Richard Zaat

Dilbert - Need more people on the project

Richard Zaat — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 13:32:00 GMT

Dilbert on how management typically reacts to project issues. Notice how the problem stays with the projectmanager whilst he is asking for help

Dilbert on changing methodology during a project

Richard Zaat — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 09:10:00 GMT

Great Dilbert on changing methodology during a project and the ignorance of the ones making these kind of decisions.

Another great Dilbert on budget estimation

Richard Zaat — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 22:09:00 GMT

Why do people keep on asking for estimations about the unknown? In my opinion it tells more about the level of professionalism of the person asking the question than the one that is asked to answer it...

EA (Sparx Enterprise Architect) keeps on asking for password

Richard Zaat — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 09:13:00 GMT

Ever had it happen, that when you

use Vista
have EA stored in a database on the network
are not part of the domain

that EA keeps on asking for the password to connect to the database, no matter what you do? Strangely enough this does not happen within Windows XP.

The solution to this problem is that you should run EA as your domain account.

Take these steps to solve this problem:

Go to the properties of the EA shortcut on your desktop
Add this command to the 'Target': runas.exe /netonly /user:<domain name>\<your username> "<location of the EA.exe file"

e.g.: runas.exe /netonly /user:mydomain\myusername "C:\Program Files (x86)\Sparx Systems\EA\EA.exe"

Each time you run EA via this shortcut, it will first request your password and then you can connect to the database without any problems.

(btw: you can add your pwd to the runas.exe statement, but I would not advise that)

Billy Connelly on requirements

Richard Zaat — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 13:25:00 GMT

Billy says what most customers actually want to say, but never do...but secretly think..

Just listen to the attachment below

Dilbert project estimation

Richard Zaat — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 13:21:00 GMT

Dilbert has a great one about project estimation. I think many people will recognize this situation!

Project Management Truisms

Richard Zaat — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 09:04:00 GMT

When surfing on the web, I found the following Project Management Truisms. It sure is a big list, but there is a truth hidden in each and every one of them.

1. Nothing is impossible for the person who doesn't have to do it.
2. You can con a sucker into committing to an impossible deadline, but you cannot con him into meeting it.
3. At the heart of every large project is a small project trying to get out.
4. The more desperate the situation the more optimistic the situatee.
5. A change freeze is like the abominable snowman: it is a myth and would melt anyway when heat is applied.
6. A user will tell you anything you ask, but nothing more.
7. Of several possible interpretations of a communication, the least convenient is the correct one.
8. There's never enough time to do it right first time but there's always enough time to go back and do it again.
9. The bitterness of poor quality lasts long after the sweetness of making a date is forgotten.
10. I know that you believe that you understand what you think I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.
11. What is not on paper has not been said.
12. A little risk management saves a lot of fan cleaning.
13. If you can keep your head while all about you are losing theirs, you haven't understood the plan.
14. If at first you don't succeed, remove all evidence you ever tried.
15. Feather and down are padding, changes and contingencies will be real events.
16. There are no good project managers - only lucky ones.
17. The more you plan the luckier you get.
18. A project is one small step for the project sponsor, one giant leap for the project manager.
19. Good project management is not so much knowing what to do and when, as knowing what excuses to give and when.
20. If everything is going exactly to plan, something somewhere is going massively wrong.
21. Everyone asks for a strong project manager - when they get one, they don't want one.
22. The same work under the same conditions will be estimated differently by ten different estimators, or by one estimator at ten different times
23. The most valuable and least used word in a project manager's vocabulary is "NO"
24. The more ridiculous the deadline, the more it costs to meet it
25. Too few people on a project can't solve the problem - too many create more problems than they solve
26. You can freeze the clients specifications, but he won't stop expecting
27. The conditions attached to a promise are forgotten, and the promise is remembered
28. What you don't know hurts you
29. What is not on paper has not been said
30. No major project is ever installed on time, within budget, and with the same staff that started it
31. Projects progress quickly until they become 95% complete; then they remain at 95% complete forever
32. If project content is allowed to change freely, then the rate of change will soon exceed the rate of progress
33. Project teams detest progress reporting because it vividly demonstrates their lack of progress
34. Quantitative project management is for predicting cost and schedule overruns well in advance.
35. For a project manager, overruns are as certain as death and taxes.
36. Some projects finish on time in spite of project management best practices.
37. Fast - cheap - good - you can have any two.
38. The project would not have been started if the truth had been told about the cost and timescale.
39. A two-year project will take three years; a three-year project will never finish.
40. When the weight of the project paperwork equals the weight of the project itself, the project can be considered complete.
41. A badly planned project will take three times longer than expected - a well-planned project only twice as long as expected.
42. Warning: dates in a calendar are closer than they appear to be.
43. Anything that can be changed will be changed until there is no time left to change anything.
44. There is no such thing as scope creep, only scope gallop.
45. A project gets a year late one day at a time.
46. If you're 6 months late on a milestone due next week but really believe you can make it, you're a project manager.
47. No project has ever finished on time, within budget, to requirements.
48. Yours won't be the first to.
49. Activity is not achievement.
50. If you don't know how to do a task, start it, then ten people who know less than you will tell you how to do it.
51. The person who says it will take the longest and cost the most is the only one with a clue how to do the job.
52. The sooner you get behind schedule, the more time you have to make it up.
53. The nice thing about not planning is that failure comes as a complete surprise rather than being preceded by a period of worry and depression.
54. Good control reveals problems early - which only mean you'll have longer to worry about them.

Dealing with alternative flows in sequence diagrams

Richard Zaat — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 07:55:00 GMT

When creating sequence diagrams, using the Use Case Specifications, it is always troublesome to determine whether all sequences are to be drawn.

Also there are always parts in a use case that are shared amongst different sequences. To avoid creating an explosion of sequence diagrams, the UML 2.0 specification has created fragments.

I found an interesting (and short!) article on how to relatie alternative flows and sub flows into these fragments.

Check it out at: Managing-Complex-Interactions-with-Sequence-Fragments

Regards,

Richard

Automatically create back-ups of Outlook 2007 .pst files

Richard Zaat — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 17:21:00 GMT

Microsoft has a utility, called pfbackup.exe which allows you to automatically create back-ups from your .pst files.

However, when you install it it does not seem to work in Outlook 2007.

Here's the instruction on how to make it work:

1) Download the pfbackup.exe file from Microsoft's website (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=8B081F3A-B7D0-4B16-B8AF-5A6322F4FD01&displaylang=en)

2) Use WinZip or a similar file extraction tool to extract the files in pfbackup.exe, launcher.exe and pfbackup.msi.

3) Double-click pfbackup.msi and follow the prompts to install it.

4) In Outlook 2007, choose Tools | Trust Center and choose Add-ins from the navigation list on the left. At the bottom of the Add-ins screen, under Manage, select COM Add-ins and click Go.

5) On the COM Add-ins dialog, click Add and navigate to the C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE12\ADDINS folder (if you are using a different language, ..\ADDINS will have a local name (e.g. in Dutch: invoegtoepassingen)). Select outbak.dll and click OK. When you return to the COM Add-ins dialog, you should see a new entry, Outlook Backup Addin, with its check box checked.

6) Click OK to close the COM Add-ins dialog.

7) In Outlook 2007, choose File | Backup (Dutch: Bestand | Reservekopie) and set your backup options.

RSDC 2008 Slides

Richard Zaat — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 14:05:00 GMT

This year I attended the IBM Rational Software Development Conference (RSDC) 2008 in Orlando, Florida. One can really see what is going on inside IBM Rational at the moment, and where the Rational world is turning to. There were 300+ sessions, divided into 14 (+ one executive summit) tracks. What I have taken back from this conference is:

Teamwork (especially with the Jazz platform, in which IBM already invested $250 million)
Process is dead, long live practices (as first advocated by Ivar Jacobson, and nowadays followed by IBM). This simply has to get its reflection within the RMC product.
Agile, agile and again agile. All three meaning different levels of agility....
Toyota and its quality are superb and often referred to

There were a lot of interesting speakers: Scott Ambler, Per Kroll, Ivar Jacobson, Grady Booch, Erich Gamma, Ian Spence, Kurt Bittner....

Slides

In 2007 IBM send the attendees a CD containing all presentation material. Too bad they are not going to do so this year. Every attendee has received a username / password which can be used to access the presentations via the web. This means you have no control whether the interesting presentation will still be there tomorrow. To solve this, I have come up with the following solution:

Unzip the file attached to this blog
Use Firefox, and install the plugin called 'Download them all'. This plugin allows you to download all referenced .zip files (amongst others) on a single webpage. Saves a lot of 'right click | Save as'.
Go to the IBM RSDC 2008 website and download all the presentations from all the tracks.
Unzip the presentations in the presentations directory (created by the zip file in step 1)
Start the website by using either the 'index.html' or the 'agenda_by_speaker.html'.

Note: The aim was not to deliver a complete working website, but just one in which it was easier to identify the content of the presentations and allowing a quick link to the real presentation (and not another zip file).

Enjoy!

Annoying Avi Chunk Viewer window

Richard Zaat — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 07:13:00 GMT

After I installed the K-Lite Codec pack, I sometimes get this Avi Chunk Viewer window at the most annoying times possible. It seems this is caused by a codec called Avi splitter. It pops up when there is an avi found with an incomplete footer.

To remove the Avi Chunk Viewer, do the following:

1. Start the K-Lite Codec Tweak Tool, located in the K-Lite\Configuration start-menu.

2. Go to the Disable part, and select Avi Splitter.

That's it. Although you might have to reboot your computer.

Requirements Networking Group

Richard Zaat — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 15:15:00 GMT

When browsing the internet, I stumbled upon this website with loads of information about requirements: http://www.requirementsnetwork.com.

It contains very useful information, which is presented via:

Forums
Blogs
Articles
Webcasts
Tools

Worth registering (free) and keep as a favorite.

Requirements Management Website

Richard Zaat — Wed, 16 May 2007 09:56:00 GMT

If you are looking for a list of Requirement Tooling, or more information about Analysis, Requirements, the Requirements Management Template, definitions of models, take a look at the following website:

http://www.jiludwig.com/

It is a rich archive of requirements related information.

Owner of the deadline

Richard Zaat — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 12:28:00 GMT

I've noticed many times that projectmanagers find themselves the keepers of the deadline. Everything has to go to reach the golden target, the deadline. And mind you, there is nothing wrong with trying to get things done before the deadline. What is wrong however, is the ownership of the deadline. To me, the projectmanager does not have a deadline. The projectmanager will do its best to achieve the work in time, but the real owner is the customer. And that is a huge difference! Why? Keep on reading...

The reason for a deadline

There are usually a few reasons for having deadlines:

Law
Money / profit

The customer usually will suffer if the deadline is not met. But, it is also up to the customer to move the deadline! Therefore, in my opinion, the customer is the owner of the deadline.

Projectmanager and deadline

How come many projectmanagers feel they own the deadline? I mean, if the solution is not in production at a certain moment in time, it will not influence the projectmanager directly (of course, corrective measures from the business will have their influence, but that is a business penalty, and has nothing to do with the solution). Somehow projectmanagers step into the shoes of the customer when it comes to deadlines. I think it is mostly because the customer does not show any interest in the IT solution, and puts a lot of pressure on the projectmanager. Sometimes fear for the customer, or the penalty plays a role as well.

What to do?

First, the projectmanager must involve the customer, and make the following clear:

1) The customer is the owner of the deadline

By having the customer as the owner of the deadline, it is up to the customer to decide what to do and leave, help prioritize, and spend additional money if required, or even move the deadline a bit. After all, if the solution is not delivered in time, or with the wrong requirements, or quality level, it is the customer that will suffer the most.

2) The projectmanager will do its best to achieve the deadline

(hey, this is really being service minded! -> try to help, but stay realistic) If the projectmanager takes on the role of a service-provider, he will assist the customer in making the important decisions. The projectmanager will make clear what is possible within the current time / budget / resource, and what is required. But the decision stays with the customer. If you have too much work and too little resources / time / budget, make it visible to the customer, and have the customer decide. That is service delivery! Once all this is clear, make an appointment to speak the customer at least once every two weeks. Discuss the progress of the team, the problems, and the issues and risks. Prioritize together with the customer. Make the customer feel important for the project. Really give them the role of the owner of the deadline.

What if the customer does not want to be the owner?

You do not really want this. It means that the customer is not involved, which to me means that the deadline is fake. If it is really important, the customer would love to be involved. But anyway, if this is the case, make sure that all your decisions are communicated towards the customer. Play it open, and tell the customer what requirements you will skip, and how you will prioritize your work and prioritize the requirements. Keep mentioning that if you do not hear anything, you will assume that your decision has been agreed upon (remember, this is business, with a deadline, you are in a rush, and there is no time to wait). Eventually, the customer probably will become involved, without even knowing it. Especially if you take some foolish decisions!

Conclusion

As a projectmanager, do not act like you are the owner of the deadline. The customer owns the deadline, you will only do your best to achieve it. Some things are impossible, and it is your task to show that to the customer (e.g. you cannot give birth to a baby with 9 women in just one month).

Interesting website - loads of tips

Richard Zaat — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 15:13:00 GMT

I have found an interesting website http://www.clarrus.com/resources.htm which contains useful information about:

Project Management Tips
QA, Test, CM Tips
Analysis, Design Tips
Business Tips
People Tips
Process Tips
Recommended Books
Articles

There is loads of information present, which will help to develop new approaches / ideas.