Work by Remote

Dr. Hank: You have developed great expertise in Project Management. How did you get interested in this field?

Terry: My love of projects began in high school when I launched a small rocket loaded with guppies. That project earned national press coverage and motivated me to study aerospace engineering. During a summer internship at NASA, I devoured all the project and program management books in their library. This ignited my passion for Project Management and systems thinking, which considers how all the elements of large and complex systems work together to accomplish the big picture goal.

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Summary:
Remote support technology is one of the most popular service and support automation tools for high-tech companies, with a well understood and easily documented return on investment story. Though basic remote control is available from many sources, including some freeware and shareware options, companies interested in improving both the economics of support and the customer experience should understand the risks involved with lower-end tools, and learn how leveraging a best-of-breed product will accelerate operational improvements and customer satisfaction ratings. In this report, find out 10 critical selection criteria to use when evaluating remote support platforms, and identify how moving beyond homegrown or freeware tools will accelerate the achievement of business goals for your service and support operation.Click here to launch the document.

Oracle University have lined up these courses, which are available here in the Philippines. Isn’t it cool?

Oracle Database
Oracle Database 11g: Administration Workshop I     5 Days     26-Oct-2009
Oracle Database 11g: Administration Workshop II     5 Days     9-Nov-2009
Oracle Database 11g: Performance Tuning     5 Days     19-Oct-2009
Oracle Database 10g: Administration Workshop I     5 Days     9-Nov-2009
Oracle Database 10g: Administration Workshop II     5 Days     19-Oct-2009, 6-Nov-2009
Oracle Database 10g: Performance Tuning     4 Days     26-Oct-2009, 3-Nov-2009
Oracle Database 10g: Backup and Recovery     3 Days     26-Oct-2009, -Nov-2009, 3-Nov-2009
Oracle Database 10g: Data Guard Administration     3 Days     4-Nov-2009
Oracle9i Database Performance Tuning     5 Days     16-Nov-2009

There are more courses!

To register or for more information, please contact us at:
Telephone: 1800 1651 6277 / +632 9768896 or
Email: outraining_ph@oracle.com

Take advantage of it now!

If you’re dreaming of an easy-to-use project management tool, then Team Effect may just be the one for you.

Read how it works HERE.

Global Knowledge recently released a whitepaper that discusses what the formal project management is and who needs it.

For the purpose of this discussion, I will to refer to PM activities in the absence of operating guidelines as “informal” project management. By contrast, project management that takes place within the restrictions of an imposed set of operating guidelines will be referred to as “formal” project management.

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If formal project management means setting standards to do the PM work well, then I totally support this.

Like any other activity or project, we need tools do our tasks well.

Dream CSS shares 11 of Open Source project management tools that will help you achieve both individual or collaborated goals, and share knowledge among team members.

1. Achievo
2. dotProject
3. SimManTools
4. Projectivity
5. BORG Calendar
6. eHour Timesheet Management
7. Task Juggler
8. Chandler
9. XPlanner
10. Memoranda
11. airTODO

Read more about each one HERE.

I’ll probably try Task Juggler. Will let you know what I think about it in a future post.

Applications are here to make your life easier. But some apps are expensive. And so Howard Wen of ComputerWorld shares five apps, four of which are open source.

Check them out!

Netbooks are the in thing today. They are small and handy, and so it’s no surprise that many people are now seen carrying netbooks wherever they go.

For remote or mobile workers,  netbooks or laptops are almost a must. They are convenient, you see. Though for programmers, these small gadgets may not be an ideal one to have. But they will do if they need to go out of their bedrooms for a while and into a cafeteria or park to work.

Remote workers or mobile workers need to get some air, too, you know.

Now we all know that the bane of netbooks or any other computer device is virus. Good thing Kapersky Antivirus has come up with an anti-virus for netbooks.

PC World shares:

Kaspersky Lab has announced an anti-malware product specifically designed for netbooks, the first to fill a potentially lucrative new software niche.

According to the company, Kaspersky Internet Security Special Edition for Ultra-Portables has been “optimized” for netbooks running the Intel Atom, Intel Celeron-M, or VIA C7-M processors that power the current generation of Windows XP-based small-screen wonders.

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Most IT projects involve geeks. I guess 99 percent of the team is geek.  All I can say is that geeks are just like you and me, only smarter, more skillful, and more serious with their craft. In other words, they’re a joy to work with.

About a couple of years ago, Chief Happiness Officer, Alexander Kjerulf, wrote an article titled how NOT to lead geeks. If you were to make each one positive, here’s how to handle your geek team.The inputs are mine based on my experience in working with them.

1. Give them the right training, and on a regular basis. Training in general is empowering. But for geeks, honing their skills is important to them. And they have the passion to learn new things or be updated on what’s the latest on their chosen field.
2. Give them recognition. Like any other worker, geeks too love to be given a pat on the back for a job well done. If you don’t know how or understand their work very well, Kjerulf suggests that you work with them so that you would know.
3. Give them reasonable work schedule. Geeks are humans, too, and although they can be workaholics, they can still be stressed out. What good is a geek if he’s overworked?
4. Talk to them in plain simple English minus management jargon. As Kjerulf said, geeks hate management-speak.
5. Do not try to outsmart or act smart with them. Admit it, if you’re not a geek or do not understand the stuff geeks do. It gets more work done and faster that way.
6. Be consistent. Probably because in IT, structure and consistency is critical, geeks also want consistent and clear directions, and policies. They hate it when they smell uncertainty and indecisiveness.
7. Connect with them. Often, because managers are not geek themselves, they tend to stay away from their geek team, and just concern themselves with the output or in the user interface, for example, of a website project. Talk to them and discuss with them tasks that are doable and not.
8. Involve them in decision making, especially when it comes to your project. For an IT project, who else understands it better than the geek team. Thus, get their ideas and suggestions and how to go about the project. There should be a collaborative effort.
9. Give them the right tools or equipment to do their tasks well. What can be most frustrating for a geek team are slow computers and lack of software. These may cost you a bit more, but just look at it as in investment where you can generate income too.
10. Recognize the creative side of geeks. Kjerulf puts it aptly, “Programming is a creative process, not an industrial one. Geeks must constantly come up with solutions to new problems and rarely ever solve the same problem twice. Therefore they need leeway and flexibility.”

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What saddens me as a project manager is to see good people go.

This may be a form of review on your project deployment. But it’s a good guide for those who are about to start a new project, too.

In every project, it’s really good to start and end with the same people or team. That way, all of you understands the project, what it entails, what the role of each member is.

You would want for example to have each team member participate in the following:

1. Initiation - Introduce the team to the project, its scope, roles and responsibilities, and deliverables.
2. Planning - Develop plans for creating the final deliverables.
3. Execution - Properly plan the work.
4. Control -Ensure that the project is progressing as planned, to account for any changes, and to make midcourse corrections that are needed to keep the project on schedule and within budget.
5. Closeout - deliverable is accepted by the customer of the project, and the project team documents what it learned that could be of value on the next project.

I got the tips above from an article on Baseline Mag. Read the rest of the article and find out how project managers can transform your business by building a process, tracking performance and helping you build best practices that work for your company.