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.

Facts I never knew about me.

According to Blogthings, I have a Type A personality so big it makes other Type A's shrink away from me, I never shy away from adversity, and I love to tackle impossible problems. Failure is apparently not an option for me and I tend to be controlling, leaving nothing to chance.

My strength is my bold approach to life. My weakness, I don't accept help.

And they can tell all that from my birthdate. Wow :)

A quick trawl through some of the other delights Blogthings has to offer revealed that

• I am only 52% pure ;),
• I come from Saturn, but should rule Mars (?)
• I have experienced 68% of life (do I want to experience the other 32%?),
• My EQ (emotional intelligence quotient) is 133
• I am 70% left-brained (more accurate than most, that one), but
• my brain is 53% female,
• My kissing technique is Perfect (yep, I'm okay with that one too)
• and I could still pass 8th grade Maths.

Oh, and I feel lazy on Sunday afternoons. And I didn't need a quiz to tell me that.

Football Manager

Am I such a management geek that I have to think about it in my spare time as well?

One of my all-time favourite pc games is Football Manager 2005. I was given the game as a present a year or two ago, and started playing it quite seriously while I was off work. After my dedicated "look for work" slot every morning, I used to load up the game, and play Jose Mourinho for a few hours. I was reasonably successful, too, winning the premiership, and the Uefa Cup, although I was knocked out of both the FA cup and the Champions League.

Recently, I started a new game, replacing Sven-Goran Erikson as England manager. So far, I have played four games, three of them World Cup qualifiers and won all of them. Perhaps if I get bored of IT, I can go and manage a football team for a living.

On second thoughts....

What job-seekers want

Well, whaddaya know?

When I wrote a few weeks ago about the factors that motivate people, apparently Accenture went and conducted a survey about it and discovered that job seekers around the world want a robust rewards programme, regular recognition, opportunites for challenging work and quick career growth.

Following on from that, an international survey of HR directors suggests that a company's reputation, culture and the working environment were more important to attracting talent than benefits and compensation, direcly contradicting the opinions of job-seekers.

I wonder where the HR directors got their information from, or were they simply trying to hide the fact that their companies don't pay very well?

It just goes to show that you can prove anything with a survey, depending on who you ask and the questions you pose.

The Condor has landed.... almost.

The feasibility study has more or less concluded. I have spent the last five days with an almost constant headache, despite almost daily 400mg doses of Ibuprofen, frantically typing up all the notes we have taken or printed off the electronic white board (a wonderful invention when it works).

The report runs to 30 pages all told, with more to come.The message, however, is not good. The figure that the business were initially given as a 'thumb suck' guesstimate for the entire project will apparently be consumed almost entirely by the application development effort alone. The Capex costs are extra.

They were also expecting to have some 'tactical' (euphemism for quick-and-dirty) options available to them in the short-term, but we have little information in that area at the moment. The boys from The Parent Company have not been very forthcoming with their estimates of the actual capacity within the system. We do have some advice for changes within the application that will allow more volume to be processed, but TPC are probably not going to allow us to implement them anytime soon.

Frankly, I believe they just don't know how much spare capacity the system has. They are very good at monitoring various parameters and reacting when thresholds are breached, but we are contemplating more than doubling the current volumes within months (not decades) as a tactical move! And then multiplying that by a factor of 5 at least later next year. They are simply not prepared for something like this.

Yesterdays meeting with the Business was therefore, extremely interesting. The Director of Product Development and the Head of E-Commerce listened to the presentation, then started grilling Mr T from TPC about why he could not / would not supply any capacity estimates not costs for upgrading the system or anything.

His response was that the CEO had instructed them to wait while the TPC's new Exec sponsor made up his mind as to what his requirements were. We felt that that story is a little unlikely. Why would he say "Stop what you're doing on that feasibility study, and don't give them any estimates. Wait until we come up with our requirements and then do it all over again. The Subsidiary, who kicked this thing off in the first place can sit on the sidelines and wait until we're good and ready."? Does that make any sense? I didn't think so.

When asked if this was not just a misunderstanding on their part, Mr T had the bald-faced audacity to suggest that perhaps the misunderstanding was not on his part. It's unbelievable!

The meeting concluded with him being actioned to escalate the question, and get it clarified. Then Mr T left, and the rest of us sat around shaking our heads and laughing at the sheer absurdity of it all. We gave a hint that the development cost, excluding any infrastructure work on the part of TPC, was likely to be in the region of four million pounds, and the DPD didn't even blink. He knows that this project has the ability to make the company at least that inside the first six months of operation.

My hope is that it is all a horrible misunderstanding, and that we can persuade them to assist us with the infrastructure work and use our project as the first phase of their more ambitious effort. But that would be too much like common sense.

Surreal

I stood basking in the warmth of the late afternoon sun yesterday, watching the people go by. A rotund man in English civil war period costume walked along carrying an eighteen foot pike. Behind him strolled a German SS officer, side-by-side with a sergeant in the red beret of the British Parachute regiment of 1944, complete with Sten gun and grenades. They greeted a Russian tank commander, who led a pair of Confederate soldiers dragging a small artillery piece behind them.

It was surreal to say the least.

The scene was the annual Military Odyssey, held in the middle of Kent County Showgrounds. The 3-day exhibition featured a hundred stalls full of memorabilia, books, photographs, badges, clothing, even genuine weaponry - deactivated of course.

There were re-enactments of battles from numerous periods in history, from jousting tournaments, English and American Civil War scenes through a Wild West shootout, to Vietnam and WWII re-enactments. The finale, a very noisy half-hour re-enactment of an Allied-v-German encounter shortly after D-Day was absolutely stunning.

An amazing day out.

Condor's wings clipped?

I am gutted.

Yesterday, I got a call from M, one of the Infrastructure guys who have been working on the Condor feasibility workshops with me. You see, the Infrastructure people are all working directly for The Parent Company (TPC), while I and my development colleagues work for The Subsidiary Company (TSC). I'd love to be able to say more, but I can't.

Apparently, the whole idea of Condor as a business proposition was presented to TPC's CEO recently. He liked the idea immensely. Good news, so far, you're thinking, right? Well, yes. But then, M tells me, CEO-fella decides to bring the entire thing in-house, and run the whole project from within TPC. Forget about the fact that the business case for this is based around TSC data and requirements, this is too big to trust those pesky people at TSC with....

M goes on to say that they will not be permitted to reveal any of the performance, capacity or cost figures that we have asked them to provide for the report I need to complete within a week, but they will now be producing their own report. I suspect that they are a little intimidated by what we want to do, and are determined to put some 'spin' on the whole affair to make sure their butts are covered. They have even gone so far as to find a new Executive Sponsor!!

I am determined, however, to make sure that my report reaches the right people and gets escalated up the correct channels. I fully intend that, within a few weeks, the CEO of TSC is chatting to the CEO of TPC, and stating exactly why this should be a TSC-led project, namely that we have the business need, all the required skills, and a plan for delivery. Next year. I doubt that TPC Infrastructure guys could draw up a plan by Christmas next year based on what they've done so far.

I do not understand the logic. After all, we have engaged them in the entire process, accepted their suggestions and agreed on design principles. Why should they not let us go ahead and pay for the first phase of the project before they come along with a completed business case, re-use our code and provide great functionality at relatively low cost? It just does not make sense.

I am just so... frustrated. It feels like I am watching kids in a sandbox, playing with really expensive toys, and someone's just snatched his toy back and won't let anyone else play with it.

Hah! Grown-ups!

Could your staff do a better job?

No of course not! They couldn't possibly do your job better than you can. But, how many of them think they can?

According to an Investors in People survey (yes I know, here we go again) quoted in Management Issues, nearly a quarter of your staff think you don't communicate well enough, and could do a better job than you.

Before we start getting all hot and bothered, however, could we perhaps stop to think that perhaps a lot of our staff don't really know exactly what we do all day. Personally, I doubt whether a quarter of my staff would take my job if it were offered to them on a plate. While a few I know harbour ambitions in the managerial ranks, there are even more who enjoy the technical challenges and more immediate satisfaction that their jobs offer. The overtime can't hurt either.

Still, it should make us all wonder - do we really communicate well enough with our staff?

Condor update

We held the last of the formal workshops today. It was also one of the more productive ones, despite a couple of people not being able to attend.

From five of these workshops we have managed to discuss and agree on a high-level design, including the need for a new service-oriented architecture across both Wintel and IBM Mainframe platforms. There are still a number of actions outstanding, but by the end of the week, I anticipate we should have all the information we need to form a reasonable initial estimate.

All that remains, then, is to document it all.

Strangely, a few years ago I would have jumped at the opportunity to do that. Writing up requirements, specifications, recommendations, was something I enjoyed doing. This one, though, feels different. This report will be read at the highest levels of the organisation, and there are bound to be a number of different viewpoints and perspectives.

I feel under pressure to produce a document that will be all things to everyone who reads it. It's primarily a report to the Business, so it needs to provide an overview of the recommended approach in terms they will understand. It will also, however, be read by senior managers in the Group's IT division, who will want to see technical details of the proposal. This is all complicated by the political elements at play, since there are two distinct stakeholder 'factions'. And there are a million if's and but's, on which the final decision rests.

There is a huge temptation to inject a healthy dose of my own opinion, in an attempt to sway the decision in the direction I would like it to go, but that's not the way it works.

I have until the end of next week to complete the document. There is a lot of material to get through, and I still have not decided how to even organise it.