Welcome to the Heart of Europe

Ancient project knowledge tells us that some things take time. Sometimes it is impossible to squeeze timelines further by adding more resources. It's like this old saying: "Nine women having a baby in one month. It just can't happen." Over time though, people tend to forget. Unless being reinforced on a regular basis, ambitious goals to challenge requirements may be diluted: "We started as a tiger, and ended as a carpet." Before you walk over us, you may want to scroll down...


Project: Life

Project Management. In one way or another, life is a project. Planned duration: A lifetime. It has a beginning and an end as well as an underlying scope, the meaning of life, which is sometimes hard to capture among all our assumptions and constraints. As in any project, there are certain milestones in life, such as graduation from school, getting a driving license and moving into an own apartment, getting married and a permanent job - with certain iterations. Just the deployment plan for having children may experience the one or other surprise element in some cases. But then again you have to be flexible with unexpected factors influencing your way, as you go along the long and bumpy road. Similar to project management, achievements can be categorized into general Key Indicators like Quality, Cost and Schedule. It will be, what you make out of it!

Quality Control. Quality on the one hand has to do with testing reality against the fulfillment of its purpose. How well did we do with our achievements and were they valuable and useful enough to justify the efforts behind them? Did we care more about the appearance or the substance of things? Did we apply double standards, when comparing our own achievement with those of others? Sometimes quality is hard to capture and counting the number of defects, the amount of shortcomings may help. Testing the result against the original scope, the amount of expectations that were met, is another method.

Cost of Ownership. Cost can be understood as the total of sacrifices one had to make in favour of a bigger purpose and more important benefit. Were those methods in balance or did we put in more than we got out of it, for us and others? Or did we usually try to live out of other people's pockets? Did we give more than we took or was it the other way round? Did we approach a goal at any cost, even taking collateral damage into account, or did we respect our environment as we should have?

Time Tracking. Progress needs to be regularly compared to an earlier baseline plan with all its task assignments that were completed successfully on time or delayed and ignored, or simply have become obsolete and were cancelled. Were we always stressed out and on the limit, or were the expectations achievable and the work package properly laid out and properly sized? Did we always run after another deadline or could we keep the expected, challenging milestones regularly, by performing well?

Life is like climbing a rock. The way up can be weary. But downhill... don't even ask!

Progress Report. Do you invest all the guts you've got in honest attempts to make a difference and leave a little better world behind? Or are you just one of those, who aim to climb up the ladder regardless of collateral damage, all for the short-lived goal of fleeting personal enrichment? How would your progress report look like from a perspective in the course of the project, and which Lessons Learnt would you summarize towards its end? Will you prevail in your own eyes and exceed the expectations of others? What bottom line can you provide to your kids to take along their way in life? How will you justify your actions and shortcomings in front of your maker? Good luck, anyway!


Forming Project Teams

Patchwork People. It felt a bit shocking to for the first time hear the term "partner for a period of life" (in German: "Lebensabschnittspartner"). Not only that people don't get married any more, they even stopped calling themselves "partner in life" ("Lebensgefaehrte"), as an alternative to spouse ("Ehegatte"). As opposed to a decreasing number of durable communities of values, supported by mutual respect and sharing the same ideals, more and more temporary partnerships of purpose come up, being formed of incoherent groups of people joining forces in the course of a project. It absolutely makes sense to team-up with others approaching the same goal, by forming an expedient alliance.

Growing with Time. Some people easily get excited about little things, scream and sweat the small stuff that doesn't matter in the end. They disturb the silence with their aggressive tone, as they overreact and make an elephant out of a molehill. In the end this is often a consequence of unhappiness with themselves, their situation and their environment, which doesn't applaud nor appreciate every single achievement, but rather takes a minimum performance for granted and also sees their shortcomings. Everyone has those areas of improvement, no doubt, but some just can't take criticism and rather try to block out unpleasant input and don't consider re-evaluating their priorities and improving their efficiency. Instead, they lose time searching for things they don't keep in order and tell stories about what they will do and have already done, while ignoring things that are right in front of their eyes. As part of "now more than ever" mentality, they disconnect to justify their means. Instead of listening, they stand there and consume words that go in one ear and out the other. The result can only be mutual disappointment.

Time Lack Excuse. It is more convenient to move on after a while, not having to deal with long term social responsibility and commitment in a fast moving environment, where time is not only money, but also a sign of respect and care, a gift that is not easily granted any more in days where nobody wants to miss a thing, needs to be up to date and perceived as permanently busy, regardless the real productivity behind it. Their standard answer may remind you to stick to high level and not lose yourself in too much detail, even if it matters in some cases. Alternatively, conversation may be blocked right away, by using the standard phrase: "Sorry, I don't have time for this now!" The best ones are those, falsely promising "I can't talk now, but I'll call you back later!" Then they never do. Do you have time for reading this?

Silence Talks. There are quite different views on communicating frequently and openly. The point is that no communication is also a form of communication. Silence may also give a message and it can lead to rumours about bad news. Fact is, if you don't take ownership of comms, you cannot influence or channel the message. And not every message you share must be a celebration. Sometimes people are too busy to keep contact, a story of life. In a way it also reveals priorities: As for the indirect message of not communicating translates to, people may simply feel deemed not important enough to talk to.


Cleansing, Purge and... Move?

Changing Platform. Speaking of analogies, here are examples from completely different areas. While planning a move, relocation to a new living place, examples from Data Profiling to Data Purge may come to mind. Why is obvious, isn't it? Preparing for an IT system change, working on requirements for development and set-up of the new solution is one thing. Planning the conversion of master data, which are stored in your previous environment, is another. Data Profiling describes the activity to verify data integrity and analyze, whether conversion criteria for the new system environment are fulfilled. It is usually followed by a corrective action called Data Cleansing, meant to improve data quality. In a way, it is like sorting your belongings before moving to a new flat. You would determine which things to take along and just throw out those, you don't really need any more. During review, you may even find hidden treasures, quite useful things that were long forgotten.

Cleaning house: Some people are more cleanly than others, from early age onwards...
a role model for all of us!

Painful Reduction. Usually, you clean house more frequently though than once in a while as part of an upcoming new installation or upgrade. Data Purge is the regular reduction of stored information, in order to optimize performance and free capacities for future additions. In the Purge 1 process, obsolete and unused information is flagged inactive or deleted, which still allows for reactivation. Only during Purge 2, information is fully deleted and physically removed from the production system. In a similar way, it makes sense to at first move old things into the basement, which you may just want to clean out then once a year. A lesson I learned the hard way, when being called to return home in order to "reactivate" a toy that I had dumped after it had been just collecting dust under a bed. But the garbage men were faster, they had already emptied the trash can. So my better half made me order a replacement for the lost toy globe-pillow. Some people say that they can even purge unpleasant memories. Others try to cope with problems over a drink or two. As if it was that easy...

Go to the next pages to learn about coping with and actively managing Change.
What about the 20:80 rule though? In order to filter out the 20 percent of useful information, you may read up to 80 percent of this webpage!