WS-Knowledge

Bad Communication = Great Waste Of Time & Resouces

This is the first time to realize this equation. I always know that Bad Communication is bad and can waste time and resources.
But, I never imagined it ca be that bad or it can cause this severe damage.

I’m leading an integration project where we are building components that consume a WCF Services hosted on a web server.
When we first receive the Integration Guide we couldn’t get in connection with services because the configuration mentioned in the documentation is totally different than the actual required configuration. That was the first communication problem that lasted for a while till we could receive a working configuration. The reason behind delay that web services owned for a company that outsourced a third-party to implement the services for it. So to reach the actual technical team you go through a tunnel of emails from us to the service owner then to the service implementor and back again through the same route.

After many trials to get things to work we agreed to make a 2-3 days workshop to solve issues face-to-face. That was after 2 months of project kick-off. It was the first time for the service implementor to hear from the real service user.
The outcome of the workshop was my recommendation of writing a proper documentation since that service implementor wasn’t ready to do any further modification and updates because for them the project is ready for sign off and we are the only impediment.

After that workshop we tried to reach the technical team again but we failed. Again, raising issues consume very long time.
After two months of the first workshop we decided to have another workshop in our location this time.
The first shocking surprise was… We are testing a different service!!! The endpoint url is different.

After this shock I realized that three companies wasted about four months of efforts and money while the major reason is `Bad Communication`. My company could not launch two products dependent on this integration project. Right there are other reason like lake of proper service interfaces although this also is part of communication in my opinion.
If they had a proper service interfaces, constructors and method signatures that would minimize the need for documentation.
Because, the service will be self-exploratory and here we can coin learned lessons for this experience.

“Bad communication = Great waste of time and resources”
“Integration is all about Interfaces”.
”Implementation Interfaces are part of project communication: developer-to-developer channel"

Another proof that Agile PM can run under PMI ' s PMBOK Guidelines

For fellows who still think that APM can not run under PMI's PMBOK guidelines, here is another proof. Recently, PMI conducted a course about Agile Project Management, summary is below. PMI.org > Career Development Course Schedule ---------------------------- Agile Project Management- NEW Category:  Tools and Techniques Instructor: Griffiths, Mike Level:  Intermediate, Advanced Status:  Full Seminar Length:  2-Day Seminar CEUs:  1.4 PDUs:  14 PMI Member Early Rate:  $1,180 (US) PMI Member Regular Rate:  $1,299 (US) Non-Member Rate:  $1,525 (US) 04/24/2008 - 04/25/2008 Scottsdale, Arizona, USA Hilton Scottsdale Resort and Villas 6333 North Scottsdale Road Scottsdale, AZ 85250 For course details you may check http://www.pmi.org/CareerDevelopment/Pages/CourseSchedule.aspx?CourseScheduleID=45 For me, questions now became: 1) What is APM? and How to best practice it? 2) For what type, or size, of projects will APM be useful? and in what projects should we avoid APM? 3) Finally, What is the difference among Agile Methods, Agile PM and Agile Software Development? I didn't get this yet.

What about Agile Software Development & Project Management ?

Few months ago, I started to read about & study project management. So, I believe that I'm a newbie for Project Management. But recently,  a question showed up to me. What is relation between Project Management and Agile Software Development? More detailed questions will be: Is there any problem or advantage when selecting one of Agile Methods while following PMBOK Guide®? Is any of these methods conform better with PMBOK Guide®? Is this a totally new issue, or may be wrong issue, to think about? In my humble openion, Agile Software Development may represent a Product Lifecyle for project management lifecycle. But I could not figure out yet how can they work better together. Agile methods concentrate on the communication with customer. They are iterative and recursive, similar to progressive elaboration concept of project definition. They require acceptance criteria and continuous integration, concerned about quality. A lot of keywords that I feel them similar to project management keywords. What triggered this discussion that recently I found the Agile community and sponsors had an event in Egypt last March and they created a nice web site about that event. You can find details of event and download presentations and resources from AgileEgypt.com. Sadly, I missed that event. So, I continued the self-paced studies about Agile Methods. One more observation, there are project management tools available, other than famous MS Project & Primavera, for agile project management environment. They are usually free open source tools, the issue I appreciate too much. How can that affect the project management environment? Some of these tools can export schedule into MS Project format and others can not. Fellows interested in Free and Open Source Software Tools for project management can check VerionOne and XPlanner. I'll appreciate to hear from any and every one :) ~ Waheed

Recommended Resource

I'd like to recommend a blog author, babou & his blog http://leadershipchamps.wordpress.com/ He has interesting articles that I read, currently, when possible.

What is Situational Leadership means? « Leadership Champions

I read this intereseting & valuable blog about Leadership What is Situational Leadership means? « Leadership Champions I hope you all find it intereseting.