Turns out my moving schedule has extended itself past all reasonable limits. We’re in the process of packing and moving right now (I expect to actually move in about a week), so while I’ll try to post some updates during that time, problems with Internet access and such will likely cause difficulty getting online. I’ll be picking up again for sure once we’re settled in our new location.

Categories: General Thoughts
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Ever heard of SMART Goals? I’ve seen several variations on the title, but it’s used something like this:

S - Specific
M - Measureable
A - Achievable
R - Relevant
T - Time dimensioned

Most people think of them as important for things like life goals or large projects, but you need to think about them even for small projects.

There are times when it seems that people just don’t realize how important goals like this are. If you have a communications project that you’re working on, take some time to develop SMART goals and you’ll find that everything goes smoother.

Let’s consider how we might want to apply this to a real situation. Suppose we need to build a presentation that’s important to get funding for a project we REALLY want to do. Let’s see how each piece applies:

• Specific - What EXACTLY do you want to achieve in the presentation? What is success? What is failure? Be CONCRETE. Be EXACT.
• Measurable - How will I know I’ve been successful? How can I tell that my presentation has been successful? Are there questions I can ask that will give me an indication of the level of support?
• Achievable - Is the funding I need to get possible? Does it go beyond what the company has normally done? Is it realistic that the company will DO what I want it to do?
• Relevant - Does this REALLY matter to ME? Am I passionate about this or is this something that I’m expected to do for someone else? If it’s not personally important to me, then it’s probably not relevant.
• Time Dimensioned - What’s the deadline? You’ve got two here: FIRST for the presentation, everything has to be ready to present at the right time; SECOND for the project, even if you sell the project successfully, will you be able to meet the time constraints of the project itself?

Don’t take this as a need to build some sort of formal goal structure. That’s not necessary, but some goals even informal ones are important to success.

Once you can clearly see your goal and you know that you’re passionate about it, you know that it’s really achievable, then get to work and make it happen!

Categories: Project Management, The Basics
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I’ll be moving in the next week, so there will likely be some interruption in my posting schedule. I’ll try to get some posts ready to go, but no promises.

Categories: General Thoughts
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If you find this interesting, try these

• Antennas, Modeling, and More - Antennas, Propagation, and Low Power operation are my interests in Amateur Radio. Here is where I talk about them
• Customer Facing Systems - I’ve spent much of my career building and running systems that interact with customers. Here is the collected insight I’ve gained
• In2SciFi - My personal thoughts on a wide range of topics originally driven as a
• Obesity and Me - My thoughts on losing weight

Categories: Blogging
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Since I started this blog, I’ve been trapping spam and rejecting it before it gets posted. I’m amazed at how much there is targeting blogs like this one. There is no discrimination, no attempt to get it to any sort of right place. Further, there is no apparent concern that it doesn’t get posted, just that it gets submitted. It’s hard to believe someone pays for this stuff, but obviously they do.

I’ve got to ask myself WHY? Why would someone PAY to have someone do this?

The stuff they’re trying to post isn’t just ’spam’, it’s junk. There’s no relation to the topic, just get some links out there. The worst ones are the ones that are trying to social engineer by posting something that LOOKS OK superficially. They have embedded links to questionable locations that have nothing to do with the topic or the words in the post.

So why? It’s simple really. People are making money at it. In fact, people are making millions of dollars doing this.

Categories: General Thoughts
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Basic Project Management

Project Management exists on many levels and with many degrees of complexity. For example, at one end of the scale, I learned project management in the Navy, training to use PERT systems in shipyards on New Construction. I was on USS Enterprise during refueling and USS Virginia when it was built. Building something as complex as a Nuclear Cruiser is a massive undertaking requiring not just one project manager, but many of them.

At the other end of the scale, project management can be just a step above time management where instead of just a task or a set of unrelated tasks that need to be completed, you need to complete a set of related tasks all of which lead to some goal. Building a Customer Facing System is in between these limits.

Most of the writing projects I’ve worked on have been at the lowest level, what I like to call ‘Everyday Project Management’ while others involved complex systems, thousands of agents, multiple sites, and so forth. No matter what the size though, there are some constants in Project Management.

Over the years, I’ve needed to teach basic project management to teams that simply never thought of it as important. I’ve taught it to developers, consultants, architects, magazine editors, executives, and others. For the last several years, I’ve used the book To Do Doing Done by Lynne Snead & Joyce Wycoff as my text. For a more detailed treatment that covers the full range of project management, I refer people to the Project Management Institute’s (PMI’s) PMBOK:

I’m going to expand on some of my other writings I’ve done on project management to highlight some things that EVERYONE should know. This isn’t about being a project manager, but it’s about understanding enough of the basics that

1. You understand when you need a project manager
2. You understand what the project manager is telling you
3. You understand why the project manager is asking for some things

VPIC

I’ve been in too many projects where there was a rush to jump in and get things done. This is a major mistake!

Let’s understand something right at the beginning, no plan in the history of the world has ever worked EXACTLY as planned! Things change; Needs change; Circumstances change; and we just down right make mistakes. it happens on every project. Some people tend to think the time spent planning is a waste of time. Nothing could be further from the truth

Planning is essential to successfully completing a project, not because we’re going to build a perfect plan, we’re not. It’s essential because of the time you spend thinking about it. Thinking through what you’re going to do, thinking about contingencies, thinking about resources, all of that gets you ready for real life.

Overall, a project will roughly break itself down into 4 major pieces according to Snead & Wycoff. These go under the acronym VPIC:

• Visualize - every project starts with an idea, something you want to do or build, so we start by getting a clear picture in our minds of the end point
• Plan - once we know where we’re going, we need to know what we have to do, who’s going to do it, and how much it will cost in time, effort, and money.
• Implement - any project involves some amount of communication and control. When there are several people involved, this becomes more obvious, but even if we’re working on something alone, there is still a need to manage communications and control the project.
• Close - one of the big things that often gets missed is closure. I’ve seen to many projects where the people thought it was done when things when the goal was reached. If you don’t do some clean up and take advantage of the chance to learn something, you’ll never get better.

Over the next several weeks, I want to expand on some of these themes and relate them to more formal project management methodologies. We’ll talk some about several methodologies I’m familiar with:

• PRINCE2 Methodology - (Projects In Controlled Environments). This is the standard in the UK and I was trained on it when I was working on projects in the UK. It’s a thorough, comprehensive system.
• PMI Methodology - (Project Management Institute). Another comprehensive methodology
• A variety of methodologies adapted to specific areas like Agile Development

We’ll spend some time discussing methodologies and what they can do for us in case you’d like to learn more. Why bother if all I’m doing is writing for a presentation or to deliver a proposal? It’s simple. If you’re anything at all like me, you will forget something. If you have something to do which involves more than one step, then some basic project management will help you do a better job.

Categories: The Basics, Tools
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I teach several technical courses online and I’ve been thinking about ways to get my students more involved in a group. However, being online, that’s hard, so I’m trying the idea of collaborative mind mapping with my students in Antenna Modeling. I’m trying two sites where free accounts are available. On Mindmeister (http://www.mindmeister.com) and Bubble.us (http://www.bubbl.us/).

The major objective of this effort is to see if I can help people more with the course, to improve the graduation rate. Antenna Modeling, since it’s setup as a self-study course with little need to send things to the teacher, often has problems. It’s easier when I can teach in a classroom where I can see people’s reactions and jump in to help when help is needed. Online I can’t see a problem developing, so it’s hard to help until it’s almost too late.

Most of my work so far has been on Mindmeister. One of the mind maps I’m working on with students is about selecting software. Here’s the start of the map:

We’ve started another map on definitions and another on basic modeling. You’re welcome to come take a look at what we’ve done and are doing, or join in the collaboration if you’d like. If nothing else, we’re building a collection of maps that will be useful for figuring out what’s important to learn.

If anything useful comes out of this effort, I’ll share it with you. If you’re working on assembling some sort of knowledge, whether you’re teaching something, designing something, or just learning something, an online mind map built as a collaboration can be an effective method of bringing everyone together. I used to do this kind of thing using GoToMeeting, but this looks like a better, more hands on way to do it.

UPDATED: Spelling correction

Categories: Practical Applications, Tools, Web & Internet Communications
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I’ve been experimenting with different screen layouts. I found that I like this one and especially because I can put my own pictures in the header.

Categories: General Thoughts
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There are lots of good ways to take notes when you’re trying to learn something. Often, a way I find useful is to take them right in the book I’m reading.

I have conversations with my books. I put comments, highlights, mind maps, and whatever in my books. For example, I was working on some material for online learning and was working with the book Pragmatic Thinking & Learning by Andy Hunt:

While reviewing the material as I was working out what I want to write, I came across some pages that I had worked on and added to. One of the major chapters here is ‘Learn Deliberately’ which I take very much to heart. Here is what the book looks like at this point:

I was looking for general techniques and recommendations for deliberate learning. Andy certainly approaches this very much in common with the way I do.

I also wanted some material on cognitive biases which was in the chapter labeled ‘Debug Your Mind’. Here’s what the page looked like after I’d taken some notes:

My point here is not necessarily that you should be marking up your books like this. Sometimes you can’t because you don’t own the book, but don’t be afraid to. All that was necessary to work with this book was the book and a couple of colored markers.

I approached these chapters like this:

1. I scanned the chapter quickly noting important information, summaries, diagrams, and so forth. I used a marker to leave a highlight at places I wanted to review in more detail.
2. I went back and read through the chapter more completely, highlighting what I considered to be important points.
3. I went to the front page of the chapter with its facing empty page and drew up a mind map of the chapter as I understood it.
4. As part of the mind map, I added some small drawings to call out key points
5. Using the mind map, I revisited sections of the chapter to make sure I got it right.

A lot of work? Yes ….. and No. It didn’t take too long to go through these chapters, I cam away from the study knowing the material pretty well, and I got the input I wanted for the material I’m working on. All in all, a good effort.

Categories: Learning, Practical Applications
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