and more - all to help managers improve how critical project work gets done, and to help grow the capabilities of everyone on their staffs and teams.
Attendance Verification Available:
Please ask an SDForum registration personnel at the event if you need an attendance verification form for professional development and certification purpose.
Cost: $20 at the door for non-SDForum members, No charge for SDForum members
For more details and to sign up, visit the Meetup.com page for this event.
BOOK SWAP - Every month! Bring books to share.
JOB SWAP - Check out our Yahoo! Group here: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/SDForum_EL_SIG_JobSwap/
PEER-to-PEER Roundtable - Every month! Join us to share insights and advice with peers each month prior to the 7 PM event.
Another year is coming to an end. As we look back on another year rich in relationships and EL SIG event memories we'd like to invite you to join us for our last event of 2012. Our fabulous December event sponsors, Project Connections, Agile Learning Labs, and Tom Delora, have contributed to cover the cost of our holiday party and EL SIG Community Feedback Exercise.
Ongoing Management Sponsor:
Project Connections is our EL SIG Management Sponsor.
ProjectConnections.com is dedicated to practically and affordably supporting individuals as they do their jobs day-to-day and helping them grow their management abilities and careers. We also provide management development and support resources to organizations, through group subscriptions, methodology content licenses, on-demand virtual training programs, virtual coaching, and more - all to help managers improve how critical project work gets done, and to help grow the capabilities of everyone on their staffs and teams.
Attendance Verification Available:
Please ask an SDForum registration personnel at the event if you need an attendance verification form for professional development and certification purpose.
Cost: $20 at the door for non-SDForum members, No charge for SDForum members
For more details and to sign up, visit the Meetup.com page for this event.
BOOK SWAP - Every month! Bring books to share.
JOB SWAP - Check out our Yahoo! Group here: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/SDForum_EL_SIG_JobSwap/
PEER-to-PEER Roundtable - Every month! Join us to share insights and advice with peers each month prior to the 7 PM event.
Sunday, October 30, 2011
Announcing the Next EL SIG Meeting, November 17 [Robert Lasater]
The next meeting of the Engineering Leadership SIG will be held on November 17 in SAP Building 2 (3412 Hillview Avenue, Palo Alto, CA), starting at 7:00 PM. Doors open at 6:30 PM. The main presentation will be a panel discussion on tools for program, resource and portfolio management.
TITLE: Exploration of Tools for Program, Resource and Portfolio Management
Have you struggled in your company to manage all the projects hitting your development teams? Are you desperate to learn about tools capable of managing your company's entire project portfolio and the internal resources that can be deployed against those projects?
Join us to hear from a panel of seasoned practitioners who can discuss the tools they have found and the benefits those tools are delivering to their teams and their organizations. Also, how they're still deficient - where they could be better - how they change the challenges and bring the next need into focus.
Discussion points include:
* RESOURCING: shared resources, resource management, dozens of developers with hundreds of tasks coming at them weekly
* PRIORITIZING: prioritizing tasks and projects, focusing on "doing the right things, not just on doing things right"
* SCHEDULING: interdependencies among projects and shared requirements, managing boundaries between teams, synchronizing and sequencing releases, planning, scheduling, and estimating for scores of products / hundreds of custom projects
* MANAGING EXECUTION: having visibility into which projects and tasks are getting resources - and which ones are not, meeting schedule commitments, metrics , predictability
PANELISTS:
* Saood Shah heads professional services for GraceNote / Sony, where he uses Salesforce to manage resource contention across lots of customer projects.
* Shawn McKay heads the GraceNote / Sony PMO, where she has deployed Microsoft Project Server to manage lots of developers working on product development.
* Ketan Bhatia heads the Yahoo! PMO, where he relies on Mariner to manage projects and resources.
BIOGRAPHIES OF PANELISTS:
Saood Shah is the Director of Professional Services at Gracenote, where he is focused on delivering solution architecture, project management, and technical support services to 60+ customer projects at any given time. His team uses Salesforce.com to manage Accounts, Contacts, Issues, and Milestones, stay on top of active project status, and analyze metrics and trends from historical data.
Saood has over 10 years of software industry experience leading Services and Support organizations, selling Services deals, and managing PS implementations and operations. Prior to Gracenote, Saood led the Client Services organization at Adap.tv, and was responsible for managing the Technical Services and Program Management teams. In this position, he focused on providing timely, quality support to drive adoption and retention, and ultimately, grow Adap.tv’s customer base.
Shawn McKay is the Director of the Program Management Office at Gracenote, a wholly owned subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America. Gracenote’s Mission Statement is to help people discover and enjoy digital media. The Gracenote PMO is responsible for Process and Tools Development and Leadership, Resource and Portfolio Management, Project Governance, and Core and Extended Team Leadership and Facilitation. The Gracenote PMO uses both “waterfall-lite” and “Agile Scrum-lite” techniques to manage all new product development at Gracenote.
Shawn has over 15 years of project and program management experience at various bay area companies, including Charles Schwab, Autodesk, AFC/Tellabs, and most recently, Gracenote. Before settling on SW program management as a career, she also worked for over a decade in careers ranging from non-profits to finance to investment banking. Shawn holds an MBA degree, a PMP certification, and a Bachelor’s degree from the Wharton School of Business.
Ketan Bhatia has over 15 years of experience in management of large scale, global web product releases and software implementations. Ketan works for Yahoo! as a Director of Product Program Management and is known as a trusted advisor with strong negotiation skills and for being accomplished in defining strategic direction for the business. He has held numerous positions in Healthcare IT including Kaiser Permanente and Blue Shield of California.
Ketan has an MBA from Temple University, Philadelphia.
Snacks and Bevevrage Sponsor:
Brian Lawley, 280Group - The 280 Group™ provides Product Marketing and Product Management Consultants, Contra ctors, Training, Books,Certifi cation, and Templates to help companies worldwideto define, launch and market breakthrough new products.ponsor:
Ongoing Management Sponsor:
Project Connections is our EL SIG Management Sponsor.
ProjectConnections.com is dedicated to practically and affordably supporting individuals as they do their jobs day-to-day and helping them grow their management abilities and careers. We also provide management development and support resources to organizations, through group subscriptions, methodology content licenses, on-demand virtual training programs, virtual coaching, and more - all to help managers improve how critical project work gets done, and to help grow the capabilities of everyone on their staffs and teams.
Attendance Verification Available :
Please ask an SDForum registration personnel at the event if you need an attendance verification form for professional development and certification purpose.
Agenda
6:15 - 6:30 Early arrival recommended!
6:30 - 7:00 Registration / Checkin
6:30 - 7:00 Enjoy cheese, fruit, snacks, pizza, soda and networking
6:31 - 6:59 Engineering Leadership Peer-2-Peer Roundtable
7:00 - 7:10 Introduction and opening announcements
7:10 - 8:20 Keynote and Q&A
8:20 - 8:30 Closing announcements
8:30 - 8:45 Informal networking and followup Q&A
8:45 - 8:50 Clean up
8:50 - 9:00 Clear the room & have a safe trip home!
Cost: $20 at the door for non-SDForum members, No charge for SDForum members
For more details and to sign up, visit the Meetup.com page for this event.
BOOK SWAP - Every month! Bring books to share.
JOB SWAP - Check out our Yahoo! Group here: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/SDForum_EL_SIG_JobSwap/
PEER-to-PEER Roundtable - Every month! Join us to share insights and advice with peers each month prior to the 7 PM event.
TITLE: Exploration of Tools for Program, Resource and Portfolio Management
Have you struggled in your company to manage all the projects hitting your development teams? Are you desperate to learn about tools capable of managing your company's entire project portfolio and the internal resources that can be deployed against those projects?
Join us to hear from a panel of seasoned practitioners who can discuss the tools they have found and the benefits those tools are delivering to their teams and their organizations. Also, how they're still deficient - where they could be better - how they change the challenges and bring the next need into focus.
Discussion points include:
* RESOURCING: shared resources, resource management, dozens of developers with hundreds of tasks coming at them weekly
* PRIORITIZING: prioritizing tasks and projects, focusing on "doing the right things, not just on doing things right"
* SCHEDULING: interdependencies among projects and shared requirements, managing boundaries between teams, synchronizing and sequencing releases, planning, scheduling, and estimating for scores of products / hundreds of custom projects
* MANAGING EXECUTION: having visibility into which projects and tasks are getting resources - and which ones are not, meeting schedule commitments, metrics , predictability
PANELISTS:
* Saood Shah heads professional services for GraceNote / Sony, where he uses Salesforce to manage resource contention across lots of customer projects.
* Shawn McKay heads the GraceNote / Sony PMO, where she has deployed Microsoft Project Server to manage lots of developers working on product development.
* Ketan Bhatia heads the Yahoo! PMO, where he relies on Mariner to manage projects and resources.
BIOGRAPHIES OF PANELISTS:
Saood Shah is the Director of Professional Services at Gracenote, where he is focused on delivering solution architecture, project management, and technical support services to 60+ customer projects at any given time. His team uses Salesforce.com to manage Accounts, Contacts, Issues, and Milestones, stay on top of active project status, and analyze metrics and trends from historical data.
Saood has over 10 years of software industry experience leading Services and Support organizations, selling Services deals, and managing PS implementations and operations. Prior to Gracenote, Saood led the Client Services organization at Adap.tv, and was responsible for managing the Technical Services and Program Management teams. In this position, he focused on providing timely, quality support to drive adoption and retention, and ultimately, grow Adap.tv’s customer base.
Shawn McKay is the Director of the Program Management Office at Gracenote, a wholly owned subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America. Gracenote’s Mission Statement is to help people discover and enjoy digital media. The Gracenote PMO is responsible for Process and Tools Development and Leadership, Resource and Portfolio Management, Project Governance, and Core and Extended Team Leadership and Facilitation. The Gracenote PMO uses both “waterfall-lite” and “Agile Scrum-lite” techniques to manage all new product development at Gracenote.
Shawn has over 15 years of project and program management experience at various bay area companies, including Charles Schwab, Autodesk, AFC/Tellabs, and most recently, Gracenote. Before settling on SW program management as a career, she also worked for over a decade in careers ranging from non-profits to finance to investment banking. Shawn holds an MBA degree, a PMP certification, and a Bachelor’s degree from the Wharton School of Business.
Ketan Bhatia has over 15 years of experience in management of large scale, global web product releases and software implementations. Ketan works for Yahoo! as a Director of Product Program Management and is known as a trusted advisor with strong negotiation skills and for being accomplished in defining strategic direction for the business. He has held numerous positions in Healthcare IT including Kaiser Permanente and Blue Shield of California.
Ketan has an MBA from Temple University, Philadelphia.
Snacks and Bevevrage Sponsor:
Brian Lawley, 280Group - The 280 Group™ provides Product Marketing and Product Management Consultants, Contra ctors, Training, Books,Certifi cation, and Templates to help companies worldwideto define, launch and market breakthrough new products.ponsor:
Ongoing Management Sponsor:
Project Connections is our EL SIG Management Sponsor.
ProjectConnections.com is dedicated to practically and affordably supporting individuals as they do their jobs day-to-day and helping them grow their management abilities and careers. We also provide management development and support resources to organizations, through group subscriptions, methodology content licenses, on-demand virtual training programs, virtual coaching, and more - all to help managers improve how critical project work gets done, and to help grow the capabilities of everyone on their staffs and teams.
Attendance Verification Available :
Please ask an SDForum registration personnel at the event if you need an attendance verification form for professional development and certification purpose.
Agenda
6:15 - 6:30 Early arrival recommended!
6:30 - 7:00 Registration / Checkin
6:30 - 7:00 Enjoy cheese, fruit, snacks, pizza, soda and networking
6:31 - 6:59 Engineering Leadership Peer-2-Peer Roundtable
7:00 - 7:10 Introduction and opening announcements
7:10 - 8:20 Keynote and Q&A
8:20 - 8:30 Closing announcements
8:30 - 8:45 Informal networking and followup Q&A
8:45 - 8:50 Clean up
8:50 - 9:00 Clear the room & have a safe trip home!
Cost: $20 at the door for non-SDForum members, No charge for SDForum members
For more details and to sign up, visit the Meetup.com page for this event.
BOOK SWAP - Every month! Bring books to share.
JOB SWAP - Check out our Yahoo! Group here: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/SDForum_EL_SIG_JobSwap/
PEER-to-PEER Roundtable - Every month! Join us to share insights and advice with peers each month prior to the 7 PM event.
Monday, October 24, 2011
"Display Defective" [Michael Emens]
This week, as if to keep our long romance “alive”, my car throws me a new dash board warning:
“display defective”
I laughed out loud. My first thoughts were that they’ve really over engineered this car to have the display tell me that the display itself is about to die. Over the course of this short drive I concluded this was likely done by design and not over design:
1. The display itself is important for so many other messages that replacing it soon was a good idea
2. The system reports on every other aspect of the car so not including the display itself would seem like an incomplete design.
Now that I solved this very important mystery of life I could not resist letting my mind wander on similar instances of apparent over design or over thinking something. Project metrics came to mind and how they are often undervalued or overvalued on a project.
Most anyone who’s been in product development for a while has seen it; companies often make the mistake of paying too little or too much attention to project metrics. Both can kill a project (or career) so the question is “where’s the sweet spot”. As with such topics there are lots of really good books out there on what metrics you can collect and how to “read the tea leaves” of those metrics, however I’ve found that few books effectively address:
1. What metrics should be collected for this particular project?
2. Of those collected what should be reported on?
3. What triggers and plans are in place to detect and correct an undesirable trend?
4. If undesirable trends are not being acted on then should those be discontinued?
I have personally found that management (me included) often make the mistake of prescribing “key metrics” to the project teams because the latest book said these are good metrics to follow. Such management direction is also done without buy in from the team members and not regularly reviewed for project impact and relevancy.
In my next blog entry I will explore this topic further and welcome your comments and suggestions.
________________________________________________________________________
With a BS in Computer Science from Chapman University, Michael has spent 20+ years in software development doing: coding, research, development, customer facing, system architecture, team building, and early stage (pre-funded) startups. Michael was first at Rockwell International designing software for an embedded systems radar system, image processing, and navigation systems. Between 1993 and 2001 Michael was a consulting software developer for several companies including Sony, Nortel, IBM, and Motorola. In 2000 and 2001 Michael co-founded two separate startups specializing in voice recognition and web technologies. Michael has over 24 software and web technology patents and is now a Project Manager for Agile software projects. Feel free to engage Michael via email: MichaelEmens@gmail.com
“display defective”
I laughed out loud. My first thoughts were that they’ve really over engineered this car to have the display tell me that the display itself is about to die. Over the course of this short drive I concluded this was likely done by design and not over design:
1. The display itself is important for so many other messages that replacing it soon was a good idea
2. The system reports on every other aspect of the car so not including the display itself would seem like an incomplete design.
Now that I solved this very important mystery of life I could not resist letting my mind wander on similar instances of apparent over design or over thinking something. Project metrics came to mind and how they are often undervalued or overvalued on a project.
Most anyone who’s been in product development for a while has seen it; companies often make the mistake of paying too little or too much attention to project metrics. Both can kill a project (or career) so the question is “where’s the sweet spot”. As with such topics there are lots of really good books out there on what metrics you can collect and how to “read the tea leaves” of those metrics, however I’ve found that few books effectively address:
1. What metrics should be collected for this particular project?
2. Of those collected what should be reported on?
3. What triggers and plans are in place to detect and correct an undesirable trend?
4. If undesirable trends are not being acted on then should those be discontinued?
I have personally found that management (me included) often make the mistake of prescribing “key metrics” to the project teams because the latest book said these are good metrics to follow. Such management direction is also done without buy in from the team members and not regularly reviewed for project impact and relevancy.
In my next blog entry I will explore this topic further and welcome your comments and suggestions.
________________________________________________________________________
With a BS in Computer Science from Chapman University, Michael has spent 20+ years in software development doing: coding, research, development, customer facing, system architecture, team building, and early stage (pre-funded) startups. Michael was first at Rockwell International designing software for an embedded systems radar system, image processing, and navigation systems. Between 1993 and 2001 Michael was a consulting software developer for several companies including Sony, Nortel, IBM, and Motorola. In 2000 and 2001 Michael co-founded two separate startups specializing in voice recognition and web technologies. Michael has over 24 software and web technology patents and is now a Project Manager for Agile software projects. Feel free to engage Michael via email: MichaelEmens@gmail.com
Thursday, October 6, 2011
Announcing the Next EL SIG Meeting, October 20 [Robert Lasater]
The next meeting of the Engineering Leadership SIG will be held on Thursday, October 20, in the Baltic/Caribbean rooms in SAP Building 2 (3412 Hillview Avenue, Palo Alto, CA), starting at 7:00 PM. Doors open at 6:30 PM. Title of the main presentation, "Trust everybody, but cut the cards - The Secrets to Building Sustainable Teams", by Will Read - Director of Engineering, Stageit Corp.
Software engineers in the Bay Area have their choice of jobs, and leaving one company for another is often a very lucrative move. It can be challenging to make new hires without having worry about turnover too. In this talk, I will show you how to create an environment that provides intrinsic value to its developers. I will also share what it ...means to be part of a team instead of a collection of individuals occupying the same physical space. In the end, it will all come down to making the right hires and setting the tone for a place that is safe to be honest and creative.
Will Read leads the company’s developers who code and maintain the systems behind the StageIt platform. Prior to joining StageIt, Will worked at Pivotal Labs, a consultancy known for its high-quality software development practices. While at Pivotal, Will helped match the physical and digital music inventories for BestBuy, provide personalized "Who To Follow" suggestions to users for Twitter, and deliver real-time, localized, personalized deals to users on desktop and mobile devices for Groupon. He began his career working for various start-ups including Jobvite, a leading job referral web service. Will holds a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from Purdue University.
Agenda:
6:15 - 6:30 Early arrival recommended!
6:30 - 7:00 Registration / Checkin
6:30 - 7:00 Enjoy cheese, fruit, snacks, pizza, soda and networking
6:31 - 6:59 Engineering Leadership Peer-2-Peer Roundtable
7:00 - 7:10 Introduction and opening announcements
7:10 - 8:20 Keynote and Q&A
8:20 - 8:30 Closing announcements
8:30 - 8:45 Informal networking and followup Q&A
8:45 - 8:50 Clean up
8:50 - 9:00 Clear the room & have a safe trip home!
BOOK SWAP - Every month! Bring books to share.
PEER-to-PEER Roundtable - Every month! Join us to share insights and advice with peers each month prior to the 7 PM event.
Cost:
$20 at the door for non-SVForum members; no charge for SVForum members
Read more at http://www.meetup.com/EL-SIG/events/23882921/
Software engineers in the Bay Area have their choice of jobs, and leaving one company for another is often a very lucrative move. It can be challenging to make new hires without having worry about turnover too. In this talk, I will show you how to create an environment that provides intrinsic value to its developers. I will also share what it ...means to be part of a team instead of a collection of individuals occupying the same physical space. In the end, it will all come down to making the right hires and setting the tone for a place that is safe to be honest and creative.
Will Read leads the company’s developers who code and maintain the systems behind the StageIt platform. Prior to joining StageIt, Will worked at Pivotal Labs, a consultancy known for its high-quality software development practices. While at Pivotal, Will helped match the physical and digital music inventories for BestBuy, provide personalized "Who To Follow" suggestions to users for Twitter, and deliver real-time, localized, personalized deals to users on desktop and mobile devices for Groupon. He began his career working for various start-ups including Jobvite, a leading job referral web service. Will holds a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from Purdue University.
Agenda:
6:15 - 6:30 Early arrival recommended!
6:30 - 7:00 Registration / Checkin
6:30 - 7:00 Enjoy cheese, fruit, snacks, pizza, soda and networking
6:31 - 6:59 Engineering Leadership Peer-2-Peer Roundtable
7:00 - 7:10 Introduction and opening announcements
7:10 - 8:20 Keynote and Q&A
8:20 - 8:30 Closing announcements
8:30 - 8:45 Informal networking and followup Q&A
8:45 - 8:50 Clean up
8:50 - 9:00 Clear the room & have a safe trip home!
BOOK SWAP - Every month! Bring books to share.
PEER-to-PEER Roundtable - Every month! Join us to share insights and advice with peers each month prior to the 7 PM event.
Cost:
$20 at the door for non-SVForum members; no charge for SVForum members
Read more at http://www.meetup.com/EL-SIG/events/23882921/
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