The week before Christmas

The sky outside my window is a uniform greyish-white. The road and pavements are damp with moisture from the fog and overnight dew, and the temperature barely claws its way above zero. There is little incentive to venture outside.

Inside, triggered by the thermostat, the central heating clicks on and the radiators warm up, meaning I stay toasty in my tracksuit bums and tee-shirt. The lights on the christmas tree glow and fade at regular intervals, bringing a cozy atmosphere to the living room. The cat is going whizzy, scampering from one room to the next in frenzied bursts, apparently also frustrated by the weather.

I'm bored. Or is that obvious?

There is such a thing as having too much holiday.

Moving into management

I remember the event as if it was yesterday, but I cannot remember when it occurred; at least 12 years ago, though. But it was one of the defining moments in my career, and to this day I still look back on that day, and wonder....

I had spent many months pondering my career path. In terms of my grade, there was little left on the ladder I was on. I was a Senior Systems Analyst or some other meaningless title, and there was now little chance of promotion. In addition, there was little of any substance left to learn in the job I had been doing for a number of years.

I finally decided that a move into management was the answer.

So one day, during a relative lull in activity, I left my little cube and walked into my manager's office.

"Vijay, I have decided to go into management," I told him.

He smiled and looked across his desk, on which were strewn small piles of papers. Even as he spoke, his desktop printer spewed still more pages of colourful spreadsheets. "Why would you want to do that?" he asked.

I briefly explained my situation. Then he sat back and sighed.

"You think I am a manager?" he asked rhetorically. "I am nothing but an administrator, a bureaucrat, a paper-pusher. I am not really managing anything".

Vijay went on to explain that he was accountable for all the work that his team did, but felt that he had no control over it. He was constantly asked by his boss for reports about project progress, budgets, plans for the next year, appraisals... the list went on and on. None of it did he find enjoyable.

As he spoke, I grew more and more disheartened. Was this all there was left for me? Where could I go now? What would I do?

Any of you who are already managers will recognise that either Vijay's view of his job was blinkered, or he was doing the wrong things.

I decided to put my technical skills to use in the contract market. I spent some time in the USA, then Portugal, before settling here in the UK, where a dozen years after that conversation in my manager's office, I had a similar conversation that proceeded somewhat differently.

"Q, Steve is leaving us," said my boss, John.

Steve was a project manager, to whom John assigned larger projects that needed dedicated management. Most of the work we did involved small tasks that the team leaders like myself could run.

"I want you to take over his position."

I was shocked. Firstly, there were more senior people than me on the team, to whom he could have offered the post. Secondly, I was a contractor, and favouring contractors over permanent staff was just not done. But, it turned out, he had already offered the job to the only permanent person who he felt might want it, and she turned it down. I accepted on the spot.

And there began my management career. I will never forget John for that offer - he could just as easily have got someone else in to do the job. But he gave me the oppotunity I needed to get my foot on that first rung of the ladder.

Vijay, I realise now, was doing the wrong things. He failed to recognise what management was all about - and it's not paperwork and writing reports.

John recognised that it's about people. About making a diverse group of people into a team, even if it's a temporary one, in order to achieve something bigger than any one of them individually, perhaps greater than the sum of all of them.

Management, done properly (can one do management?), can bring enormous rewards. There are various styles of management, and you will naturally fall into one, but consider this: management is about achieving things through others. It's about people. Never forget that.

Party time

Over the last few weeks, I have received invitations to a number of Christmas parties.

There was the official black tie company party at a swish country manor. I decided to take Mark Horstman's advice and had just one drink (well, actually it was two glasses of red wine, but that's the same as one beer, right?). I went home at 11:10, thoroughly bored because all my colleagues were drinking, dancing and partying like crazy, while I sat and chatted with those who either couldn't dance or weren't being asked to. Oh, well. Next time, I'll book a hotel room, and leave the car at home like everyone else did.

Then there was the team Christmas lunch at a local pub. The team has a long-running tradition of awarding prizes for the silliest saying of the year. There were some great candidates :
"It's a secret; I could tell you but I would have to kiss you", "Don't drown, you'll never want to swim again" and the winner "If I get fired, it will be a good reason to leave the company."

Another team tradition is the good old 'secret santa'. My present was one of the most thoughtful, relevant and humorous presents I have ever received. I don't know who got it for me, but whoever it was put a lot of thought and effort into it, and I am truly touched by it.

Another lunch was arranged for all the IT PMs in the company (which I couldn't make because of a Condor workshop), and an after-hours do was arranged for the Condor project team (which I missed due to a clash with the team one). I was invited to one by one of the agencies we use to recruit our contract workforce (which was held on Thursday evening and I missed that due to working late on my presentation to a Condor workshop the next day).

It's good to spend some quality social time with people you work with, and I particularly enjoy that aspect of the festive season.

Happy Holidays, everyone.

Management blogging community - tagged.

When I hear the words 'tagging' or 'tags', I think about the tags added to the search strings in web pages for tracking the success of online marketing campaigns. I hadn't considered the childhood game of tag, until I read Wayne Turmel's post about the blogging equivalent.

I'm 'IT' apparently.

Well, here are 5 things about me that few people know:

1) Despite leading a very active life as a child (jumping off the garage roof, riding bikes with no hands, etc), I have never broken a bone, nor have I ever spent a night in hospital. The worst injury I have ever sustained required 6 stitches, the result of catching my ankle on a broken milk bottle at the age of about 11. Let's hope my luck continues, eh?

2) I was once a member of Toastmasters, the best club in the world for helping people with their public speaking, thinking and listening skills. I achieved Competent Toastmaster status, but still have unfinished business there.

3) Apart from my current location in greater London, I have also worked in Johannesburg, Lisbon, Minneapolis/St Paul, and Dallas, TX. And turned down a job in Hong Kong.

4) I served 2 years in the military. After basic training, I was posted to a medical depot in Namibia as a storeman/driver/computer operator, and was promoted to the best rank in the army - lance corporal.

5) I enjoy shooting. I was once lucky enough to sample a Lee Enfield 0.303 calibre rifle, modified for Bisley competition. Putting 6 shots in a man-shaped piece of paper 600 yards away takes a lot of skill, and is an awesome feeling. I used to own a handgun and enjoyed going to a shooting range every couple of weeks (when I could afford the ammunition), but got rid of it when I realised that it was more likely that someone would get accidentally shot, or I would shoot someone I was not legally entitled to shoot. So I sold it.

There you go Wayne.

Ton up !

This is the one-hundredth post for the upwardly mobile manager (!), and I will use the occasion to review what has happened since I started this little online journey.

I started this blog back in July, at a point when I had just started work on a Strategic Options Analysis. The business were looking at introducing a new online Brand into the Group. This project goes (here anyway) by the code-name Condor. We spent a couple of months looking at how the basic business brief might be put into practice. The project has now been launched and we are in the requirements gathering and analysis phase, while simultaneously mobilising a project team and doing some high-level planning. My initial hopes of managing the entire project were dashed when The Parent Company decided to take it upon themselves to build the online business as a strategic enabler for future business options. My part was reduced to providing the functionality and interface into our part of the business. It's about 20% of the total project, but my part alone has been estimated at about £1.8 million.

This blog has also been the perfect forum for my thoughts on the subjects of appraisals, staff engagement (a very popular post, that one), rants about silly surveys - here and here - engaging the business, my Prince2 course, motivating managers, and requirements specifications.

It has been an enjoyable journey so far. Here's to the next 100 posts.

Tower Bridge

I have made a few trips into central London over the last week or two, and decided on Wednesday evening to see what the latest in camera phones are capable of. The results are quite impressive, I think.

Workplace Politics harming the project

Back in September, I alluded to the impact that politics was having on project Condor. That impact reached a peak yesterday.

The Parent Company (TPC) have spent the last few weeks gathering requirements. It has, truth be told, been quite successful. Representatives from the outsourcing company in India have shown themselves to be slightly ignorant of how our business operates, but their knowledge of Use Cases has been encouraging and really helpful.

The problem is that this requirements gathering exercise has focused purely on what Condor's front-end application will do. No attention has been paid to the back-end core systems. They have assumed that everything below the web services interface layer is within my scope.... but it isn't. I have been given - on more than one occasion - a strictly limited scope and instruction not to 'get mugged' by taking on additional work. Politics. I have twice been told that we do not want to take the blame when something goes wrong. Aaaaarrrrrgh!!!

When I expressed my concerns over the gap in scope, no-one took any notice. Until yesterday.

My boss and I were talking about this scope gap, when he wondered aloud who our Business Unit thought was paying for this stuff - them or TPC. So I phoned the lovely K and asked.

She replied that they were paying for all the changes necessary for the product to work. Heartened, I explained about my enforced limitations, and my concerns that significant areas of requirements had not been included in anyone's scope nor budget. She thanked me and immediately got on the phone to G, my boss's boss. Later that afternoon, he came upstairs to talk to me and my boss about the situation. It didn't take long to convince him that it was 'reasonable' to expect us to do that work, since the outsourcing company were not going to do it, and it was our system, after all.

The upshot of it all is that I now have most of what I wanted in the first place. It would have been nice to manage the entire project, but I will still be responsible for providing the core functionality required for launch.

Although the project is still highly commercially sensitive - hence my use of the Condor code-name (not the real one) - once it is launched to the public, I will be able to reveal my involvement. I can now enjoy my weekend, and look forward to my final 5 hectic days at work before the holiday break.

Specifying Requirements

Now that project Condor has begun, one of the first workstreams - and arguably the most important - is specifying the Business requirements. Normally, IT projects are only started once we receive a Requirements Specification from the business area, and we start the analysis process. Requirements are often incomplete, ambiguous, stated without context, duplicated or reflect a suggested solution rather than a business need.

It is an oft-quoted statistic that the later in the life-cycle of a project - any project - that errors are spotted and eliminated, the more costly it is to do so. To quote an extreme example, one error in a requirements specification spotted during User Acceptance Testing can require weeks and cost tens of thousands of pounds to rectify, but only a few minutes if spotted before the specification is baselined.

In order to have any chance of meeting the tight deadlines imposed on this project, I have arranged for an analyst to be assigned to the business team drawing up the requirements. The project team assigned other people as well, and set up dedicated office space where everyone could work together, and arranged a series of workshops to draw out requirements on specific topics before they were documented.

Specifying business requirements - or user requirements - is not a difficult thing to do, but it's also very easy to do it badly, and make the developer's job a nightmare. We are not always understood when we explain something verbally, but it's even more difficult to get the message across accurately when we have to write it down.

Here are 8 simple rules about good requirements. Whether you are someone who specifies requirements, or someone who receives them, make sure the Requirements Specification you end up with follows these principles, and your project will be off to a good start.

1. Source - Identify who originated the requirement, so that any queries can be addressed to the right person.
2. User - Identify who will benefit from each requirement.
3. Clear and concise - Eradicate any possible ambiguity.
4. Unique - Eliminate duplication.
5. Identifiable - Each requirement must have a reference to ensure traceability (see below).
6. Prioritised - Each requirement must be assigned a priority to distinguish between the ones that are essential for the business case, and which are 'nice-to-have'. The MoSCoW method is widely used for this purpose and is easy to understand.
7. Verifiable - It must be possible to verify, by inspection or testing, that a requirement has been met. If you cannot verify it, you should not be specifying it.
8. Genuine - Specify the requirement, not a suggested solution.

Traceability must also be maintained from each requirement, through design, to individual test cases. The ability to track a test case back to a requirement ensures that all requirements are delivered and verified. But more on this another time.

Rules for Productive meetings

There are numerous resources, both in print and on the net, that express ways of making meetings less onerous and more productive. Here are mine.

• Work out how many man-hours (meeting length times the number of attendees) will be consumed during the meeting. If that number exceeds the potential benefits of the meeting itself, the meeting isn't worth it.
• How do most people treat the reminders that Outlook pops up? Most click 'Snooze' until the time the meeting starts, then leave their desks. The intention is to give yourself enough time to get to the meeting on time. Make sure you and your attendees use the tool for what it was intended and be there on time. Always start the meeting promptly, and don't pander to those who arrive late by going back over what has already been stated.
• When inviting someone who has a really busy calendar with back-to-back meetings, try starting your meeting at ten minutes past the hour, giving him/her time to transition between meetings.
• AOB. This can generate sufficient unplanned conversation to push the meeting over it's scheduled finish time. Don't bother with this on the agenda, it has little purpose. If people bring up items not on the agenda, put them in a 'parking lot' instead. Record these items and discuss them 'offline' or add them to the agenda for the next meeting.
• You can persuade people to come to a lunchtime meeting by providing lunch. If your meeting is important enough, arrange for sandwiches and fruit to be brought in to the meeting room at an appropriate point.
  

Feel free to add your own 'rules' in the comments.

Ethical Blogging

This little article got me thinking.

"...responsible bloggers should recognize that they are publishing words publicly, and therefore have certain ethical obligations to their readers, the people they write about, and society in general."

I am not for one second advocating controlling or censoring the internet, but I think it would be a good thing for bloggers to voluntarily take it upon themselves to follow a code of ethics similar to this one. I'm all for it.

I would welcome any comments - positive or negative - about my own conduct in this blog.

Motivated Managers

I have always been motivated to perform. It's the sense of achievement that comes from a successful implementation that makes us strive to do it all over again next time. The buzz that comes from being able to update our CVs (resumes) with our accomplishments fuels us for the challenges that follow. Often, little more is needed to motivate a manager than to give him/her a challenging assignment, provide the resources necessary, and watch him/her get on with it.

Yesterday was R's last day at work, and over a swift farewell pint at our local pub, someone asked him what were his best and worst memories of the last seven years. His best memory was the time he worked on the launch of a new online business. It was a time of intense pressure, but also tremendous progress. Everybody worked together, putting in very long hours, but they did so willingly. All IT professionals I have ever met, including the managers are especially motivated to do whatever is necessary simply by being made to feel worthwhile, that they are adding value to the company.

Provided that effort is recognised.

If the company does not recognise or reward the accomplishments of it's staff in at least some small way, all the best people will bleed their way out of the organisation, and the intellectual capital and teamwork will dry up and vanish.

Executives of the world, hear this - give your staff a challenge, tell them how they can make a real contribution, and then recognise and reward their achievements. You will reap more than you sow.

PRINCE2 Practitioner

I passed!

Yep, I got my letter on Wednesday confirming that I had passed the Practitioner exam.

I am chuffed, but not surprised. I knew the day I wrote the paper that I would pass it, but it is nice to have it confirmed in writing.

Of course, it's also nice to use the principles in day-to-day project work, it's REAL value lies in my increased credibility if and when I decide to seek employment elsewhere.

Condor approved !

My portion of project Condor - the mainframe back-end bit - was granted formal approval this week. Even better, since Condor is currently the only approved project planning to build and utilise web services, I have been given additional funding to implement whatever web services Condor requires.

My total budget is now £1.6 million - more than enough, I think. It should give me plenty of flexibility to not only design services specifically for Condor, but also services that the current web application can use. After all, that is the point of web services - re-use.

This is an exciting time. It's going to get really busy really quickly.

I need to build up two teams - one for the mainframe work and one for the web services work.
I need to create a detailed project plan, draft a Terms of Reference, establish a project Board, define a stakeholder map, and a million other things that a project requires just to start functioning.

I love this part of a project - it's exciting. It's all about possibilities, and nothing has gone wrong... yet.

Contractors - the forgotten learning curve

As with most big organisations, we have a large number of contractors. Officially, we do this to 'flex' our capability, increasing the headcount with contractors to meet demand over peak periods and releasing them when demand is low. With a lot of those contracts soon to expire, we are once again having to carefully consider whom to renew and for how long. Obviously we need projects on the workstack to justify - and pay for - these people. The problem is that there is currently not sufficient authorised work to justify keeping them on. This is a deficiency in the planning process, as by the time we DO get authorisation to build the teams for these projects, we will already have let some of our people go, and will need to get others in to replace them.

Contractors are generally viewed by HR and senior management as just 'pluggable' resources. Expendable people who can be acquired and discarded at two weeks notice for whatever task we need. The truth is quite different. The reality is that some of these contractors are a lot better than any of the permanent employees, and their knowledge and skills become very valuable. We have accumulated a number of such people who have been here a number of years; the best are usually renewed ad infinitum..

Current thinking does not take into account the knowledge of the applications that the contractors have built up during their time here. While the hard skills of design, coding and testing can easily be replaced, knowledge of how your applications work cannot. The learning curve required to get a new contractor up to 100% productivity can take anything from a few weeks to a number of months, depending on the size and complexity of your systems. No-one factors that into their resourcing models.

Being ill sucks

The worst part about being ill is worrying about what's happening at work while you're not there.

Or is it that illnesses seem to coincide with lousy weather, so you can't even enjoy being off work?

No, the worst part is not having any good books to read while you're ill.

No, the worst part is the offerings on tv during the day.

Actually, no the worst part is hearing all the neighbourhood dogs going nuts every time somebody walks past the fence. Especially when you're trying to sleep.

Aaaarrgh! I'm bored!!

Interview: What's your biggest weakness?

Have you ever been asked about your weakness/es in an interview? How did you answer? Did you blab something meaningless about paying too much attention to detail, say with a completely straight face that you don't have any, or did you laugh and say you have a weakness for Belgian chocolate?

This article in CNN's Money column presents some advice on the subject, which is promptly castigated as "exceptionally bad advice" by Mark and Mike at Manager Tools. I can't wait to hear what they have to say on the subject.

Don't manage my expectations

The term 'managing expectations' has seemingly come into more and more frequent use around here lately. It seems to mean ensuring that someone does not expect too much, to avoid disappointment later. I have heard project managers talk about "managing business expectations" in the sense that they are probably planning to deliver less than the business asked for. When used in a third-person context, when both parties understand that it's not their expectations that are being managed, it's probably a good thing to do.

But I heard the term mentioned at a meeting the other day in a way that made me cringe! A programme manager said to someone at a higher level than himself "... I just want to manage your expectations here...".

If I had been the recipient of that remark, I would have been more than a little peeved - more so if that person was my subordinate. How do you know what my expectations are, and how dare you suggest that you are somehow managing them?

I know he did not mean to cause offense, but it could have been expressed better.

Creating a Productive Environment

I am guessing that, if you are reading this, you are working in a knowledge-based business area. The value that you provide to the company you work for lies in the knowledge and experience you have, more than in what you do/produce. The people you employ are required to think more than anything else. This is especially true in an IT environment. It stands to reason therefore, that it should be incumbent upon the company to provide an environment conducive to productive thought and communication.

But how many do? How many of you work in open-plan offices in which at least one telephone seems to be ringing at any given moment? Where other people's conversations and clicking keyboards vie for your attention, and you try desperately to demote everything to background noise? Ever wondered why so many of your staff work with iPods plugged into their ears? Wonder no more! But this is nothing compared to the worst offender of them all.

Think of a time in your project where your best people were at their most productive, generating complex designs or program code, brainstorming ideas, or trying to resolve testing defects. Now just at that point where productivity is at it's highest.....

TTTTTTTRRRRRRRRIIIIIIINNNGGGGGGGGG.

The fire alarm goes off. No, the building is not on fire, it's just the regular weekly test, scheduled at exactly the point where people are busiest - mid-morning.

Some time ago, being below the level of authority required to change such things, I nevertheless tracked down the person responsible for the fire alarm tests, and asked if they could be conducted out of hours, so as not to disrupt people's work. The answer I received was that it needed to be tested during the day so that as many people as possible would know what it sounds like, so that they will recognise the real thing(!). As if anyone could mistake it for anything else.

Please, people, if you have any control whatsoever over this sort of thing, please give your people the environment in which to do what they do best.

Taking on the Load

I am currently being torn between the desire to take on as much of the Condor project work as I can get (I love a challenge), and the opposing need to limit our involvement to what can be achieved within the current budget and resource capability.

You see, ever since this project somehow acquired the target of a mid-2007 delivery date (I am still unsure how that happened), the focus has been on 'how can we deliver this quickly?'. It is no longer 'my' project, and I will be managing only a portion of it. Disappointing. It is also clear that, since our business area has the requirements, and our development team have the expertise, the key to rapid design and build is probably to utilise what has gone before as far as possible. I am therefore tempted to take on as much work as I can get away with, but I am under strict instructions to preserve the other projects on the portfolio. In other words, I can utilise only those people not already allocated to higher-priority projects.

You see my problem. To be fair, when I asked if I could expand my present scope and the number of resources assigned, provided it did not affect other projects, I was told that was fine, as long as TPC pay for it.

We must, however, be seen to make the maximum effort to meet this (frankly unrealistic) target. To that end, we need to come up with ways to make most efficient use of the standard project methodology, modifying things where necessary, and re-use as much of the current intellectual and software capital already in place. The current method - sorry, framework - assumes a waterfall approach to managing the phases of a project. A set of requirements is delivered by the Business, an application design is created, followed by an Infrastructure design, followed by build.... you get the picture.

We are going to have to adopt a more overlapping approach to things, specifying dependencies at a much lower level. I have already suggested that we adopt a JAD approach to the requirements definition phase. I envisage defining requirements categories, each being specified in parallel, but not wholly in isolation, with significant IT involvement, since the so-called business analysts don't actually have any analysis training.

We will also need to combine the design phases, producing application and infrastructure designs in parallel.

Any of you managers used to delivering software projects will recognise the challenges inherent in meeting a mid-2007 deadline with an estimated spend of £6m. We need to get a quite phenomenal 'burn-rate' to obtain that sort of productivity.

Condor to be outsourced.

A workshop was held yesterday, the purpose of which was to work out an action plan for the next 30 days. Why 30 days? Well, that takes us to virtually the end of the year.

The new programme manager for Condor, E, said that in order to have even the remotest chance of getting this project implemented by mid-year, we need to have some requirements and some high-level designs by the end of this year. And he's right! So what do we need to to do achieve that?

The group identified several separate work streams - Requirements, Design, Testing, Business Operating Model, etc. A team leader was appointed to each, and other people allocated to each work stream according to who the group felt was best suited to performing the tasks identified in each. It's a decent enough approach. For me the biggest disappointment of the day was seeing representatives from an outsourcing company in India present. It is obvious that E has already made the decision to outsource a large amount of the development work.

The end of the meeting was by far the most revealing.

On a flip chart, someone drew a mini Gantt chart showing, against the project timeline, the major activities and milestones that we would need to hit to make the plan work. The level of overlap between activities made it obvious that, either we were simply not going to do it, or we were letting ourselves in for the mother of all managerial nightmares.

E finished up the meeting by saying that while it appeared as if the plan was... um... challenging, he was not prepared to go back to his boss and say it was not do-able, until the various work streams generated the estimates to prove it. Smart cookie. E is no fool, and is obviously a very experienced and competent manager. He is surrounding himself with people he trusts and who he knows can do the job.

Communicating with staff

Apparently, UK companies are generally not very good at communicating with their junior employees. Gee, now there's a surprise.

Even in my company, where senior management have made a serious attempt to improve communications, morale and staff engagement, there is room for improvement.

There are a number of factors that help or hinder the process:

• Is communications one-way or is there a forum for staff to generate ideas?
• Are those ideas considered by senior managemet and the good ones implemented! Only if staff believe that their contributions have a chance of making a difference will they feel encouraged to contribute in the first place.
• Are ideas filtered or prioritised? If so, how? I once participated in a session in which some really good ideas came up, but were discarded by the facilitator, because in his opinion they were either too costly, or would take too long to implement. There was pressure on him to select only a few ideas out of the many that were generated, and he selected the ones that were easiest to implement, not the ones that would generate the most benefit. It is important that contributors feel that their ideas are getting a fair hearing, and discarded only because someone else has a better idea.

I have posted before - my God, was that really all the way back in July? - about Workout as a tool for process improvement. It has its uses, but only for specific purposes, and there are better ways of improving things on a larger scale. About which, more another time.

Have a good weekend everyone.

Over budget is fine

"When it comes to project finance, there are only two states that raise concerns in my mind," said my Boss to S, our newbie PM.

"One - you come in exactly on budget. That says you are being very creative with the figures and are managing the budget not your project. And Two - you come in under budget."

Wait a minute - under budget doesn't concern you?

Yep. In an organisation like ours, in which project costs comprise solely the man-day rate applicable to the people working on the project, if you get the number of people right and the duration of the project right, you should come in pretty darn close to your budget. Easy.

If you come in under budget, you have over-estimated. If you are a little over-budget (within contingency), you have done your job. If you are a lot over-budget, you didn't do your job properly, because you did not get authorisation for the additional spend - change control, dummy!

The 'fun' part of managing IT projects around here is in dealing with all the minor crises that inevitably arise that cause your beautifully crafted plan to gradually evolve into something virtually unrecognisable from the version that was originally approved.

Planning to Fail

When I posted (here and then here) that I was sceptical about the plan to deliver Condor in 6 months, it now appears that I was not the only one. At a meeting earlier this evening, it transpired that I am being instructed to limit our involvement in the project not only to protect the other projects on the portfolio - although there is an element of that in the mix - but also to limit the damage should the project fail.

It was even suggested that the web front-end component should be outsourced to India. This would have two benefits - relieving us of the need to resource it ourselves, and providing someone else to blame when the plan slips.

The fact that The Parent Company is willing to fund and resource a large part of this project means that our part of the company is happy for them to go ahead and get their noses bloodied, while we merrily go on delivering the other planned projects on our workstack.

Why can they not create a realistic and workable plan to succeed, rather than playing political games to limit the damage of failure? Perhaps the fallout from the US mid-term elections has had consequences far beyond the boundaries of the United States, in ways no-one predicted.

This project is starting to get a distinctly nasty smell attached to it.

It is situations like this that make me glad I am publishing these comments anonymously.

Appraisal time again.

Am I the only person who finds the process of self-appraisal very difficult?

It is, of course, that time of year again, and we are being asked to complete our self-appraisal forms, as well as for those we are assessing.

In my case, I had a load of people to do mid-year, but most of them do not seem to have asked me again at the end of the year - a sign I don't do it well? Anyway, I also have the time available at the moment to give it a good go. The only problem is that, having spent the last ten years as a contractor, I am out of practice at this self-appraisal thing.

There are two reasons I find this process difficult:

1. I find it difficult to 'blow my own trumpet', even though I know it's a very necessary part of managing my own career. Where do you draw the line between just-doing-my-job and going-above-and-beyond? At my grade, I am supposed to be doing things I am not getting the opportunity to do, and I do not believe I am doing anything special.
2. There is a sizeable part of me that thinks this will have absolutely no bearing on the size of my increase (assuming any of us get one) or my bonus, nor will it alter my chances of a promotion, nor my chances of getting assigned to juicy jobs.

So, despite reading the best advice on the subject I can find, I still find it difficult.

Meetings - last one in

Further to my last post on punctuality at meetings, I thought I'd let you know about something I am trialling in this team.

The weekly team meetings we have are not project-related, but programme. They are attended by the Programme Manager (my direct boss), three other PMs who report to him, plus a couple of senior techies.

Every meeting starts late! Every week, someone is either talking on the phone or MIA when the meeting is due to start. Last week, I suggested that the last person to arrive buy some nibbles (biscuits, donuts, cake, whatever) for the following week's meeting. The boss loved the idea (despite the fact that he's no less guilty than anyone else) and offered to buy the first round.

I'll let you know how it goes.

Yesterday, with one of our PMs off ill, we were supposed to have a shorter meeting, with a longer resourcing discussion today. Again we started late (and NH will be getting in the nibbles next week), but the meeting still lasted 90 minutes! The majority of the time was taken up by arguing over what to do about a perceived slide in software quality control. That will be the subject of a later post, but my point is that the boss, who is supposed to be chairing and therefore controlling the meeting, was getting embroiled in heated discussions that actually were best handled in a separate workshop in a more structured manner.

I think I should give him some feedack, so I will be brushing up on how best to do that here and suggesting that he listen to this.

Bullying in the workplace

This article in Management Issues quotes that "one fifth of all employees in the UK claim to have experienced some form of bullying over the last two years".
As far as I can remember, the only incident of bullying I can ever remember happened last year.

Three members of my project team (Pete, Anna and Mike) were working in another building, and apparently Mike had promoted to the Test environment a program with an inherent bug. The bug caused a problem in the overnight batch. The guy who was called in to support the batch that night fixed the problem, and the next morning came over to where Mike, Anna and Pete were sitting and said

"Which of you f@&%ed up my batch last night?"

Of course, they were flabbergasted and took offense. When the incident was drawn to my attention - thanks to Pete's email - I escalated the matter to my Delivery Manager, frankly not expecting very much. To my surprise and relief, I got a phone call from him a few days later to say that he had called the offender into his office and given him a lecture, and a warning that if any similar incident involving him came to light, he would be immediately dismissed.

I was at once relieved to hear that I was able to protect my team, and gratified to know that the company was not prepared to tolerate such behaviour.

Fashionably late

One of my pet peeves is punctuality. I am almost never late for meetings, and consider it downright rude to keep people waiting. I had cause to consider this twice yesterday.

The first was a meeting scheduled for 1:30, at which I sat down - along with one other attendee - at 1:29 and waited for the rest to arrive. We waited four minutes, which is not bad considering. I have waited longer before. At a company I used to work for, a senior techie, who was always very busy, was such a stickler for punctuality that if the chairman had not arrived within 5 minutes of the scheduled start, he would get up and leave the meeting. Gotta love it.

The second occasion I had to consider the subject of punctuality yesterday was later in the afternoon. A social event had been arranged at a local bar for 5:30. Being an early bird, and not exactly overloaded with work at the moment, I left the office at 5:20 and get there at 5:30 almost exactly.

There were three people in the bar, none of whom I recognised. After a short wait, I realised that most people had either gone home earlier, or would be arriving later. As I couldn't be bothered to drink alone waiting for someone to talk to, I left.

There are undoubtedly times when fashionably late is the ideal time to arrive.

Back to GMT

I love the first Monday after the clocks go back. Especially when, like this morning, the weather is good. It makes me feel like Summer had just arrived, except that the trees are a million shades of amber and gold.

Such a beautiful morning.

Of course, by mid-afternoon, the crystal blue sky had changed to a patchy dull grey, and on the way home it started to drizzle. Which reflected my mood.

Cost cutting folly.

As in most enterprises, people are the most critical element in any IT project. In projects involving highly-skilled tasks, like IT, it is arguably even more important to get the right people.

People also usually form the entire basis of the costs of a typical IT project - capital expenditure aside. It stands to reason, therefore, that there is a direct relationship between the cost of doing business (the number and quality of the people you employ) and the capability to deliver. When a company wants to cut costs, people are usually the first to go. This, of course, reduces a companies capacity to maintain its service, or deliver new products.

If this all sounds like common sense, it is. At least to most of us.

Royal Mail, however, apparently ignored this simple truth when they cut 30,000 jobs over the past few years. In this article from The Times, Trade Union Amicus claims that in some areas, it has often fallen to managerial staff to make up the shortfall, delivering the mail themselves.

What this does to the workload of managerial tasks is not clear. Who do they get to do their jobs? Or were they under-utilised anyway?

Hypocricy

I could never be a politician, for so many reasons. For starters I am not a very good liar, I tend to speak my mind more often that would be healthy for a political career, and I abhor hypocrisy.

In the Guardian, is this article in which Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell, speaking about the recent American ban on online gambling, said "America should have learnt the lessons of Prohibition". There was a "real danger" she says, that the US laws would create the modern-day equivalent of speakeasies - venues that illegally served alcohol - online.

The fact that a complete legal ban on something simply pushes trade in that substance or practice underground is not new. If there is sufficient demand for something - alcohol, online gambling, cigarettes or sex for money - making it illegal it will not stop people wanting it, nor supplying it. Britain's puritanical legislation on prostitution, for example, has not stopped the trade. Perhaps the Governor of Nevada should have a chat with the FT about the Bunny Ranch.

Flattered

The most pressing task on my to-do list at the moment is to complete a presentation to senior management on the viability of project Condor in terms of time and resource needs, so I am not very busy. And I hate being bored.

But yesterday afternoon, an email from R came round formally announcing his resignation. I responded saying it had been a pleasure working with him (it had) and that I was disappointed that our great working relationship was soon to be over (I was). What I didn't expect was a reply stating that I was "... without a shadow of doubt the best PM / good all-rounder that I have ever worked with...".

Either he needs to get out more or he wants something. Except I can't think what. Honestly, though, I felt absurdly flattered. Professional compliments are always more welcome than personal ones, and it put me in a very good frame of mind before I got on the train to Bayswater.

Online Managers Community

The internet was initially viewed as being impersonal, something that would drive people away from each other, limiting social interraction. And yet, dating sites aside, the internet can, on occasion, be a tool to bring people together as well.

A case in point is my meeting last night with Wayne Turmel. Yes, the Cranky Middle Manager himself was in London on business for the last few days, and he and I met up for a pint and an Italian dinner of dubious quality. At least the company made up for it.

Wayne is very entertaining company, and it was great to swap stories with him for a couple of hours on his last night on this side of the pond. Apparently, he has spent quite a bit of his time here meeting up with other people from the international online managers community (most of whom involved with sites I already read regularly) , but I feel honoured to have been given some time in his busy calendar.

Wayne, I hope you had a good flight back home, and I look forward to chatting to you again the next time you are over here (not sure when I will get the chance to be in Chicago).

Meeting Wayne

On a Friday which sees my calender refreshingly empty, I am looking forward to the end of the day. Nothing unusual there, then. Ah, but today I am going into town to meet Wayne Turmel, who is in London for a few days. We'll have a couple of beers, and probably discuss podcasts, weasels and what makes middle managers cranky.

And I'm really looking forward to it.

Feeling guilty

In Monday's post about R's resignation, I neglected to mention that he asked me to keep the information to myself. Well, yesterday I might have accidentally let something slip on the subject to my boss, who, by coincidence, was having lunch with one of the Business managers.

It appears that he told the Business manager, who told his boss - and the rest of their office, and the news reached the ears of the guy in charge of the business-end of the Condor project. He is now very unhappy that R is still in the office, given his knowledge of commercially sensitive information about the project.

I am feeling really guilty about it, but there's not much I can do about it now. I don't see why he should go on 'gardening leave', since he is not going to learn anything new about it between now and the day his notice is up and he leaves for good. On the contrary, he might be able to assist us further.

I hate feeling guilty. I don't screw up often, but when I do, it doesn't feel nice.

Congestion charge

The governments chosen strategy for... well anything really, is to charge people for it. Transport is probably the best example. It costs me virtually the same to get a train in to work for a week as it does to drive my car and park it for the same period. So where's the incentive to use public transport? Especially when it would take twice as long to get there.

With an awful lot of people thinking the same way I do, it is hardly any wonder that the road network (especially here in the south-east) is almost at grid-lock during the rush hour. The solution? Yep, you guessed it - charge people.

The latest initiative, soon to be trialled on a stretch of motorway near you, is to charge people for every mile they drive during 'peak' times. The idea is that vehicles would be fitted with an electronic 'tag' (no, of course they won't give them away), which will record data on your whereabouts, speed, etc every second of the day, and work out how much to charge based on your road usage.

People who work on farms, or live close by their places of work will surely not be too bothered by this, but people like me, who have little choice in where they work, and need to travel some distance to get there, will surely feel victimised.

Either I double the time it takes me to get to work, by taking the train (not ideal since my nearest railway station is 3 1/2 miles away), get to work at 6 a.m to avoid the 'congestion charge', or move home. Some choice!

Traitor

The secrecy with which the initial investigations into the feasibility of project Condor was conducted has had an unwanted side-effect. Now that we are, of necessity, getting more people involved to get the project formally incepted, we are spending more time re-hashing the same old assumptions, conclusions and ideas as we did a couple of months ago.

Today, for instance, we spent about four and a half hours bringing just four people up to date with the high-level design we had arrived at via 6 weeks of discussion and investigation. Oh well. Whatever gets us to the start line, I suppose.

On a different note, my good friend R, the architect behind the initial idea, the guy who initiated the feasibility study (although I had to expand the scope) in the first place, the guy who has so supported me through the whole exercise, has resigned. Yep, he handed in his notice on Friday. Considering his strategic role in the company, he may just be asked to leave sooner rather than later, too. Leaving me to run with it alone. More or less.

I feel betrayed.

But I wish him all the best in his new venture.

Surviving Life in the Workplace

I noticed this very humorous piece in the Guardian online the other day, and thought you might enjoy it - top tips for surviving life in the workplace. Now I see why my life is such a mess!

Dilemma

I just looked up that word here and here. Both define the word as primarily a choice between two equally unfavourable options. But I might have to choose between two equally favourable options. Let me explain.

Having had three separate meetings today on the subject of Project Condor, it appears as if it's gathering momentum fast. There is not only a huge desire among senior management for this, but it has now also been given a candidate slot for May 2007 implementation. You heard it here first. The fact that I don't believe we can deliver as early as May remains to be believed among those that count. There is a workshop on Tuesday afternoon to start discussing the candidate projects for the May release, and I am invited to discuss Condor. Excellent.

In the meantime, my name was mentioned by my good friend R, with whom I have been closely working on Condor, to a programme manager who apparently has a piece of work that he a) is finding hard to accurately define, and b) needs someone to pick up and run with. R thought I could help him out.

So on Tuesday, I met with him (let's call him A) to discuss this piece of work. It turns out to be the rollout of a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) across the organisation. The scope has not yet been defined and it has thus far been seen as phase 2 of the SOA adoption project, which delivers the framework, standards and development toolset for a service-oriented architecture.

Now, as we all know, a project has a definite start and end and a clear objective, and therefore cannot be ongoing by definition.

He concluded the meeting by asking about my availability, making it clear that the job was mine if I wanted it.

Hell, yes! You see, it would entail forming a more-or-less permanent team (something I have wanted for years), to become a 'centre of excellence' for web services and service-oriented architecture. It would require more man-management, but a lot less of the administrative cr*p that goes with pure project management. An ideal mix of all the best parts of IT management with very few of the worst parts. Fantastic.

And therein lies the dilemma (or whatever is the choice between two equally favourable options). Do I stick with Condor and deliver the IT components of a new Brand with national exposure (it's like being able to say I managed the project to developed Amazon.com), or do I take on the SOA adoption piece?

I almost certainly cannot do both (although that would be ideal, because of the need to run both pieces of work more or less simultaneously.

Please let me know what you would do and why.

Unlikely

I am still trying to work out how someone got to the figures of 6 million pounds / 6 months to deliver project Condor. The best plan I can come up with has us implementing in October '07, regardless of who does the work. And that assumes that the green light is given next week and work starts on Requirements definition immediately.

It's unlikely to say the least.

More disturbing is that I was left off of the distribution list for the meeting held last week, despite the fact that I have an action. Is that a hint?

I am pulling together a list of the deliverables, and some assumptions, but I am battling to work out how to specify milestones for just a small part of the work. It's unrealistic without seeing them in the broader context of the overall plan. Which I am obviously disputing. I am debating with myself whether I should distribute the entire MS Project plan I have, showing all the relevant high-level tasks, and let everyone pick the bones out of it.

I drove home this afternoon in melancholy mood. I get like this sometimes, but it rarely lasts long.

I'll be more chirpy soon. All should be resolved by Thursday.

Condor too heavy

It's been two weeks since my last post - criminal!

Actually, it's been a little hectic around here with the mother-in-law staying with us. Anyway, I have been back at work for a week, and what a week it has been.

In my absence, the report we wrote (or at least a synopsis thereof) has been sent all the way to the CEO. The reponse has been more or less what we expected - at 12 months work and costing around 8 million pounds, it's too expensive and will take too long.

While I was loafing at home, some additional work was apparently done to determine how much work could be stripped out, in order to make it quicker and cheaper to deliver. The new figures are six months and six million pounds (although that excludes capex). Say what???

I can find no evidence of how six months and around 2 million pounds has been cut from the estimate, and yet no-one seems too uncomfortable that we can deliver to those figures. I am aghast. I went so far as to speak to G, my boss's boss to tell him I don't believe it is achievable.

After an audio conference yesterday, it does appear, though, that in the grandiose halls of The Parent Company (TPC), significant weight is being applied to get this project off the ground. There were even suggestions that, since the basic infrastructure requirements are fairly clear already (albeit undocumented), someone can start work on the Infrastructure design. Without any Business Case having yet been completed! It is seen as a strategic revenue-generator, and looks to be given a very high priority relative to the rest of the portfolio. That in itself is A Good Thing, but I have two major concerns:

1. that TPC insist on doing the majority of the work and with limited budget and time, develop a basic strategic product that doesn't actually meet the original requirements.
2. that, even if I am allowed to put together a team to do a large part of the work (after all, it's our Business area that wants this project), I will be held to the 6 months, 6 million pound budget. I just do not think that is achievable without some VERY dodgy accounting - not something I am happy to do.

There is another meeting being held on Thursday to discuss next steps to getting the project kick-started early. I have an action to provide a list of planned deliverables, milestones and assumptions for our (mainframe) part of the work. I am hopeful that I can get involved in the planning process and can be tasked with delivery of a lot more than that. I want this project on my CV too. I want to be proud of this.

I just want a reasonable shot at it.

Word fun and games

While surfing through the sites on my blogroll and following some of the links, I came across a few really fun ones -

• If, like me, you never learned to type you may be wondering what exactly is your typing speed. If so try a short typing test and see if you can beat my 42 wpm (including three words spelled incorrectly).
• Think you can spell? I thought I was pretty good at it until I tried this difficult spelling test and scored 18 out of 23 (78%). Can you do better? I felt a little better, though, when I scored 10/10 on the first level 5 test here (NB. spellings are American).
• I was a little disappointed with my results on this grammer and punctuation test (which doesn't provide scores).

Have fun.

Prince2 - a validation

It has now turned into another lovely sunny day here in south-east England. Summer is being comfortingly stubborn this year.

I am sitting here in my study - a rather grandiose title for the third bedroom, which just happens to hold a large and rather cluttered desk instead of a bed - and contemplating the last week and the next two.

The first three days of my holiday were taken in order to study for the Prince2 course, and although I did not do as much of the preparatory work as I wanted to, it was well worth while. Anyone contemplating doing a Prince2 course is well advised to do the pre-course work. While passing is entirely feasible without completing it (as I hope to have just demonstrated), the more prepared you are, the better.

I took the course not for advancement within my current company, because almost all of my peers will now be taking the course as well. No, I did it because if the worst came to the worst, and I needed to look elsewhere for a job, a Prince2 qualification is seen as vital. It's a validation that a manager knows the 'proper' way of undertaking Projects IN Controlled Environments. Even though the manual has it's fair share of contradictions (are Stage plans mandatory or not?), it is only a method, a high-level framework, similar to the Project Management Institute's Body of Knowledge.

Interestingly, a comparison of the two documents was made by Colin Bentley, Prince2 chief examiner, and author of a large part of the manual. Read the article here.

Having the qualification somehow ensures that one is taken seriously in the industry. I will be adding it to my CV as soon as I get the results through. No hurry - I'm not actively looking for a job at the moment, but you never know.

I would appreciate comments from anyone who has had recent experience of Prince2 helping them in either getting a job, or helping them on the job.

So... things I need to do over the next two weeks :

• Tidy this desk
• Get the car washed and valeted

Things I should do, but lack the enthusiasm for :

• Tidy up the row of trees at the side of the house
• Clean out the garage

Things I will probably do rather a lot of :

• Coffee mornings at Starbucks
• Daily updates of news from my favourite bloggers (see sidebar)
• Continuation of my Football Manager career (might have to upgrade to the new version though).

I will also - sad as I am - be getting an update on things at work, so that I know whether any new work is coming up. I am keen to get some interesting work when I get back.

Chat soon.

Mobile phone 'scam'

"Hi, I'm calling from [mumble mumble]. We're an authorised Orange dealer, and we would like to offer you an upgrade."

Now, I wasn't aware that I was due for an upgrade, but was nonetheless glad, as my current phone has a slight buzz to it sometimes, like the speaker has worked loose and there's a bit of vibration coming through. So I said, fine, send me the paperwork.

A few days later, I received a follow-up call. Since the screen said "withheld", it could have come from my own building, so I answered. When the same lovely ladies voice said my name, I told her I was in a meeting and could she call back.

Since then nothing.

Except my phone now says "Limited Service", which I suppose means I can call the emergency services, but not even my service providers customer service department.

Now, having no means of mobile communications while commuting into London for a week is no joke. I was reduced to using pay phones from the station - "Hi, honey, can you meet me at the bottom of the hill in ten minutes?"

Having gone into my local shop, I have discovered that this fly-by-night company has not only got actual authority from my service provider to contact me, but they have indeed already upgraded my phone and de-activated my current SIM card. Nice. So I called them to complain.

"Sorry, sir, but it's been more than 7 days since the contract was upgraded and there's nothing we can do. You phone was delived to you, but no-one was home, so it is now at the local post office depot awaiting collection." Whaaaat? Now, I know I have not seen one of those lovely little Royal Mail calling cards recently, so how the hell should I know that a new phone was supposedly delivered?

I am insisting that they cancel the contract and reinstate my old service. This is just not the way to do business! Their email address is a hotmail account - I kid you not!

I am already gathering details of all the people I can complain to if this is not resolved in the next couple of days. If anyone else has any similar experience with this sort of thing I would be grateful for any advice.

PRINCE2 Practitioner

Thank God that's over with!

Although it was an intellectually intense week, the exam paper was not nearly as bad as I had anticipated, and I fully expect to pass. Unfortunately, candidates are apparently not informed of their actual mark unless they fail. So, I don't wanna know.

Now I am going to be on tenterhooks for the next 6 to 8 weeks waiting for the results. Wish me luck.

Oh, remember I needed a passport photo to get a weekly travelcard? Well, guess how many people asked me to show them that photo ID card over the week? That's right - zero. So what was the point exactly?

Prince2 Foundation Exam

After a couple of mock exams, I took the real one this afternoon. Much to my amazement, I scored higher than I had expected - 68/75 - so I am really chuffed.

I have just spent the last hour or so completing a mock Practitioner exam question, which will be evaluated tomorrow, before the actual exam on Friday morning.

I have an appointment with a pint of lager at lunchtime on Friday - I will have earned it.

Cappuccino

I strode purposefully through the first scatterings of autumn leaves that littered London's pavements this beautifully mild morning. With reference manual in one hand and a small brown bag with an almond croissant and a grande cappuccino in the other, it was difficult to glance at my wristwatch; even more difficult to consult the map that had been provided.

This, the first day of my course, had not started well.

"A weekly travelcard, please."

"Do you have a passport photo?"

I stared back blankly. No, of course not. I don't carry around a stack of embarrassing photos just in case. Fortunately a booth was close by, and I just managed to catch my train. Once in London, I twice had to stand and watch as an underground train left the platform, packed to bursting, without me on it.

When I finally got to the training room, put down my books and sat down, a glance at my watch told me that I was one minute late. Phew!

Since we need to be seated 30 minutes earlier tomorrow, a new plan is now required.

The Training manual from Hell

Wayne Turmel has done it again! His latest article in Management Issues, entitled "Satan's Training Brochure", manages once again to simultaneously inform and entertain. This has become something of a trademark for the host of The Cranky Middle Manager Show, and I am looking forward to meeting Wayne in person next month.

Best laid plans

Once my boss returned from his holiday in the Sunshine State last week, and I had completed the Condor report, I had little else to do. No other projects on the workstack had my name against them, and a speedy approval for any of the Condor work to start in earnest was a pretty forlorn hope. Business doesn't work that way, to misquote a loathsome local TV advert.

So I decided to take some time off, starting on Wednesday (two days ago).

As it happens, I have a PRINCE2 course scheduled next week. Much like taking driving lessons teaches you to pass the driving test, this course teaches you to pass the Foundation and Practitioner exams. Another nice item to put on my CV.

Taking some time off work would also allow me to put in the required 20 hours or so of preparatory reading required to familiarise myself with the material.

However, as is always the case with great-sounding plans, they gang aft awry. Wednesday was also the time my sister-in-law decided to get severe abdominal pains. This was not the first time, but fearing the worst, she chose this occasion to go to the hospital, leaving Mrs Q and I to look after her four kids - two of them year-old twins! And she's still there.

My course-preparation time is limited to an hour in bed in the mornings, the manual propped up against my raised legs, an hour in the study while the kids are being taken to school, and perhaps some time in the early afternoon.

The house is in a complete state of chaos. Clothes, toys, bedding and babies bottles litter the floor. The kitchen constantly looks like the aftermath of a party. Very few things are where they should be - the kids even lost the Sky remote yesterday - and I am sorely tempted to take my books and the CD-ROM down to the library and leave the wife to it. But that wouldn't be fair would it. Never mind. I'll get by.

Next week I will be at the mercy of (shudder) public transport again, but after that I plan to have two blissful weeks of coffee mornings at Starbucks with Mrs Q, matinees at the cinema, and perhaps a short trip somewhere nice if the weather holds out.

Hopefully, that will be just enough time for something juicy to appear on the workstack spreadsheet with a vacant cell in the PM column, where my name would go.

Staff Survey

One of the biggest causes for staff dissatisfaction is the upheaval that results from mergers and acquisitions. In our case, the company has been through a few. We are now part of a very large corporation, one of the half-dozen biggest companies in it's category in the world. Some companies do badly for years after such turmoil.

This company, however, appears to be serious about finding out what the workforce thinks about the company - and doing something about it! They have so far this year held a number of Work-out sessions (despite my misgivings about the tool, the idea is right), and held the first ever IT Conference.

The annual staff survey is supposed to expose the areas to concentrate on, but it has become apparent that an interesting point has now been reached. The survey appears to be asking the wrong questions.

This raises a bit of a dilemma - changing the questions would invalidate previous years results, in effect 'starting over'.

Specifically, one of the questions is along the lines of "I frequently think about leaving the company". We are supposed to answer in varying degrees of "I agree/disagree". Do you see the problem?

Lots of people think about leaving, and going to work elsewhere. Last year, senior management were appalled to see the results showing more than half the staff were thinking of leaving, but they could not reconcile this with the actual staff turnover figures, which were comfortingly low.

As i've said before here, surveys can be a minefield of misinformation. There are only two categories of survey :

• those where you know what answer you expect, and use the results to prove a conclusion you have already reached, and
• those like this one where the answers result in more questions than answers.

So, is a staff survey effective? Yes, to a point. It can be a gauge of general staff attitude in certain areas - pay and reward, job satisfaction, leadership, etc. but it is a blunt instrument at best, not a surgical tool.

Who wants to work from home?

Management Issues is highlighting a new report by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, which reveals that tele-working or tele-commuting is not as popular as once thought, and figures are being skewed by the inclusion of the self-employed. Hardly surprising, really.

I posted an article on the subject back in July, in which I mentioned some of the major stumbling blocks. Chiefly practical ones, they nevertheless pose a sufficient barrier to make it not worth the effort for most people.

I spent a couple of hours on Saturday morning in my study working on the project Condor report, and it was pretty productive really. But only for a couple of hours, and only because my son was out with his mates. I also had to e-mail the document - and the review comments - to myself at home, because I cannot access the LAN from home.

When someone comes up with a system which provides broadband internet access securely from company laptops, I will be one of the first to give it a try. However, a lot of my work involves face-to-face discussions, so I would still be in the office most of the time anyway. And I would find it really difficult to plan when I was going to work from home, too.

Which raises another point. How many of us have weekly buss passes, weekly train tickets, or weekly parking tickets? Working from home sometimes will surely negate some of the benefits of those discounted tickets, so there is little incentive there.

Traffic report requirements

Have you ever thought what would result if you wrote the requirements specification for radio traffic reports?

Apparently, someone specified that warnings of traffic jams would always be broadcast immediately after your last chance to take a detour, or the jam has already cleared.

Today is a case in point. At just the point where I was stuck, engine off, on the motorway, the local radio station reported that the motorways were "flowing freely". Oh yeah? Not from where I was seated, it wasn't. After about ten minutes, though, the traffic started moving and soon I was back to normal rush hour speeds - 40 mph.

Then the traffic report comes back on to report that the debris on the motorway has just been cleared and traffic is getting back to normal.

Brilliant!

Report published

Today, I finally got to the point where I felt comfortable enough with the Condor report to publish it. After revisions too numerous to mention, it has now been sent to the Infrastructure guys and the Delivery Manager to check over before it goes to the Business.

Interestingly, in the last few days I have discovered that it was all a misunderstanding, but not the way I thought. It appears that the Infrastructure team lied to us all along - they never did any of the work we requested. Why not, we have no idea, but it's as if we are working for rival companies. It's completely ridiculous. Suffice to say that it's been escalated up above their heads and the right message has now got down to those concerned - take your finger out and get it done.

We have an audio conference tomorrow to discuss my report, on which their estimates are based, and then we wait and see what they come up with.