Category Archives: project management

2014 USENIX LISA Mini-Tutorial: Establishing IT Project Management Culture: Nerdherding on the Frontier

Posted in project management, Seattle, tutorial, USENIX LISA by

Here are my mini-tutorial description and slides from the USENIX LISA Conference, November 14.

Description: 

Some IT organizations have well-established project management cultures; other organizations are on the frontier, either without project management culture or experiencing rapid change. The application of appropriate IT project management principles in such organizations can be challenging, but some basic techniques can allow IT teams to be more efficient and effective.

Daunting projects can be accomplished as you foster project management culture, and this tutorial will give you the tools you need to enjoy life on the frontier.

Attendees: 

Anyone either coordinating or participating in IT projects within groups or organizations without a well-established project management culture.

Take back to work: 

Attendees will learn techniques to better understand and define projects, and how to apply appropriate and effective management techniques within organizations where project management culture is rapidly changing or being newly-created.

Topics include: 
  • Understanding basic differences between well-established environments and launching toward the frontier.
  • Management techniques for organizing projects.
  • Frontier questions to select appropriate project management techniques, covering Governance, Scope, Time, Costs, People, Communication & Visualization.
  • Advanced Nerdherding: improving visibility and celebrating progress.

Slides: Nerdherding On The Frontier

Handouts: Nerdherding On The Frontier

2014 USENIX LISA Workshop: Warp-Speed Project Wrangling

Posted in project management, Seattle, tutorial, USENIX LISA by

Here are my workshop description and slides from the USENIX LISA Conference, November 9. Workshops are small, hands-on collaborative sessions.

Description:

Bring your wildest projects to this workshop, facilitated by an experienced technical project manager, and let’s wrangle them together!

Some basic project management techniques can quickly allow IT teams to be more efficient and effective. The big question is “What are we trying to do?” and a short list of the most useful follow-up questions can help all involved to better understand and define a project’s scope, time, cost, stakeholders, governance, and communications needs.

This collaborative session will allow participants to speedily apply appropriate and effective management techniques to their own real-world projects.

Slides: Warp-Speed Project Wrangling

2014 CascadiaIT Lightning Talk: Girl Scout Cookies as Motivators

Posted in CascadiaIT, lightning talk, LOPSA, project management, Seattle, USENIX LISA by

I was randomly conversing about my experiences in motivating project teams with several people in the lobby of the beautiful Hotel Deca at CascadiaIT, and one of them said, “You should give that as a Lightning Talk!”

So even though I’d already submitted one Lightning Talk, I signed up to give a second one.

Here are my notes, and some additional thoughts, from that second talk. These are just my thoughts and experiences, your mileage may vary, etc etc etc.

Girl Scout Cookies as Motivators

  1. food as motivator (shoutout to MikeC and timtams!)
  2. additional motivators: tech toys, gold stars, gift certificates, positive reviews to management
  3. girl scout cookies
  4. find parents with kids
  5. difficult meetings
  6. icebreakers (minus the thin mints)

I asked the room who’d taken a class from the phenomenal MikeC, because he hauls entire suitcases of different varieties of Tim Tams all the way from Australia to give out during his tutorials for folks who ask good questions.

About half the room raised their hands. Go MikeC!!!

Those who’ve never taken a class from MikeC and who do not know the wonderfulness of Tim Tams, I strongly recommended that they come to the USENIX LISA conference! It’s in Seattle this year!

It’s important to note that I (we) use the word “cookies” a lot, and sometimes we mean actual cookies. Actual cookies can be a wonderful and appropriate motivator… get to know your project team to understand if actual cookies are a good idea for them.

Sometimes “cookies” can mean tech toys, (big! cardboard!) gold stars, gift certificates for a local movie theater, gift certificates for ThinkGeek.com…

And sometimes “cookies” can mean positive reviews to management. When someone really made a very positive difference, sincerely thank them, in writing, and cc their supervisor. Such letters of thanks can make a difference during annual performance reviews.

General notes of thanks to everyone who participated in a project are good; getting into the habit of writing those, and then writing additional specific, honest and brief thanks to a small group of people who were absolutely instrumental to project success is an even better habit to foster.

I’ve used Girl Scout cookies a lot as motivators for my project teams… as one tool in my motivator toolkit (among many) to encourage people outside my management chain who are working with me toward the success of some technical effort at work.

Be aware of people’s dietary restrictions and preferences ahead of time!

And think about other things which may be like cookies, regarding motivation…

I buy my Girl Scout cookies from co-workers who are parents, rather than getting them at the sidewalk tables near my grocery store or other markets. You can make a lot of friends by easily filling those co-worker parents’ children’s sales quota for cookies, chocolate brittle, or whatever they’re selling.

Difficult meetings go more easily when folks have good food to eat, and cookies (or other non-edible motivators) can put everyone in a better frame of mind when you’re having stressful conversations as a group.

Thin Mints seem to have been the most popular Girl Scout cookies for difficult meetings, in my experience, followed by the chocolate-covered peanut butter cookies (which seem to actively slow down the pace of meeting conversation!).

However… if you’re bringing together a large project kick-off meeting where many participants do not already know each other, set the most popular treats aside (in my former places of employment, this meant “hide the Thin Mints!”), then place a variety of treats on the various tables in your meeting room.

Scatter a couple boxes of each flavor around so they’re not all together.

In my experience… people will abandon their orgchart groups and forsake their co-worker friends to sit at a table with an unopened box of their favorite Girl Scout cookies.

Those people will then strike up conversations and form positive connections with other people across orgchart boundaries, departmental silos, and levels of seniority or experience. Just as importantly, their introduction to each other will involve talking about a positive thing they immediately have in common: their favorite Girl Scout cookie.

And then they will open the boxes of cookies, and you can start your meeting, and your project team members can associate their favorite tasty, happy-making cookie flavor with your very important project.

Think outside the box, think inside the (cookie) box, think of positive motivators…

Cookies!

2014 CascadiaIT Invited Talk: Establishing IT Project Management Culture aka Nerdherding On The Frontier

Posted in CascadiaIT, invited talk, project management, Seattle by

Here’s my talk from Seattle, at the CascadiaIT 2014 Conference, March 7-8.

Invited Talk: Establishing IT Project Management Culture aka Nerdherding On The Frontier

Some IT organizations have well-established project management cultures; other organizations are on the frontier, either without a project management culture or experiencing rapid change. The application of appropriate IT project management principles in such organizations can be challenging, but you will benefit from the experiences of a frontier project-herder, covering basic techniques to allow IT teams to be more efficient and effective, and tips for establishing and fostering project management culture within rapidly changing and growing organizations.

Slides: Adele Shakal Nerdherding On The Frontier

New website for 2014, upcoming CascadiaIT conference and LOPSA local meetings

Posted in Baltimore, Boston, business continuity, CascadiaIT, disaster recovery, diversity in IT, drill design, emergency planning, invited talk, LOPSA, preparedness, project management, Seattle, tutorial, women in technology by

I’ve finally admitted to myself that I need a single place to archive online all of my conference presentations, workshops, tutorial materials and such.  So here I am.

And here you are!  Thanks for stopping by!

I have a few upcoming invited talks and a tutorial coming up…

Baltimore

I’ll be speaking remotely in Baltimore, at the CrabbyAdmins Local LOPSA Chapter Meeting, March 5: The Practical Gamemaster: Design & Execution of IT Emergency Operations Drills.

Seattle

I’ll be giving a talk and a tutorial in Seattle, at the CascadiaIT 2014 Conference, March 7-8.

Invited Talk: Establishing IT Project Management Culture

Some IT organizations have well-established project management cultures; other organizations are on the frontier, either without a project management culture or experiencing rapid change. The application of appropriate IT project management principles in such organizations can be challenging, but you will benefit from the experiences of a frontier project-herder, covering basic techniques to allow IT teams to be more efficient and effective, and tips for establishing and fostering project management culture within rapidly changing and growing organizations.

Tutorial: The Practical Gamemaster: Design & Execution of IT Emergency Operation Drills

Keeping IT folks engaged in a drill simulation can be very challenging. The skills necessary to design, execute and facilitate IT emergency drills are practical, perfectly suited to the hands-on, participatory environment of a technical tutorial.

Become a gamemaster worthy of designing and executing drills on likely emergency scenarios and realistic function failures for your organization.

Who should attend:  Technical IT staff, IT supervisors, managers, directors, business continuity/resiliency project managers and IT emergency planners – anyone who may be tasked with planning or facilitating an IT emergency drill for an IT department, business unit or organization. Prior experience in IT disaster recovery or any kind of emergency response will be helpful but is not required.

Take back to work: Practical experience identifying critical business functions, designing emergency operations centers and incident headquarters, and designing, executing and facilitating IT emergency drills.

Outline: Within a broad context of emergency response, emergency operations, business continuity planning/resiliency, disaster recovery and information technology architecture, this tutorial will provide participants with hands-on experience to design and execute IT emergency drills.

Participants will collaboratively identify critical business functions and continuity/resiliency objectives for two fictional example organizations, and catalog IT services involved in supporting those business functions. We will then design an appropriate emergency operations center incident headquarters for those organizations. Along the way, we will discuss and brainstorm methods of introducing such concepts to participants’ actual organizations.

During the latter part of this tutorial, participants will walk through a first a basic life-safety and IT emergency operations drill, and then an advanced IT emergency operations drill. We will also evaluate quantifiable success factors for each drill, collect lessons learned, and discuss guru-level additions to advanced drill design.

Boston

And I’ll be speaking in Boston, at the Back Bay Large Installation System Administration (BBLISA) Local LOPSA Chapter Meeting, April 9: The Practical Gamemaster: Design & Execution of IT Emergency Operations Drills.

Other Places?

If you would like for me to speak at your conference or meeting, about IT emergency planning and drill design, project management, advancing women in computing … please let me know (especially if your organization has a real Code of Conduct/Anti-Harassment Policy #CoCPledge — I value and support your efforts to include more diversity in IT).  I’m starting to polish up some additional content around cloud computing concepts as well.

LISA 2013 The Guru Is In Session: Project Management: Establishing and Fostering the Basics

Posted in office hours / guru-is-in, partnership management, project management, USENIX LISA, Washington DC by

I presented a Guru Is In session at USENIX LISA 2013 in Washington, DC: Project Management: Establishing and Fostering the Basics.

Some IT organizations have established project management cultures. Some do not. If you’re in the latter camp and are interested in the potential for project management practices to increase productivity within your organization, please stop by and visit with Adele Shakal.

Adele believes in the genuine value of project management, yet understands that the application of appropriate project management principles can be challenging. She is happy to share her best practices for applying non-invasive techniques that allow IT teams to be more efficient and effective. She’ll also share tips for establishing and fostering project management culture within rapidly changing and growing organizations.

Adele currently heads up project and knowledge management at Metacloud, Inc., a cloud solutions company providing Private Cloud as a Service based on OpenStack.

She has nearly two decades of experience with IT project management, business process analysis and design, knowledge management, emergency operations and drill planning, business continuity, service management, system administration, and web technologies.

She has been a presenter, roundtable facilitator and panelist on IT emergency preparedness, Google Apps For Education, project management and technical documentation, and advancing women in computing; at CENIC, EDUCAUSE, APRU, USENIX LISA and CascadiaIT conferences.

CascadiaIT 2013 Lightning Talk: Getting Your Arms Around Unscopable Projects

Posted in CascadiaIT, lightning talk, project management, Seattle by

I gave my first Lightning Talk at CascadiaIT 2013: Getting Your Arms Around Unscopable Projects

(And yes, I realize that “unscopable” is not in the dictionary. That might be because no project is really unscopable!)

Here are the notes I prepared in my phone just before giving the lightning talk:

  • My background: startup OEM, higher ed, startup cloud solutions company
  • Unscopable project examples
    • “Improve and upgrade IT Service X!! For varying definitions of improve!”
    • “Move our office!  And/or our datacenter! But we’re not really sure what’s in them…”
  • What are we trying to do?
    • How will we know when we’re done?
    • What resources and budgets may be involved?
    • What deadlines have already been promised?
    • Who needs to be included in the team?
    • Who needs to be informed about progress?
    • Who is the GO/NO-GO person for this project?
    • Are we looking for consensus on scope, time or money?
    • Is this project a democracy or a dictatorship?
  • If any consensus is needed, build it… meet individually, meet in small groups, meet in a large group… cookies!  fruit!  healthy snacks!  but beware nuts and foods allergies!
  • Write down:
    • what we’re trying to do
    • budget
    • time
    • people
  • Get signoff on what you have put in writing from the go/no-go person!