Meetings Today

I’m writing this at work since I’m going right from here to do phone calling for the most liberal candidate for governor. It’s frightening to think of several hours on the phone but I’ll survive.

Over lunch time I had an hour-long meeting to discuss the job responsibilities of the project managers in my group that do different stuff than I do. We’re all PMs though, so all of us had to be in the discussion which was slow and painful. We had to translate each activity that a PM might do into separate Planning, Execution and Communication goals. OMG it was painful and we barely got started, so now we’re going to meet every Tuesday at lunch time until we’re done.

While it’s annoying to write those responsibilities, that document will form the basis for the PM’s reviews so they are being given the opportunity to create goals that really match their work. My job document was written before I got there.

The second thing that happened was straight two hours of meetings on my newest project. First there was a “core” meeting with more than a dozen people, then I ran a Quality meeting. By the time the group got to my meeting, they’re all burnt out (most also had lunchtime meetings) and antsy. This is the late stages of the project with major milestones coming in February and everyone has lots to do. Unfortunately no one paid any attention to testing earlier in the project so I’m backtracking a little and trying to get things organized which seems like a waste of time to a few people in the group. AHHHHHHHHHH. They’re testing like crazy but they don’t even know if they’re testing all the requirements.

Today, I figured I would try to be more visual in my approach to my meeting so I created a calendar with some key dates and we filled in the rest of the dates. About three quarters of the way I had to start doing a lot of “hey, let’s talk about that next week, but right now could we just figure out when we’re…” Overall it was good, we accomplished a lot and had some laughs and I didn’t show too much ignorance of the product or their process. What more can you ask for?

Automatic Email Deletion....Nooooo!

About two months ago everyone at my workplace (probably the whole corporation) received a friendly email explaining that the company had adopted a new email policy. In addition to limiting the size of everyone's mailbox, any emails more than three months old would be automatically deleted starting on a day in February.

I read through the email several times looking for the loophole, something like "emails you designate for follow up will not be deleted" or "this applies to everyone except technical project managers sitting on the south side of the really big building." There were no loopholes.

Yes, I know that you can create personal mailboxes on your computer and back them up in any number of ways. Yes, I agree that some people (e.g., me) keep more emails than they really need to. Yes, I know a corporation with tens of thousands of email users probably has to have a server room about the size of a stadium just to store all those emails.

But automatically deleting emails? When I expressed my horror about this, my manager just shrugged his shoulders--kind of a "whatever" shrug. No one else seems to think (or will say they think) that's it's creepy. What's next, deleting programs from your computer that you're really not supposed to have there? (I bring this up because I got a form letter asking me why I had Quicktime on my PC and suggesting, but not demanding, that I remove it.)

I've been adjusting. I created my personal folder, moved some files into it, and set up a search folder so I can look weekly and see what is going to be automatically deleted in the next week. I stopped complainly out loud since, after all, I've only been there three months and it's not a big problem for me.

It's just the principle of the thing, right?

It's late so this will be short.

My class today was really fun. We were talking through the planning and development phases of a project, so we watched an entertaining video about XP development and testing and then attempted to build a "product" for our customer (the instructor) using playing cards and tape. Not only did our product fail, we also forgot to follow all the rules we had learned over the last three days. That was the point of the exercise, to show you how easy it was to overlook good change control, risk management, etc. We had a lot of fun failing too. I have one more day of class, part of which I have to miss since I have to lead a meeting in the late morning.

I had my weekly one-on-one with my manager. I tell him interesting things about what I'm doing (he doesn't want to hear the details) and then he asks me penetrating questions that get me thinking about how I can do better. I'm sure I get more out of the meetings than he does.

While I'm not the world's greatest expert on testing (my peer is an expert), I've managed to stumble into some interesting areas. The best is building a relationship between my group and the group that directs testing for "the business."

Who is "the business?" During my first couple of months I would hear people say things like "Oh, he's from the business." I had no idea what that meant but I was sure that everyone else knew. I knew I was in Technology, but isn't technology part of the business? I tried asking people about "the business" but people in Tech were evasive and people in the business would say "Well, I'm in the business" and stop there which told me absolutely nothing.

I finally felt better when, at my Friday quality meeting, a fifteen year company veteran looked a guy from "the business" right in the eye and asked "Just who do you mean when you say the business?" He was surprised, stammered a little, then reeled off a list of groups that sounded businessy. There was a collective "Oh, I see" in the room. Just another workplace mystery solved.

I'm taking a project management class every morning this week. The teacher is great-she has every certification I've ever heard of, is funny, and has lots of experience doing all sorts of projects.

Most of the class is group work. She introduces a topic like how to identify and deal with risk, then we go into groups and do that using a case study. I'm in a group where we all have roles and I guess we're going to get a "project" to do that involves us actually planning, creating, testing and releasing something by Friday.

The people in the class are either project managers in groups like me or technical people who are going to start managing projects. Everyone is friendly and the group discussions are intense. I actually already know about five of the twelve people.

After class today my manager called me and my peer in to tell us that there is going to be some other types of project management work we can do besides quality. He said (and he really was sincere) that we need to think about how we can be best prepared for senior project management jobs or other jobs in the company and he thought we'd get burnt out if we do the same thing all the time. Seriously. So we said "Sure."

After that I had my first Quality meeting with a new project team. These are folks that are very deep into the details of the content that we're serving--they're the ones that can look at something and say "That comma shouldn't be there" and give you the reason why in legal terms. I was worried that they would either not be interested in Quality or just not participate. They did, however, have a lot of questions for each other about how we are testing and though a portion was over my head (writing the minutes is going to suck), we had a productive hour.

Those first few minutes of the meeting were tough. Even though I know they're nice people, it's pretty intimidating when a group of people you really don't know all look at you waiting for you to say the right thing. It takes me back to my short teaching career when 25 people did that. The only way to approach that problem is preparation, preparation, preparation. Too bad I like things to be spontaneous. Oh well, this is only for five years.

Coffee Club Culture

There is a chain coffee store in my workplace, a Moose Coffee. It looks like a regular Moose with the usual prices and products--it's just tucked away inside a large sunny space on the fourth floor of the main building. The coffee shop is, in fact, the most successful store in the Moose chain.

There are several things you notice when you visit the Moose. First, the people that work there are really friendly. Really, really friendly. They know the names of a bunch of the customers and know their drinks. In fact, this Moose just recently won the first "really, really friendly" award from the chain. The manager, a woman who has worked her way from serious illness to this success, regularly engages anyone who will make eye contact with her in conversation on her subject of the day (we've talked about her grandchild, and cappucinos with too much milk).

Second, there are really a lot of people working there, most of them young women. In the morning when it's busy there are people at three registers, two people making drinks, and one or two people walking up and down the line of up to twenty people at a time taking orders for coffee or "fancy drinks."

There are people (okay, mostly guys) that have learned the names of all the young women and like to hang around the Moose just a little longer than necessary, loudly telling (really funny?) stories that are received with a big smile. There are also a few women who hang around trading family news with the Moose crew. That clogs up the small waiting space during coffee rush hour for those of us that are just passing through.

I do pay attention to who is working. By now I've figured out who can make a dry cappucino and who can't, so I take a look and don't even order if I see someone on the machine that's going to make me a latte (yuk!).

No one at the Moose knows my name (unless they see my security badge) or my usual drink. I don't know whether to be depressed about that or not. Maybe when my projects launch in 2008 I'll have time to hang around and really be part of the culture.

How soon do new things get old?

As I took a Widgeteer for a tour at lunch time today, it occured to me that I no longer saw my work place with the eyes of an outsider or even a newbie. Am I taking the cruise ship for granted after only three months? Do I feel like it is (yawn) just another place to work?

Let's look at how I relate now to some things I blogged about during my first weeks.

- The building that seemed as big as the sMall of America is just a big building in which I can find any person or room with a little wandering. That's how everyone does it. The stairs are now part of my regular workout program.

- I've bought something from every station in the fancy cafeteria but I usually go for the tacos or the salad bar, not the fancy stuff. I also use the less fancy and less crowded cafeteria that the manufacturing people use in another building.

- I've taken two classes and I am signed up for three more, one of which is four hours a day for a week. They've been great so far. I check out books from the library occasionally but I do wander through the new book displays once a week.

- I park in almost the same place every day in the third parking lot from the door and don't try to work out schemes to park closer. I've only used the shuttle during storms.

- I try not to hit the coffee shop too much, usually only going when I'm nodding off AND there's a barista on duty that knows that a dry capucino has a lot less milk than a latte. (This relates to the Coffee Shop Cult that I'll blog about very soon.)

- I love getting the free fruit but I often forget to pick it up.

So I've developed my way of relating to the amenities. Does that mean I don't appreciate them? I don't think so. I know this is the nicest place I've ever worked in and may become the nicest place I ever worked in so I continue to appreciate these things even if I (yawn) don't get as excited as I did that first week.

What are project managers like?

I had a lot of face time today with my project management peers. I spent time throughout the day talking and meeting with other PMs about my projects and at noon I went to my second project manager brown bag.

There are forty-five PMs in my particular part of the company. Most are in the project office but a lot of departments have one or two project managers like me. I suspect the PMs in the project office are watched more closely by their management and are under more pressure to succeed than people in non-PM groups.

What are the PMs at my job like? About half the group are men, although the leaders are all women. There are a few people in their 30's but otherwise they're 40s or older. Almost all (except for me and my peer) have the coveted PMP credential from the Project Mangement Institute, the Microsoft of project management. Most of them have been project managers for a long time although a small number were promoted in the last few years from the development staff. A handful are contractors, senior people brought in at very big rates because 40 PMs weren't enough.

The people with the PMI certificates tend to talk in PMI. They say things like "I can't wait to do a WBS on that!" or "We must have accountability from the stakeholders to have a valid bug tracking process." They like to talk about closing a project and about really good processes used in their last jobs. Sounds dull, doesn't it? It is.

I'm not sure I exactly fit in but it's a considerable pay raise if you move into a job in the project office. If it helps me retire a year or two earlier, I'll talk the talk. Hey, did I ever tell you about that great baselining macro I wrote for Microsoft Project?......

A long weekend. Yay!

Here's the first installment from my new business book on creativity and innovation--"The Concise Adair on Creativity and Innovation". This is a great book, kind of a Dummies book on creating a workplace that inspires those wonderful skills. Here's an interesting passage:

"Characteristics of an Innovative Organization

- The management is personal and informal
- There is not an emphasis on functional specialization
- Workers have been allowed to have freedom of thought
- The management structure is quite flat with leaders being very approachable
- Clearly laid down procedures are kept to a minimum
- Workers are encouraged to be creative and flexible, and to develop themselves."

Do you work at a place like that? I don't know if a workplace culture exactly like this exists, even at places known for innovation like 3M. My workplace has a lot of these qualities but certainly doesn't have a flat management structure (I can't even imagine how many layers of management there are between me and the corporate CEO). On the other hand, I have met with executive-type people who are very curious about how the projects are being run and listen carefully to how people expect to reach their goals without dictating their own preferred way of doing something.

Does a company have to be small to be like this? My (informal) mentor at Not Big Blue was in charge of fostering innovation and did some wonderful training to get things going but there was a lot of resistance from management and workers. At Widgets we innovated all the time, usually just for survival, but there was a hierarchy and most of the creative work people did was unknown to the company leaders. (Note: the innovation program at Not Big Blue was stopped about two years ago and my ex-mentor was laid off after twenty years at the place. Nice.)

My computers are set up and I think I've screwed around enough with my LCD monitors and should leave them alone. I started working with Final Cut again using a bunch of family videos. I was surprised that the new G5 take a long, long time to create a .mov file for a 30 minute video (using Sorenson's which I supposed adds a lot of time). I just couldn't hold out another six months for the very-much-faster Intel Macs.

Anyone want an ancient iMac for free?

Well I blew most of the evening showing my daughter my company's online product. We did some case law searches and a lot of public record searches to find out the secret lives of everyone we know. Not really...I always search for myself or other family members.

We did find a tax assessor record that says my lot has one million acres. We're going to start evicting the neighbors this weekend! We were unsuccessful in finding death records for my grandparents and we did confirm that I hadn't been convicted of a crime.

I've spent the last few days at work in small group and one-on-one meetings to figure out what people do and to explain the status of my projects to other groups. I really like that kind of interaction. People are very friendly, ask good questions, and always think of ways they can help, even though they're really busy like everyone else. (I think I have the smallest workload of anyone in the building at the moment.)

The company is in the middle of a major hiring binge. The web site has dozens of jobs and we've been told to expect a lot more postings, all to handle the migration that I'm part of as well as new features that the company needs to compete with our one major competitor. I have no idea where those new people are going to park.

The migration, which was originally scheduled to be done in 2005 now is stretching out into the future. My peer and I joke that we're going to retire when the migration is finished.

Ok, back to trying to make my extra hard drive accessible.

It's late for blogging. I had early soccer and then talked for a while with a couple of Widgetistas. I heard that it was announced to my former group at Widgets that I wasn't responsible for the big mess that happened there in November and December. I knew when I walked out the door I would be blamed for anything that went wrong, including higher gas prices and the avian flu. Now I know that, in fact, I WAS blamed for most everything (but probably not the avian flu). I actually do care if people think I caused all the misfortune so I'm glad that no one is spreading that story at the moment.

Things certainly did change for the worse in the basement after I left Widgets since no one took over the project management work I was doing. That created problems that were....someone else's fault.

I was given a new project today that will move very quickly. I looked on the intranet for information but it was very sketchy so I talked to my former coworker who is working on the DTDs for the content. He explained it generally but it's tough to follow the jargon when you first start on a new project. I need to draw some diagrams tomorrow and talk to some more people.

I have some interesting things to talk about but no energy or time now. Tomorrow.

I haven't blogged for days! I've been going through the painful process of trying to get my new G5 and two LCDs working the way we want them to. I've already returned a Samsung LCD because text looked terrible on the display. I have a better samsung 19" with the G5 which is okay but now we have a Neovo with the G4 and it's still sketchy but maybe as good as a relatively inexpensive LCD is going to get. Any suggestions?

I had my Goals and KSF (key success factor) workshop today. You write goals that state what you will DO this year (more general, not specific things) and how that will help the department and the company. Then you write these ksfs that say HOW you will do your job. There's a matrix that explains how each level of employee should be doing things in the areas of problem solving, collaboration, etc.

The year end review then becomes a reading of your goals and ksfs. Your manager gives you a number for each goal (degress of completing it) and agrees or disagrees with your ksf writeup. My manager said he presumes I'll do what I'm supposed to so most of the discussion will be about how I did the job. For example, I could write up strategy documents just sitting at my desk and emailing people but I should be calling meetings and having one-on-one discussions.

It sounds horrendous and I didn't understand it until the workshop, but it's mostly straightforward. I'm going to write goals with my peer since we do the same job so that'll be easy. The ksf matrix is quite large so I have to figure out how much of that I really have to deal with and if I'm doing things at or above my level.

Meanwhile we're all writing some goals that will be magically converted in a consolidated goal for the department. I'm also saying I'll help the department improve in the areas of training and communication, although I'm not sure how.

This is typical big company stuff but they presented it well and it's a better way to review people than the mostly worthless guidelines I was using at Widgets (when we did reviews) or the phony self-reviews at Not Big Blue. Who knows, maybe I'll learn something I can use on my next job!

I have to apologize to the creators of my new time tracking software. It does total the hours for each day. The total is at the top of the column, not the bottom where I expected the totals to be.

The free fruit of the day was bananas.

I found the matching gift form on the HR web site today. The company matches employee contributions to a wide variety of non-profit organizations. I'll be putting in a few of those this year.

I spent a few hours learning about laws/statutes/codes and how my company receives, annotates, relates them to past laws and judicial cases, and delivers them. A very nice reference attorney and another co-worker walked me through the subject, then gave me some materials to read. I logged onto our online product to see how the users viewed the information and then I explored for a while.

While I was logged into the product, I decided to look for the scary personal information I had heard was there. As an employee, I have access to all 20,000+ databases while customers only buy particular databases and have a lot of access controls attached to even that information.

I didn't find much. I can do reverse phone lookups, get into the general information in the license databases of most states and see the address/phone information from your credit report.

Oh, I can also check for criminal records. I found out that a couple of guys with my last name had a lot of trouble with the police in the 60s. (I'm almost sure they're not related to me.)

I went to the library and checked out a new business book, "The concise Adair on creativity and innovation," to write about. I'll start this weekend. I also got some books on CD out of the library that I'm importing right now. I love that library.

I arrived at work later than usual today because I took my work computer home before the holidays and forgot to bring it when I left for work today. I drove home, retrieved the computer and drove back to work, pulling into the company street at 9:15. I was worried I would be stuck in the dreaded overflow lot--a space the size of a football field that is located somewhere on the MN-IA border. Luckily there was still space in the far corner of the third parking lot from the door and the shuttle was sitting there waiting. I've heard people say that if you need to come in after 10:30 for any reason you may as well wait until 11:30 and grab a spot that was vacated by someone leaving for lunch.

I thought I would be busy today but I had two meetings cancelled because people were sick and I had to reschedule another meeting that I had called. People have taken a lot of sick days in the last month for themselves and to take care of children, mostly due to a virus that has slowly circulated through the building. My manager has it now.

A new time tracking tool was introduced today. Anyone who has ever been forced to do time tracking knows it's very annoying and time consuming. Time tracking software seems to be carefully designed to be slow, ugly, hard to customize, and prone to crashes. I suspect there's an international organization of time tracking software designers that publishes strict (bad) standards and does user testing to make sure people can't use the software. They may even whack people that turn out a good product.

Is our new time tracking software any better than the old software? It is less ugly than the old software, which looked like it was created by some manager's eight year child. It's also a bit quicker than the last software, which would take so long to refresh the screen after a save that I would just go to another window and do something else instead of waiting.

How well does it work, you ask? Hoping that it would work they way it LOOKED like it worked, I carefully set up my projects so they would become defaults. I pressed the save button and......it deleted all my projects. I reentered the projects and then yesterday's and today's hours and saved again. It reloaded briskly with all the information intact (projects must have hours assigned to them to be saved) but then I saw it--they made the screen less cluttered by taking out the total fields. I have to add the hours for each day and the for the week in my head!!!

Thank goodness--they followed the (bad) standards. Now I have countless hours of time tracking fun to look forward to!

Thanks for the responses to my recent "Angry" entry--I enjoyed reading your comments and emails. I promise my anger at Widgets isn't affecting what I do or how I do it but it hits me when I think about that place or talk to people still working there or other Widgets survivors. Writing that entry really helped me understand what I was feeling.

BTW, I didn't make it to Widgets for the shareholders vote on the company's fiscal reorganization. The reorg was approved, which will make certain partners happy and lead to a confrontation with another partner. I hope the fiscal leaders correctly calculated the cost of this change.

Arizona was great! It was in the 70s during the day, 40s at night and sunny most of the time. They haven't had rain in Phoenix for three months so it's very, very dry. I got to do a little climbing and see some ruins and red rocks although we didn't have time to look around Sedona.

Wow, having more than a week of vacation has been wonderful! We have MLK day off so that's another long weekend and then I already have a long weekend in March set up. I think I can handle going back to work tomorrow.