I've resigned from my job...

Yesterday I handed in my resignation letter, giving notice of 8 weeks, my last day at work targeting 13 May 2011.  It was surreal, and I had a deja-vu moment just as I was writing up the letter, it was as if I've seen myself doing this before in a dream...I've had a few occasions of this deja-vu where I could almost predict what's going to happen next, or the situation seems really familiar...

Even though I've not formally accepted a job offer so in theory I don't have a job waiting for me, I was duty bound to let my employer know of my intentions to leave.  Some might say this was a foolish move, but I was faced with an unusual dilemma: I had a got a new job at my company and was going to start with my new team this week, I was in the process of handing over my old job and join the new team.  We were going to plan my next set of work and was being assigned to a critical project where the CEO was the main stakeholder.  This was a critical project where the stress was going to be high and the pressure to deliver, enormous.  Knowing that I'd made the decision to leave for South Africa, I felt duty bound to come clean with my new manager - it could have went either way:  I could be put on this project and commit to working through my notice period, or take on other tasks the company felt they needed help with, or my employment be terminated immediately, or stay with my old team...

It turns out however, that my new boss was very understanding and appreciative. I wish I'd made the move to his team years ago. In fact, his team is considered the crem-de-la-crem of the company (working on advanced development), and I felt honoured to have got the job, competing with eight other extremely competent colleagues...and now I was leaving!!  So my new boss says he understands completely, family should always come first, and it was the right thing to do instead of waiting to take on new tasks and then spring the notice on him suddenly.  He was very quick to resolve everything with HR and my old manager, and we came to an amicable agreement.

I would work with my new boss for the rest of my stay with the company, working on an invention of mine called "Talking EPG", bringing it to closure before I leave...What a wonderful way to stay motivated for my remaining 8 weeks!  I was dreading going back to my old job and didn't want to take on the other stressful project.  

"Talking EPG" is a project I started about 5 years ago aimed at enhancing accessibility for digital TV. Essentially for people who don't like reading the text on the Electronic Program Guides, they have the option of the TV speaking out the text for you. This was before the days of iPhone/Android, nowadays most modern devices have some sort of speech capability. Soon it'll come to TVs and Set-top-boxes.  I wish I could say my invention became public before anyone else, but alas, my company was too slow to pick it up (I'll write about that in another post on Innovations soon to come) and other company has went public and are already selling these boxes in the UK.  Anyway, accessibility is a passion of mine, one that I hope to pursue in the years to come.  So my new boss says they need parts of my Talking EPG to integrate with another project they're running...without hesitation, I jumped at the chance!!

Working on my own creations would be a nice way to go, and also leave the stressful part to the whole moving back to SA.

So I have 8 weeks to:
- fix my house up, find a letting agent and get a renter committed
- sort out all the paperwork for SA home affairs
- get relocation companies to quote on the move
- agree everything with new employer (actually sign a contract when it's ready, hopefully there's going to be a contract)
- sort out vehicle import
- sort out paperwork for UK

I should be back in SA by June time...fingers crossed

Review: Good Boss, Bad Boss by Rob Sutton

Fight as if you're right; listen as if you're wrong.If you plant a seed in the ground, you don't dig it up each day to see how it's doing.Beware of your inner jerk. Peformance, humanity...Self-awareness.Bossholes

...are just a few snippets that stand out for me. This piece is not just an opinionated work by Sutton, it's a culmination of a life time's research, backed by professional studies, research and personal accounts from the workplace. Although it could be said the vast majority of the material is from US companies, the problems of being a good/bad boss/manager are relevant to all countries & cultures - humanity.

This book can be read by managers and subordinates alike - If you're a manager, then hopefully you'll leave your ego at the door, open yourself to new insights, allowing you to question yourself, an exercise of introspection; if you don't experience an "aha" moment, then you're either a very good boss, or just an asshole...for those people reporting to managers/bosses, you'll find the material useful in managing your boss, to detect signs of "bossholes" and possibly change you ways, e.g. don't take it personal, find methods to deal effectively with an asshole boss...



 


It's unbelievable how I found myself looking back to scenarios in my own professional life, and of late, have had to deal with some really difficult people, including my bosses.  I can personally relate to having a boss who is so full of himself that he barely listens to people, or appears to be listening, but doesn't heed a word being said. Once he zones in on a train of thought, for his understanding and for all intents and purposes "rightly or wrongly" (his famous quotes) assumes his way is the best without giving a chance to the others for trying out their ways....on top of that, the guy builds upon his 20 years of industry experience and always uses that as leverage against his subordinates. Instead of teaching the ropes, this guy is just plain bossy - a manager without any form of coaching skills, of rather selfishly keeps the skills and experience preventing others from learning.  Among other the things, this guy was notorious for delaying meetings, extending the meetings to have "educate me session" with no cause for concern if you've got other commitments to attend to. Not to mention, he takes over meetings, and wants to be involved in the detail...I've also had bosses where after having been completely honest about issues, does nothing to improve the situation...At first I thought it was just down to UK management style and culture (i.e. being aggressive, in control, focussing on production production production, less on people people people) - but then I later worked with some brilliant managers that were very good coaches, mentors and leaders.  So it's good not to generalise... Anyway, one should always take time to assess the situation, as the saying goes to "soss it out" - and if you don't like what you see, or the person you might become as a result of working for a crappy boss, then walk away.... 


 
If only they could read this book and learn a thing or two. But even then, as the example cited in the book, even if you give the book to your asshole boss as a gift, he won't get it, think that he's an excellent boss...afterall a leopard can't change its spots, you can't teach an old dog new tricks....unless you empty your tea cup ;-)  And yes, I'll be reading the The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilised Workplace and Surviving One That Isn't in the near future...

What's in a nationality anyway??

After 33 years of being considered a South African, I found out today that actually I, along with my wife, are not South Africans any more. Our SA citizenship was lost automatically on acquiring British citizenship because we had not formally applied for permission, or retention of SA citizenship BEFORE applying for UK Naturalisation!

My fault really :-( I was impatient to get my UK nationality sorted out, and I thought I could kill two birds with one stone. So what I did back in 2009 was apply in parallel. I thought I could get my Home Office letter proving  I'm not yet a UK citizen, send that off to SA Home Affairs at at the same time apply for UK naturalisation...but it didn't work out well, because as soon as I got the letters from Home Office, the naturalisation application followed suit the next day!

So I could've sent the SA retention application anyway to see what would happen, but decided against doing that because if for some reason the SA people called the UK Home office then that letter would've contradicted the status with the Home Office...so I said, not a big deal...I'm pretty much free to travel the world on a UK passport and I could zip in and out of SA on visits to the family...

Little did I realise that I would actually be moving back to SA soon, the idea of going back to work in SA was far off in the future. Just proves how life is so unpredictable.

So after many weeks of email conversation umming and arrrring about my situation with various immigration consultants, which by the way, gave conflicting advice, I decided to go to the SA Consulate today to get things sorted out. What was really annoying though, is that the people I was talking to via email, refused to offer advice, or make any effort in understanding my situation. All I got was "Please come in with BI-529 application, original certificates and we'll see what we can do".  Up at 4AM getting ready for the trip to London, took the 6:43 train to London Waterloo from Eastleigh station. I thought I would make it in good time as the office only opens at 08h45am - but when I turned the corner to Whitehall, looking for the building as I hadn't been there in my 8 years of living in UK, I walk past this long queue of people, and then it struck me I was right in front of the building...lo and behold, in typical SA fashion, people are queuing out early in the cold...a nice introduction of what's in store for me when I get back :-)

Waiting in the queue for 30 minutes, then get called, I speak to the lady at the counter, explain the situation and why I'm there.

"Show me your paperwork"
"Here you go - BI-529, ID book, passport, naturalisation"
"Where's your photocopies"
"What photocopies - nobody mentioned I needed photocopies - see the email. They said bring original documents"
"I don't know who's that person who told you that..."
"Mrs Stone, she works here. I didn't bring copies. Do you have a photocopier I could use?"
"We don't do photocopies, that's not what we're here for. Go and get photocopies and come back"
"I'm not from London, where should I go?"
"Just go round to Charing cross station, opposite is Ryman stationer - you can get copies there. Come back and see me"

I lose an 45 minutes sorting the photocopies out....but the rest of the waiting and the process pretty much went smoothly...

Long story short - I'm in a bit of a mess here because I didn't follow protocol to the letter. And in an instant, one can lose one's nationality...In my heart I'm still African, even though I live in the UK and am naturalised, my heart still belongs in Africa - but I've blended into UK society and pretty much become invisible like the rest of the 60 million sheep living a life of comfort, efficiency, safety and routine...

Advice to you if you're a South African living in the UK that just happened to stumble upon my blog:
- Follow procedure
- Be very patient
- You will lose your citizenship if you don't follow the rules to the letter. Do not apply for naturalisation before doing the SA paperwork...
- By the way, the email address they have on their website for emergencies:

In cases of extreme emergency, applicants concerned should send their emergency requests to:Lusibanet@dirco.gov.za or fax to: 020 783 5198 

is wrong - you should use: Lusibanet@foreign.gov.za

Another trick I found to get information about who to contact - just google "dirco.gov.za" and you'll find some useful sites and contact names popping up...this site contains some useful info not on the consular pages...

Still, it's not a complete loss. I can return to SA as a permanent resident, live and work there without restrictions, the only exception is I won't be considered a citizen of South Africa...if I live there long enough, 3 years, then I'm entitled to regain SA citizenship...or possibly apply for dual-citizenship...

The Build Master by Vincent Maraia (Microsoft build secrets exposed)

If you're in the business of software product development and management and are not using a continuous build and configuration management system, then you should definitely reconsider your approach. This book offers insight into how Microsoft handles its product build processes, it's always interesting to learn from the world's most successful software outfit - finding out about Microsoft isn't easy, so any bit of inside info is useful.

Regardless of this book being out-of-date, especially with the influence of continuous integration and delivery, and the large-scale adoption of Agile development processes; where information is freely available on the net - I still recommend this book to those who have little or no experience on effectively maintaining product code, what you'll learn is the following:

• Processes, techniques and tools to make build, configuration management, integration and testing easier, more controllable and predictable
• Change the way you think: The people in power is the Build, Integration and CM team, not component developers. Learn ways to control check-ins, find out about Triage and WAR room. Learn about Dogfooding
• Interesting side-notes on the inner workings on Microsoft, containing memos from Bill Gates himself, Microsoft's management philosophy, etc.

If you're not a fan of Microsoft or your products are not based on Windows, then this book isn't for you. There are plenty of good resource material available on the web...

PMP - Project Managment Professional Certification Course - Day 4

By the way, I haven't yet registered on the PMI website yet, so I've not booked my exam. The guidance is that we should do this asap because as we learnt from the Communications Management process, the chances of recollection after a month are pretty slim. So I plan do register over the weekend. Registration a project in itself!

So yesterday covered Chapter 11 Project Risk Management and Chapter 8 Project Quality Management


Again, it is interesting that the team participating in the training, consisting of Delivery, R&D and the Services organisations, did not own the Risk Management and Quality Management activities of the PMP processes, going back to the nature and culture of the company. For sure, we do manage risks, but in our own areas of expertise. In my case, as a Software Project Manager, we utilise the Agile Development Methodology and I do risk management every iteration, during the initiation/planning stage, through the iteration until delivery, repeated every 6 weeks. But that's in my own world of development, as a "development owner", and the development of a software stack, though a project in itself, is usually just a piece of the puzzle, the puzzle though is managed by top management, and they don't call themselves project managers...when in fact, they are - we're not given that visibility. However, I have initiated brainstorming sessions pro-actively myself and contributed to generating the risk register, but I haven't been accountable a program activity apart from maintaining responsibility and accountability for my deliverable.

The same can be said for Quality Management. We don't have a specific Quality Department, although quality is built-in from the ground up as part of our Development Methodology. We have very strict product quality control, including but not limited to Zero MISRA Warnings, Zero Compiler &  Lint Warnings, Minimum Acceptable Line Coverage, Minimum Branch Coverage, Measure Code Complexity, Minimum Defect Criteria, Root Cause Analysis, Rolling QC, Continuous Integration, Component Unit Test, and very strong Configuration Management System and use Static Analysis tools like Klocwork as well as search for Open Source violations with Blackduck. ..So we are pretty solid code product quality - it wasn't easy of course, and we learnt from past mistakes. We have build masters, war rooms, in fact we do way more than covered in the Build Master.

On the Quality Assurance side that, according to PMI is the process of measuring and controlling the quality of the project itself, well, we don't really do much of this - although we do monitor and question if our project processes are working and whether anything can be optimised - but we don't really measure our performance against a baseline, or have metrics in place that illustrate the health of the processes. Certainly worth considering, but again, this is usually a department wide policy initiative that needs top-management buy-in.

As a project manager however, the PM is ultimately accountable for the quality of his/her project. Even though I don't manage the QA of my project personally, I must ensure it is being done and followed to the letter. In the software product development world, projects pretty much have to respect the product rules of development and management, so thankfully, much of the work is just automatically inherited.

----------------oOo------------------------------
Chapter 11 Project Risk Management
Risk Management today is considered the most import thing in the project management arena, since it is very difficult to measure in reality. Some companies use the title "Risk Manager" as a substitute for "Project Manager" in job descriptions.

What is a Risk?
A risk is a possibility than an event with adverse consequences for the project will occur. An event is a point in time. Classic mistake of PMs is to confuse problems and issues as risks.  The opposite of risk is opportunity, which need to be managed as well. Good PMs maintain two registers: Risk Register AND an Opportunities register.
Risk can be considered as a measure of uncertainty. As the project matures, i.e. as we go deeper into the project lifecylce, the amount of uncertainty decreases, but the amount at stake increases. When the amount of uncertainty equals the amount at stake, at the intersection point, the risk is considered to be the greatest, nearing the end of execution.


Exam question: Risk Aversion - due to human nature, some people are risk takers, others are risk avoiders. It's about a person's willingness to tackle risky situations.

Six processes in Risk Management:
1. Plan Risk Management - Planning process
2. Identify Risks - Planning
3. Perform Qualitative Risk Analysis - Planning
4. Perform Quantitative Risk Analysis - Planning
5. Plan Risk Responese - Planning
6. Monitor and Control Risks - Monitor & Control

To Summarise:
Risk Management is identifying the risks, create a risk register, assign owners to risks, actively monitor and control the risks throughout the lifecycle of the project, especially the execution phase. However, according to PMI, the most crucial process in getting your risks sorted out, is the Planning stage.

Exam Terminology
Business Risk - a normal risk of doing business with an opportunity of gain or loss. Business risks dealt with top management.
Pure Risk - risk not related to the business with a possibility of loss only. Project managers deal with pure risk not business risks.

Categories of Risk

• Technical/Quality/Performance - Reliance on unproven or complex technology, unrealistic performance goals, changes to technology used, project management risks: poor planning 
• Organisational - cost, time, scope objectives internally inconsistent, resource conflict
• External - legal issues, changing owner priorities, country risk, weather

Qualitative Analysis - Essentially tools that allow you to determine the risk factor, by assessing the risk against Probability and Impact, for each assigning a weighting (high, medium, low) point system in calculating the risk factor:
Risk Factor or Risk Rank = Probability score X Impact Score
This is added to the Risk Register

Risk Map - A tool used to visualise the areas of risk according to the risk factors

Quantitative Analysis - is all about MONETARY impact. Tools:

• Decision Trees  - visual aid that maps the path of various decisions/routes showing the monetary output
• Simulation - use Monte Carlo simulation, assuming statistical distribution
• Sensitivity Analysis - ability to assess what will be the impact of changing something on a project (a tool is normally used)
• Expected  Monetary Value (EMV) - Do not confuse this with EVM Earned Value Measurement - they're not related! EMV is the sum of the values of all possible outcomes of the risk event (random variable) weighted by their respective probabilities

Strategies for Negative Risks

• Avoid: eliminate the exposure to the risk. Could change the scope of work, remove constraints or use alternative resources or suppliers. This may affect overall project objectives, customer satisfaction and profitability or cost.
• Transfer: insurance or subcontracting, but remember the accountability remains with you, the PM! Transfer could involve subcontracting the work to an outside organisation, possibly better equipped to deal with the risk due to Resources, Expertise, Experience, Economies of scale. This of course may introduce new risks and costs. Insurance: substitute a known, small cost for an uncertain damage.
• Mitigate: This is very much a main part of pro-active risk management. Reduce the probability of the event. Focus on the risk factors by acquiring information to reduce the uncertainty. Take preventative steps for example, select more suppliers. Reduce the impact of the event, have recovery plans in place, also keep reserves - materials, resources, budget, time.
• Acceptance: it may turn out that the risk is not serious enough to warrant the time, energy and money to mitigate. Suitable for low impact, low probability, high mitigation cost events.

Strategies for Positive Risks

• Exploit: to ensure that the opportunity is realised
• Share: allocating ownership to a third party who is best able to capture the opportunity for the benefit of the project
• Enhance: modifies the "size" of an opportunity
• Accept: no change in the project management plan to deal with the risk

Residual and Secondary Risk

• Residual: risks are those that remain after avoidance, transfer or mitigation responses have been taken
• Secondary: risks that arise as a direct result of implementing a risk response

Risk-related Contractual Agreements

• Fixed price contract
• Insurance
• Performance bond
• Bonuses and penalties

Risk Register

A good risk register contains the following:

• Category of Risk
• Event (what is the event)
• Consequence of event
• Probability of occurrence
• Impact
• Cost
• Response to risk (Avoid, Transfer, Mitigate, Accept)
• Contingency/Recovery
• Risk Owner
• Status

Depending on the size and nature of the project, one can use Excel or a tool. Read more here

My Own take on the Subject
Risk is an interesting area that can consume a majority of one's time, it is almost a full time job. To manage risk well, the project must have a culture of embracing risks, i.e. in general people are afraid of communicating the risk and wait too long, and when the event occurs and becomes a critical issue, it's too late to say "I knew this would happen all along". People from all levels of the project should be empowered to communicate any concerns they have on the project - active feedback and active response from the project team is required. During the course of monitoring and controlling the project, the PM should ask the right questions - it's not often that people give you the most truthful answer, and generally when a PM requests for a status update on a task or activity, the usual response is "just provide enough info to get the PM off my back" - So more often than not I find myself drilling down to get the answers I seek, and in so doing try to uncover potential issues before-hand...I am a big fan of Tom Demarco - take a look at his books in the side bar. I recommend reading all of them, but it's a pity that having read all of them myself, I find myself in the wrong company environment that don't appreciate the professionalism behind some of these topics, and are quick to dismiss my attempts as academic exercises, not fitting with practicality and people rely on their past experience to manage ongoing projects...In any case, should the right opportunity come my way, I'll seize the it to ensure I implement some of these practices...

----------------oOo---------------------------
Chapter 8 Project Quality Assurance
Main aim of QA is to ensure Customer Satisfaction at the end of the project.
Quality Assurance (QA) - deals with Project Processes
Quality Control (QC) - deals with the product / deliverable
Primary responsibility for quality lies with the project manager.
Exam prep
Quality Initiatives:

• The Deming Improvement Cycle - always iteratively checking: Plan, Do, Check, Act
• TQM (Total Quality Measurement)
• Six Sigma - all about the standard deviation between -3 sigma and +3 sigma, normal distribution. 99.73% normal case, six sigma 99.99% failure rate
• Failure Mode and Effect Analysis - Fishbone or Ishikawa diagram
• Design Reviews
• Voice of Customer
• Cost of Quality - how do we measure the cost of quality? Important topic

Quality management process:

1. Plan Quality - Planning

2. Perform Quality Assurance - Executing

3. Perform Quality Control - Monitoring and Control

Cost of Quality - Conformance

Ensuring conformance to requirements - money spent during the project to avoid failures:

• Prevention - Quality planning, training, process control, field testing, Design validation
• Appraisal - Process evaluation, test evaluation, quality audits, maintenance and calibration of eqipment

Cost of Quality - Non-Conformance

Money spent during and after the project because of failures

• Internal Failure - these are failures not visible to the customer that we can fix internally
• External Failure - this is noticed by the customer and can be the following: Scrap, Rework, Expediting, Additional material of inventory, Warranty repairs or Service, Complaint handling, Liability Judgements, Product recalls, Product corrective action

Operational Definitions - Metrics

• Metric = measure. A numerical representation of an attribute of interest
• Criteria - indicators used to compare and evaluate alternatives
• Performance measurements - indicators used to determine how well the project is being executed

Tools & techniques for Quality Control

• Cause and Effect Diagrams
• Control Charts
• Flowcharting
• Histogram
• Pareto chart
• Run Chart / Trend
• Scatter diagram
• Statistical Sampling
• Inspection
• Approved change requests review
• Variability analysis
• Pareto's law