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PMI in Numbers!!!

15 inspirational Project Management quotes to live by

Three Essential Leadership Practices that Improve Team Ownership - Practice 3

Written by Pollyanna Pixton,

Practice 3: Apply Meaningful Metrics

People do what they are measured by. If you ask people to come to work at 8 and go home at 5, do you get eight hours of productivity? Focus on results. Ask the team to decide how they want to measure project, sprint and release success using the following guidelines for their metrics:

Focus on measuring results (versus activities) toward meeting business goals.

Keep few in number—otherwise, the sheer volume of metrics makes them meaningless.

Be sure they motivate the right behaviors rather than being something used as a weapon against others. Too often we impose metrics to punish wrong behaviors rather than inspire improved performance.

Design metrics to measure processes, not people. Meaningful metrics help us identify when processes, not people, need to be fixed. Keep them simple to measure and simple to understand.

Make sure they are quantifiable. If the team members decide they want to decrease technical debt, ask them, “By how much?” and how they will measure their progress and success. At the end of every planning meeting, ask the team how they will hold each other accountable.

Successful leaders know how to transfer ownership to team members. They recognize that people support what they create. Allowing teams to come up with their own answers, prioritize their work based on business value and create their own results-based metrics are essential practices in the agile world.

Three Essential Leadership Practices that Improve Team Ownership - Practice 2

Written by Pollyanna Pixton,

Practice 2: Prioritize Work Based on Business Value

Make sure your team understands the “what” and the “why” of their project, features and goals. Couch the “why” in terms of business value to the customer and business value to the business. What features differentiate your company in the marketplace and will increase market share? What features are parity and are needed to close gaps between you and the competition?

Your teams need to understand this to know where their solution needs to be betterthan the competition and where it needs to be just as good but not better. Get the team together with some sticky notes and for each feature, determine the differentiating or parity value to the business and the customer. Mark every story with a “D” or “P”. This will remind the team which story to not over-engineer and which stories deserve innovation and creativity.

Who has the best Web-based shopping experience? Amazon. So if your project has a shopping cart, it must be as good as Amazon’s but not better. One company I worked with required users to set up an account before they could even look at or search for products. Is this a great web-based shopping experience? Not even close. When it comes to important but parity features, mimic best in class and free up your resources for what you do better than anyone else.

While you are at it, have the team mark each feature as high, medium or low value for both the business and the customer. Validate this with the business and have a conversation about any differences. Business value is not a number. It’s a conversation--a collaboration with stakeholders and customers. Besides taking differentiating and parity into account, other non-quantifiable considerations must be considered--such as risks, flexibility, time to benefit, competition, dependencies, complexity and uncertainties.

Yes, cost and benefits do factor in, but only if we can use somewhat precise numbers. Otherwise, cost/benefit analysis can be gamed. You might have never seen this, but sometimes people use historical estimates, know what number the manager wants to hear and back into the value of the benefits. Never happens, right?

This combination of design goal (differentiating or parity), considerations and precise costs/benefits generates a prioritized list your team owns and that guides their decision making. Can things change? Absolutely. The prioritized list, which maps to epic stories, gets re-prioritized by market, business and customer changes. Suppose your competitor releases their product with your differentiating feature…it is now parity! (While I am thinking about it, does your team know who their competition is?)

Now, huddle up together again and reprioritize the list (backlog) as a team.

Three Essential Leadership Practices that Improve Team Ownership - Practice 1

Written by Pollyanna Pixton,

Why is team ownership important? It is essential to agile team success because individuals thrive on ownership. With ownership, you have a stake in the game and push to find the best solution. It is yours.

The difficulty is that most corporate cultures have command-and-control leaders--leaders who not only tell teams what to do, but how to do it. Telling them how takes away ownership. Without ownership, productivity is low. In one company I assessed, it was as low as 20%. Most often I see productivity of around 50%. Still, that’s a real waste of talent!

As a leader, you can’t “give” ownership to teams and individuals. They have to take it. And many people don’t know how to do that. They are frightened of failure and making a mistake that could result in humiliation, demotion or worse, losing their job. There is a lot of fear. And leaders can help.

Practice 1: Don’t Give Answers!

One of the members of your team comes into your office. “I can’t solve this!” You, as the leader, answer: “Have you tried this….?” You just provided the answer. Now, who has ownership for the solution? You do.

How do you avoid taking away ownership from your team? Don’t give any answers! Just ask questions. I always ask, “How do you want to solve it?” or “What options have you tried?” I also ask people to talk about the pathway they went down and why they chose that path. Sounds simple--but team leads find it difficult to do. We came up through the ranks solving problems. Now, in our leadership roles, we have to help other people solve the problem.

Besides not giving answers, do not correct mistakes. Tony Dungy, the NFL coach, would never correct or yell at his players when they did something wrong on the field. Later, he would ask them what they saw out there to make them do what they did. That way, he could learn and better prepare his players in the future and his players could reflect on how to improve outside of the pressure of the immediate situation.

The more this writer talks to people about their PMOs, the more apparent it becomes that organizations frequently don’t know what to do with them--and he's not sure why that's a problem. Why do so many PMO “problem children” exist?

The Knowledge Sharing Journey

Change Management - 7 Basic Questions to Consider

Soft Skills - Critical Thinking and Problem Solving

Reuniões de negócio em inglês - Dicas!

Participar de uma reunião de negócios em outra língua pode não ser uma tarefa fácil. Para preparar-se para tal situação é importante conhecer algumas expressões comuns utilizadas em reuniões em inglês. Veja:

- Justificando a reunião:

OK, so we’re here today to … discuss/plan/prepare for/ brainstorm/go over… – Bem, então nós estamos aqui para… discutir/planejar/nos prepararmos para /levantar idéias/ discorrer sobre…

The reason I wanted to talk to you is/was… – O motivo pelo qual eu queria falar com vocês é/era…

- Discutindo a agenda:

We’ll start by… – Vamos começar…

The first matter we need to deal with is… – A primeira questão que devemos tratar é …

We’ll also need to go over… – Nós também precisaremos examinar…

After that we’ll break for question. – Depois disso teremos uma pausa para perguntas.

Concordando: I agree./ I partially agree. / I strongly agree./ I understand where you are coming from. / I couldn’t agree more.

Concordo/ Concordo em parte./ Concordo plenamente./ Eu entendo o que você está dizendo./ Eu não poderia estar mais de acordo.

Discordando: Yes, but…/ I see what you mean, but…/ I totally disagree./ I don’t agree.

Sim, mas…/ Entendo o que você quer dizer, mas…/ Discordo completamente./ Eu não concordo.

- Continuando a partir da argumentação de outra pessoa:

Going back to what (John) said,… – Voltando ao que o (John) disse,…

I’d like to add to what (Brian) said about… – Eu gostaria de acrescentar uma coisa ao que o (Brian) falou sobre…

- Indo em frente com a discussão:

I think we should move on. – Eu acho que devemos ir em frente.

I think we need to leave this for now and move on to other issues. – Eu acho que devemos deixar isso de lado por enquanto e passar a outras questões.

Fazendo uma sugestão:  Can I make a suggestion? /Here’s an idea: Why don’t we…? / One idea I’ve had is…

Posso fazer uma sugestão?/ Aqui está uma idéia: Por que nós não…?/ Uma idéia que eu tive é…

- Falando do andamento do trabalho:

Can you tell us how our project is progressing? – Você pode nos contar um pouco sobre como está andando o nosso projeto de…?

Have you completed the report on the new payroll system performance? – Você já terminou o relatório sobre o desempenho do novo sistema de folha de pagamento?

Has everyone received a copy of the January report on current market trends? – Todos receberam uma cópia do relatório de janeiro sobre as atuais tendências de mercado?

- Uma reunião formal:

With your permission, I’d like to add a comment on… – Com sua licença, gostaria de fazer um comentário sobre…

Skipping ahead to item (10)… – Pulando então para o item (10)…

Let’s put it to a vote. – Vamos por em votação.

The motion is carried unanimously. – A proposta foi aprovada por unanimidade.

The motion has been rejected by ___ votes to ____. – A proposta foi rejeitada por ___ votos a ____.

OK, then. That concludes our meeting for today. Thank you. – Muito bem, então. Com isso, encerramos nossa reunião hoje. Obrigado.

- A próxima reunião:

Can we set the date for the next meeting, please? – Podemos definir a data da próxima reunião, por favor?

Let’s meet on Monday at 10 am. – Vamos nos encontrar novamente na segunda, às 10 da manhã.

What about this coming Wednesday? – Que tal na próxima quarta?

Fonte: Yazigi

6 dicas para não cometer gafes em inglês no ambiente de trabalho

Segundo pesquisa da Catho no Brasil, mesmo o inglês sendo o idioma estrangeiro mais presente no mercado, apenas 3,4% dos candidatos à vagas no setor corporativo conseguem se comunicar fluentemente no idioma

Todos sabem que o universo corporativo adotou o inglês como idioma oficial, por isso é cada vez mais necessário ter o domínio da língua pelos profissionais da área. Porém, o índice de fluência da língua inglesa no Brasil ainda é considerado baixo, ao ponto de refletir de forma significativa no ambiente de negócios.

Segundo pesquisa da Catho no Brasil, mesmo ele sendo o idioma estrangeiro mais presente no mercado, apenas 3,4% dos candidatos à vaga conseguem se comunicar fluentemente em assuntos variados. "Nos dias de hoje, tanto os profissionais no início de sua carreira quanto os mais experientes necessitam de um bom conhecimento da língua inglesa, tanto oral quanto escrito, para obter uma progressão no âmbito profissional. Por isso, nossos cursos trabalham exatamente com este objetivo; buscamos conhecer as limitações e dificuldades do aluno, executivo ou não, para possibilitar que ele se supere a cada aula", afirma o professor Elvio Peralta, Diretor Superintendente da Fundação Fisk, detentora da marca PBF.

Para ele, é necessário manter-se em constante convívio com a língua, para só assim poder aprimorar o entendimento e a pronúncia no idioma. "Ler livros da área de atuação e literários em voz alta, assistir filmes, comunicar-se com estrangeiros por telefone ou e-mail, e ouvir músicas em inglês são ótimas maneiras de praticar o idioma, ou seja, acostumar os ouvidos aos novos sons e enriquecer o vocabulário", completa.

Pensando nisso, o especialista listou 6 dicas para ajudar os executivos a fugir dos deslizes mais cometidos pelos brasileiros no campo dos negócios e evitar gafes no ambiente corporativo:

• Não fazer traduções de expressões do português para o inglês – O uso dos chamados ‘falsos cognatos’ pode levar o executivo a situações embaraçosas.

• Revisar a formulação de perguntas no passado – Fique atento, somente use verbos no passado quando necessário. Exemplo: ao utilizar o ‘did’, os demais verbos da pergunta devem ser mantidos em sua forma original, como na seguinte frase: “Did you see that?”.

• Evitar erros ao usar palavras no plural – Conheça o plural das palavras e cuidado com as que seguem o mesmo formato, tanto para o singular quanto para o plural. Exemplos:‘news’ (notícia / notícias), ‘luggage’ (bagagem / bagagens) e ‘information’ (informação / informações).

• Se familiarizar com termos e jargões utilizados no mercado internacional – Conheça termos como: ‘bottom line’ (lucro ou déficit de uma empresa); ‘turnover’ (rotatividade de funcionários dentro de uma empresa, ou quantidade de negócios efetuados dentro de um período de tempo); ‘overhead’ (despesas operacionais); e ‘cover letter’ (carta de apresentação).

• Usar corretamente ‘résumé’ e ‘summary’ – Não confundir ‘résumé’ (currículo), e ‘summary’ (resumo).

• Treinar a pronúncia - É importante que o profissional escute sua própria pronúncia e compare com a original, afim de que se aproxime o máximo possível de um falante nativo.