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Index section

1. Welcome to Elements!
2. Industry - Review of Project World Keynote Speaker
3. Vendor Trends at Project World
4. Project Success After Delivery
5. Links
6. How do Kids really use the Internet?
7. Coaching: Values and Fulfillment
8. Coaching Notes

Welcome to Elements!

This is the first edition of the Elements newsletter. 
The twofold purpose of it is awareness and sharing. 

As I continue to grow and learn, I’ve uncovered my tendency to collect
information.  I am constantly seeking and learning and then haphazardly
sharing it with whoever I am in conversation with. Each issue will be a place
to share and store what I  find as interesting and helpful information.    

I request your participation in sharing information with me that you would  

also like to share for publication in future editions.  

Coaching is a new focus area that has been added to my consulting business.
This newsletter will also serve as an awareness to those interested in being
coached, that “Yes!  Star is coaching and she’s ready to coach me or someone
I know who could benefit from it."  I've learned that to be successful in a
coaching relationship, the person must be ready to be coached and be willing
to invest the time and energy.  Many people are interested in coaching,
however, it may be months or years before they want to start and I'll be here.
 

I'd love to hear from you!

 
Sincerely,
Star

 

2. Industry - Review of Project World Keynote Speaker

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3. Vendor Trends at Project World

This is my fifth year of attending Project World. This year, after spending
the day on the tradeshow floor, I spotted some new trends and some older ones
being built upon.

Initially, it was hard to distinguish vendors’ products. Vendors all spoke of
providing a whole solution, web-enabled, collaborative and enterprise
wide. The marketing line is the same. However, the products have come a long
way from last year.    The whole solutions differed in functionality by
vendor; yet they all had some flavor of being an integrated suite of project
management tools, labor tracking, people management, company financials,
accounting, and reporting.  Additionally, other products had live discussion
groups, release management and document control functions.  Each vendor's
strength was evident from where their starting point was as a company. For
example, PeopleSoft's HR management function was more robust and feature rich
than other applications.  All of the products are now more open and
accommodating to integrating with existing application and databases and are
using industry standards.   For the first time there were a few international
companies and products participating in this show (Cataligent, Agresso and
RPlan).

I attended the show with a colleague who observed, “What's old is new and
that might not be for the best”.  For example, some of project management
tools were based on more traditional models of waterfall methodology and
earned dollar value, with a web front end slapped on top. Or some of the
existing Customer Services, Human Management and Time Tracking applications
had new web front ends and had just integrated and added new features to now
call themselves a whole solution.  

In my opinion, the product from eRoom Technology was the most improved from
last year. It's relatively new and was initially developed for the web. It is
based on the assumption that a project is a collection of ever-changing
things.   It doesn't force an older methodology. The vendors that were
speaking ill of eRoom claimed it didn't scale well.

Microsoft was showcasing Project 2000 due to its wide acceptance and price
point. It was the yardstick for the other vendors who claimed that their
products were an add-on, an extended project, or that they integrated with
Microsoft Project 2000. Or, they differentiated themselves by any of the
following: being truly enterprise wide, more web-enabled, visually being able
to manipulate data or more collaborative, or offering the ASP (Application
Service Provider) Model, or targeting themselves to a specific industry.

I was interested in how the ASP Model was really doing.   Last year, it was
more of a new idea and only a few vendors offered it.   This year most every
serious application vendor offers this model and has had some success with
customers.   One CFO I talked to said, “It's an easier sale, and we work to
make it an expense item for the company rather then a large capital item.”
Another VP noted, that smaller companies, fewer than 200 in population,
generally find this an easier model for them. It is because they have a few
or no internal IS people, smaller budgets and it's viewed as a lower risk
offering.
 

4. Project Success after the Delivery

An alternative success measurement for a project after the delivery is how
long it lives, and how useful and productive it is over the years.   
Traditional success measurements for a project are those of: being delivered
on time, on budget, with happy customers, and high quality. This means
nothing in the long run if your project is gathering dust on a spindle, or
buried in cyber hole.    It can be incredibly satisfying or it can be scary
to look at a project you originally delivered and to see how it is doing
years after you were involved with it. 

After its delivery, a project is like a living creature.  One might look at
it and ask: Is it thriving and growing?  Did it stop growing after a certain
point?  Is it hiding and hard to find?  Did it cross-pollinate and become
something different?  Or, did it wither up and die in a grand fashion or
quietly?

To begin a project with the belief that it has a future of thriving and
growing can help with the more traditional success measurements and keep  

your mind at ease when you look back at it years later.  

Here are some of the things I've noticed in projects that have a successful  

life beyond the initial delivery:

* The users of the project can easily see the benefits and want to and are
eager to start using the project.
* The company, senior management and support personnel, understands the
project. That means they can talk about it, support it, and they have tried it.
* There are easy ways to get delivery feedback, support, and to find help on
using the project with immediate and satisfying results.
* A simple and timely method exists for updating the project software, the
processes, and to ensure that the data are in place, whether it's on a daily,
weekly, or monthly basis, or if it’s a version-based process.
* The technology used is built on at least 60% industry accepted standards.
It is extensible, scalable, and easy to maintain, and major reworks are not
needed after the initial release.
* The software design allows for maintenance and new development that can be
done easily and concurrently.

Acknowledging that projects have a life after delivery and finding the
appropriate time and ways to factor this into your project will enhance your
delivery and the acceptance of your completed project

5. Links

Free Website for personal career analysis - http://www.assesement.com/

MAPP - Motivational Appraisal for Personal Potential Survey 

 It takes about 10-20 minutes and asks lots of questions. They respond by
sending you an 8-page results document about your motivations, top vocational
areas, learning styles and work preferences for career planning. My results
were pretty accurate and insightful. Their goal is to sell you the full
assessment packages. 

Project Management Website - www.ganatthead.com 

This site has a free section and a per fee section of $350 per year.   The
free section has great examples of templates and tools for any stage of a
project.    About 90% of the material is available in the free section.  
This site is updated often with new information and material. They also offer
a newsletter.   This is a great website for anyone who has to manage a
project.

Great Buying experience - http://www.staples.com/ 
I needed to replace a Panasonic fax film cartridge.  I checked Amazon, no
luck; I checked the Panasonic site, very expensive.   I randomly typed in
www.staples.com  and within minutes, found the part, registered as a new user,
bought it.  Even better, it was $12.00 less than the offering on the Panasonic site, and it arrived in one business day! They also followed up with a letter and a coupon. This is a site I will use again.

Summer Vacation Rental - www.cyberrentals.com 

Someone asked me what was the most money I had spent using the Internet.   My
answer is related to the best summer rental I four years ago on this website. 
It was a self-contained private summer beach house in Plymouth, MA. Since
then I've recommended this site to others who also have had success. I am now
in the process of listing my cottage on beautiful Bare Hill Pond in Harvard,
MA, for summer rental.

Interesting Concept - www.lifecycles.com 

They specialize in converting family videos to DVD for easier and safer use.
 

6. Home/Family - How do kids really use the Internet?

I observed that my 13 year old and 8 year old boys both use the Internet, and
in ways different from me and from each other. This is a quick view of how
they use it:

My 8 year old views the Internet as a big encyclopedia that has all the
world’s answers on it. With someone helping him, he:

1. Finds cheats (secret back doors) for video games
2. Prints out pictures of characters he likes
3. Finds Instructions for card games
4. Is suckered into advertising sites believing he's won
5. Uses it for research for school

My 13 year old has his own Yahoo! mail account and is quite versatile. We
share the same PC to access the Internet. So I would like to believe that I
have some knowledge and control over what he is doing. He: 
 

1. Bought a baseball glove and bat from eBay
2. Manages a fantasy baseball team
3. Sends and receives email from friends and his baseball coach
4. Uses AOL instant messenger to talk to his buddies
5. Uses it for research for school

I have not purchased any childproofing or filtering software.   I believe in
the peer-to-peer relationships and freedom of the Internet. I want to trust my
children and be involved with them and how they use the Internet.   So far,
I'm pleased with how it's working for us and there haven't been any
incidents. Ask me again later; I might have changed my mind!


 

7. Coaching: Values Fulfillment

II recently completed another coaching course from the Coaches Training
Institute.   This intense 3-day course was focused on fulfillment.  It began
by us being asked what fulfillment meant to us. It's a very personal
question, and the answers are different for everyone.  The course focused on
how to help our coaching clients design their lives today and in the future
from the perspective of fulfillment. As coaches, we will help our coaching
clients to be able to take a stand for the quality of their lives and to
discover the values that fulfill and nourish them.   We spent lots of time
coaching and being coached using techniques and tools on discovering
values.  

Each person is composed of a collection of values that they use consciously
or unconsciously.  However, a person can also possess various values that
they do not use. Beyond asking a person about their values, other ways we
learned to discover a person's values are:

1. Review a past and future peak experience, and see what values are present
2. Imagine your 20-year future self and the values you would embody
3. What makes you angry? Sometimes it’s the result of a value being dishonored
4. What do others see as your values?
5. What are you wearing? Does it speak to your values?
6. Identify non-values. What's the opposite?
7. Who do you admire? What values do they have?

Each way may help uncover a different set of values that are important that
currently may be unconscious.   The goal is to bring these values forward
into our conscience, clarify them and make it so that we can choose to honor
them or not.   This is built on the assumption, that if you are living your
values you will lead a fulfilling life both personally and professionally. 

An example was recently encountered with a coaching client. Through
observation and active discovery, she became aware that the values she puts
as the highest priority were not present at her place of employment or in her
career.   Once she made that discovery, she then felt much better by being
aware that the values conflicted.   She was then able to choose what she
wanted to change based on her terms and her timetable. She chose to accept
some parts and to change the others that weren't acceptable to her.



 

8. Coaching Notes

 I am developing a website, with the same purpose in mind as this newsletter, awareness and sharing. On the website, I will have some basic information about coaching, the industry, and it's benefits. I will also include specifics of my coaching practice, consulting and teaching.

The name and availability of the new website will be announced through the Elements newsletter.

Here are few samples that will be on the website:

Frequently Asked Question about my coaching.

Q. What types of people do you coach? 

A. A wide variety of people, for example:

Project Managers
Marketing Managers
Software Engineers
Directors
VP's
Entrepreneurs
Job Seekers
Career Changers
Personal Growers
Business Owners

They all have in common a desire to be coached and are willing to spend their time, energy and money for results.  The results are very personal and are established by the individual and coach throughout the relationship.
Specific examples are: to deliver a project, find a job or a new career, to
change a habit, foster personal growth, enable skills improvement, or to
enable business growth and change.

Q. How much time a month does coaching take?

A. After an initial discovery and goal setting meeting, Coaching calls are:

Four (4)  - 30 minutes calls a month
OR
Three (3) - 45 minutes calls a month

Preparation by the coaching client is typically 10 minutes to one hour prior
to the call.

A minimum commitment of three months is required.

The initial discovery and goal setting meeting is 2 hours and I prefer to do
this in person.  A review session is 1 hour and takes place as needed, recommended every 3-6 months

Each call usually ends in goals and inquiries being assigned. The time to
complete these varies based on the individual. An Inquiry is a broad
thought-provoking question for the coaching client to spend sometime between coaching calls.  The goals are determined together and can be sub-goals of the intended larger results, or they can be for a new area that the client wishes to explore.