Cricket style retrospective...

Retrospective is one of the event the team is always looking forward. I always try to bring something new which can make them take more interest in retrospective. Such variety in retrospective can make team members think out of the box and help them to nurture their creativity. 

As India enters in semi finals of Cricket World Cup 2015, everyone is super excited and in high spirit. So, for the last retrospective, I came with new idea of Cricket style retrospective.

Strikers

These are the activities, interactions, tools, techniques that helped the team to achieve the sprint goal.

Non-Strikers

These are the intentional activities, interactions, tools, techniques that team used but didn't help team achieve the Sprint Goal and team would like to STOP using them. 

Cheer Leaders

These are the improvement ideas for next sprint.

Boundary

The Sprint Goal.

Fielders

These are the impediments that stopped team from making progress towards the Sprint Goal and team want to eliminate them. 

Psychometric tests to help know the team better

Success of a Project Manager is highly dependent on the team he / she is managing. It would be better to be informed about the personalities of individuals of your team. Such psychometric tests of communication styles and learning styles could be very helpful. Understanding how team members communicate and how they learn and process new information can be vital to avoiding and removing roadblocks to the project plan. Learning style is not often considered outside of an educational setting. However, project team members receive, process and interpret new information every day.

Recently I came across to two very useful psychometric tests, MBIT^® and Firo-b^®. It gave me good interest to know more about them. I personally took those test and found the result very appropriate. I am planning to use this on my team in near future. I will write on my experiment on this blog.

Meanwhile, readers can use below links for the MBIT and Firo-b online tests...
https://www.mbticomplete.com/contents/learnmore.aspx
https://www.cpp.com/products/mbti/index.aspx
http://testets.com/pages/Tests_by_BRAND_FIRO-B.html 

In search for affordable PMP Study Material...

After achieving CAPM, I set my eyes on bigger target, PMP®. For PMP exam preparation I was looking for a tool, which is simple, very powerful and most importantly affordable.

There is a very huge reason for stating "Affordable" as most important characteristic. The average Indian IT Project Manager Salary range is INR 828,739 to INR 1,452,949 per annum ^[1] which is approximately $18,000 to $32,250. Where, in USA the range is $67,470 to $106,097 ^[2]. At the other side the PMP® study material cost range is between $50 to some thousand dollars. And this range is same across the world despite to salary difference.

I really would like some suggestions from all of you my friends if you can find some powerful yet affordable study material for PMP exam preparation.

References:
[1]. http://www.payscale.com/research/IN/Job=Project_Manager,_Software_Development/Salary
[2]. http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Project_Manager%2c_Information_Technology_%28IT%29/Salary

A New Approach for Constructing and Generating AOA Networks

In this MPP era, how many of you still use AOA and AON techniques to find your Project Management problems' solutions? Honestly speaking, I have stopped using AOA and AON techniques after start using Microsoft Project. Microsoft Project is quite fast to get solution but, somehow I really miss using AOA and AON. Today while surfing I found out this really great article about "A New Approach for Constructing and Generating AOA Networks" on The Scientific Journals. It's really worth to read.


http://www.scientificjournals.org/journals2007/articles/1049.htm

How to create Project Charter in 7 Easy Steps

 

The Project charter is the document that officially starts the project. The charter is one of the most important documents on a project. It is essential for creating the project. The project can’t be official without Project Charter. Absence of Project Charter may create huge difficulties to Project Manager (My personal experience).

Below are seven easy steps to create project charter document.

• To create a Project Charter, you must be quite clear about the project and its objectives. Begin the document by explaining the project objectives and effect of that project on organization. The charter basically reflect the usefulness of the project for company and its customers. And the main thing, you must to be convinced by it’s statement of purpose.
• Make list of all the stakeholders and all the persons going to involve in the project. Define their roles and responsibilities. Organization chart can work pretty good here.
• Developing Project Charter is a group activity. A single person cannot create project charter by alone. Before work on the project can commence, the project charter must be supported by the person in charge or a sponsor. The supervising person signs the project charter document to indicate approval.
• Define the context and scope of the project, specifying who or what the project will affect. Include the expectations and limitations to the project and people affected by it.
• Measurement is very important in any project. Project Charter document must have the measurable goals documented.
• Risk analysis and plan are also quite important in project execution and planning. The Project Charter document should include contingency plans for possible risks. 
• Resource plan also need to be included in Project Charter document. Include a list of financial, material and staffing resources in project charter.

Image Rotation with JQuery

 

I was finding some JQuery plug-ins for image rotation. And I found few excellent stuff. Check below links…

http://designm.ag/tutorials/image-rotator-css-jquery/

http://www.chazzuka.com/blog/?p=101

JQuery simply rocks… It’s my latest love…

Project Server 2007 Implementation

 

Finally, I got success in implementing Microsoft Project Server 2007 in my organization. And at first impression, it seems really cool tool for project management. And I hope this first impression stay last long. The deployment of the Project Server was little bit hectic. That might be due to not having enough experience implementing and installing that. Below are the features, which I really like into Project Server 2007.

• Excellent Project Web Application.
• Sync. with Microsoft Project Planner. (It’s really cool)
• Sync. of tasks and time sheet with Microsoft Outlook. (It’s really helpful, tried in pilot run. Quite impressed).
• Share Point - document management. And documents’ sync. with Microsoft Outlook.
• Resource Center.
• Sync. with Active Directory.

Isn’t it seems cool?? Find below articles for Project Server 2007 implementation guides.

“Deployment for Office Project Server 2007”— http://technet2.microsoft.com/Office/en-us/library/0c43062d-30e3-49b1-9705-ed447ad1d2561033.mspx

“Deployment for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 technology”—http://technet2.microsoft.com/windowsserver/WSS/en/library/1f505e96-60e2-41ac-bf5d-9739105f047c1033.mspx