Voicemail is dead?

That's what Michael Arrington says. He suggests that if you want to contact him, you should email him instead. Of course, elsewhere he has talked about periodically declaring "email bankruptcy," deleting all unopened emails in his inbox, so maybe that's not a great strategy either. Maybe if you want to contact Arrington you should just visit his house.

For me, voicemail is just fine. No, I will not give you my number.

identi.ca

identi.ca is the latest Twitter-like service. It's open source and uses OpenID. It's also slow right now -- but if you like it, you can download and install the underlying software on your own server. Not sure at this point whether doing that will wall you off from other installs on different servers, but if it does, it seems to be going in the wrong direction. More as it stabilizes.

The iPhone wants me to buy it after all

Corporate iPhones are rumored to be getting a slide-out keyboard. Golf clap for Apple.

Point of No Return

The world (of Warcraft) is flat.

Network book cover is up

A total surprise for me. Cambridge still hasn't updated the book title on the page, but the proper book title is on the cover. I'm just delighted to see it coming out, and incidentally I like that the typeface and bars make it look a little similar to my other book's cover.

Here they are together, my two books, just hanging out.

Microsoft to buy Powerset, or Yahoo Search, or something

People are all excited about the rumor that Microsoft will buy Powerset to beef up MS Live Search. Of course, this succeeds the rumor that MS is back in talks with Yahoo to buy it or its search business. My sense is that the Powerset deal is a possibility, but MS is floating it now to keep Yahoo's stock from rising on speculation.

I remember this pulp cover for 1984

Cory Doctorow just reposted an excited blog post about a pulp fiction-style cover for George Orwell's 1984.(Click through to see the lurid cover.) The blog's author enthuses: "Significant is the artwork and over-the-top copy on the back, which is quite different from almost every other edition of this novel that I've seen."

The funny thing is that this is the version of 1984 we had when I was growing up. I think I read this thing when I was ten, and I remember feeling a little let down that the material was less exciting than the cover.

Big glossy love letter to Android in Wired

Google\'s Open Source Android Phone Will Free the Wireless Web

Reading :: Agile Project Management

Agile Project Management: How to Succeed in the Face of Changing Project Requirements
By Gary Chin

I've reviewed several project management books lately, and so far this is the best-of-breed in terms of defining agile project management, describing its need, and setting out a list of concepts for understanding it. The book isn't a set of heuristics and principles, nor is it a methodology, but it provides a solid basis for those other sorts of books.

Starting in the Preface, Chin argues that highly innovative businesses, especially those that push the limits of current technology, face challenges in discovery and planning that have not been encountered before. Such projects have inherent uncertainty, and face multiple paths, decision points, and iterations. Classic project management, he argues, is simply not set up for that sort of problem (p.vii). He ties this issue to the advent of the knowledge-based economy and acknowledges that although project management could be a key advantage for smaller businesses in this economy, classic PM is not well suited for helping them (p.ix).

It's not that classic PM is broken, he argues in Chapter 1, but it's been overextended. Agile project management is seen not as yet another extension, but a new foundational element (pp.2-3). The focus of agile PM moves from planning to execution -- a necessary move because

Agile PM Environment = [Uncertainty + Unique Expertise] + Speed (p.3)

or, in other words, the agile PM environment involves specialized problem solving that has not been done before, at the edge of experience, with rapid development. It's for startups in particular. Think in terms of software development, but also other lightweight tech-heavy development such as search engine optimization, social networking, and social media marketing. Organizations functioning in this space have "gurus" rather than interchangeable resources, working on problems that change from day to day, opportunistically incorporating new technologies to accommodate a rapidly shifting environment with both internal and external uncertainties. In contrast, classic project management assumes familiar problems, interchangeable expertise, unchanging objectives, and minimized internal and external uncertainty -- all signs of more mature industries such as construction.

I've discussed emergent organizational structures such as networks, federations and coworking on this blog. Chin doesn't quite get there -- he is still envisioning single organizations, multiple organizations, and single companies within multiple organizations (pp.17-20). Yet he edges closer to a federation understanding in Chapter 3, when he argues that in smaller companies, projects are the business (p.22) -- that is, a single project might be the central activity of the startup. In such an environment, classic PM, with its emphasis on project boxes that cut across silos, is not wholly applicable (p.25). Naturally, a project-driven organization is better suited to agile project environments (p.33).

In agile spaces, Chin argues, teams need to be boundary-crossers in order to solve new, multidimensional problems (p.43). Agile decision-making must be decentralized as well, pushed down to the level of the local team when possible (p.46); it is rarely handled through formal authority, most frequently through personal credibility established during the project (p.69). "The agile project operates in an atmosphere of high interactivity, boundary crossing, and multiple simultaneous pathways," he adds (p.79), which is to say (in my terms) that agile PM is a result of splicing dissimilar activities. It's not surprising (to me) that he points to telecommuters as good candidates for agile projects (p.94).

Chin goes on to offer some heuristics and practical approaches to implementing agile PM. But the real value in this book is Chin's sharp eye for the connections between classic and agile PM, grounded in the differences among organizations, industries, uncertainty, speed, and expertise. It's a great book for getting an overview of agile PM rationale.

Reading :: Managing Agile Projects

Managing Agile Projects
By Sanjiv Augustine

In my ongoing quest to read about project management and its permutations, I picked up Augustine's Managing Agile Projects. This book is focused on software development projects, as much of the agile literature is, but provides principles that could be more broadly abstracted. Like other books along these lines, this one takes pains to separate its brand of project management from more traditional, PMBOK-based project management.

The author draws heavily from agile programming and its variants (eXtreme Programming, Scrum, FD). But he also draws from a broad set of other concepts and frameworks, and the result is sometimes a grab bag of theories and concepts: complexity theory, memes (as cultural DNA), game theory, mental models, and communities of practice all make a showing without much to tie them together. But this book really isn't a theory book -- it's more about a set of organizing principles put forth as a compact or a constitution for governing team interactions. Augustine introduces this notion from the beginning with a clarifying "fable" based on an actual shift from traditional to agile project management (Ch.1).

Essentially, agile project management as it is described here consists of the following principles:

• foster alignment and cooperation
• encourage emergence and self-organization
• institute learning and adaptation (p.25).

Complementing these are the following practices:

• organic teams (small, flexible, composed of generalizing specialists)
• guiding vision (keeping the team aligned with the same "mental model" or "commander's intent")
• simple rules (generative process rules that can result in emergent organized behavior)
• open information (vs. information kept in silos)
• light touch (fostering emergent control rather than heavy-handed rules)
• adaptive leadership (continuously monitoring, learning, and adapting) (pp.26-29)

The author lists certain core values for agile project managers:

• trust
• collaboration
• learning
• courage (pp.38-39)

The rest of the book elaborates these principles, practices, and values and supplies heuristics for implementing them. Overall, these are well done, with clear guidelines and relationships. But, I hasten to add, the approach really does assume strong management backing to push through this compact, even though the end result is to get everyone else on board. Also, the approach is meant for larger organizations working on large software projects, and may not be appropriate for other industries -- too variable for longer-term manufacturing projects, too heavy-handed for smaller, lighter organizations with short engagements.

Plurk has third-party updating available via HelloTxt

... along with several other services. Have not tried it yet, but this was one big obstacle to using Plurk. Perhaps I will set up an account and double-update for a bit.

HelloTxt - Help SMS Gateway

How are people reaching this blog?

The answer, according to Google Analytics, is surprising to me. The top referring site is Google Images, probably because I have a couple of images such as one of John Paul Jones playing a many-necked mandolin. But the next few referring sites are:

2. twitter.com
3. apps.facebook.com
4. google.com
5. friendfeed.com
6. locus.cwrl.utexas.edu (my homepage)
7. stc-austin.org (The Austin chapter of the Society for Technical Communication)

5-7 are tied. 2, 3, and 5 are different aspects of my lifestream; people are seeing the same information refracted through different services.

Reading :: The Rise of the Project Workforce

The Rise of the Project Workforce
By Rudolf Melik

I've begun trying to push past traditional project management literature to look at what is typically called "agile project management": project management for less hierarchical, flatter, typically smaller structures. In particular, I want to see what's out there for networked organizations that are distributed geospatially and temporally as well as organized in networks rather than silos or hierarchies.

Rudolf Melik's The Rise of the Project Workforce is in some ways a good place to start. Although the book is a bit too focused on a particular methodology for my purposes, its opening chapters frame the issue well and provide some good concepts and thoughts on the distinction.

Malik is deeply influenced by Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat (which I haven't read). Based on Friedman's description of a hierarchically "flat world," Melik says, "Today's business systems are simply not designed to plan, schedule, manage, audit, and optimize work that gets done in a flat world. ... More modern versions of business optimization tools such as enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), and project management software want to impose a certain rigidity within business processes, and fail to address the dynamic interplay and constantly shifting relationship between projects and people, which occurs naturally in the flat world that characterizes today's businesses" (p.5). Malik's book attempts to move toward a project management footing that addresses these characteristics.

This footing is called "project workforce management," a solution that combines human capital management, project management, business process management, and cost/revenue accounting (p.9). Such a system aims to integrate components such as time and expense tracking, cost and revenue accounting, workforce planning, project planning, project process management, and analytics (p.13). The idea is to produce a system that provides "a common vantage point for all decision makers"; "real-time views of projects, resource groups, actual progress, and issues"; and "more accurate decision-making" (p.14).

The rest of the book describes such a system in nuts-and-bolts terms. Melik has obviously given these parts a lot of thought, and I don't have the expertise to evaluate them, but the described system is fairly intricate and appears to be aimed at larger organizations with cross-functional projects. That is, Melik appears to be supporting project management for global enterprises which are going through "flattening"; I'm more interested in smaller, more agile organizations.

Nevertheless, the book was helpful for me to conceptualize some of the issues I've been investigating, and should provide a good blueprint for those working in larger organizations.

No cameras, no big deal

House Rep. John Culberson (R, Tx) has been Twittering from the House floor in the name of transparency. It's pretty interesting, but this post really caught my eye:

"@maslowbeer We (Rs) had TV cameras in the Rules Comm hearing room - Pelosi took all the cameras out - I will start Qikking these meetings"

Qik is a service that allows you to stream video from your mobile phone in real time. It's been used extensively by tech industry folks such as Robert Scoble. But seeing it mentioned in this context is arresting because it highlights the ability for someone with a pocket-sized device to easily replace much larger chunks of infrastructure such as larger cameras plus multiperson camera crews.

I don't take a position on whether transparency is a good thing in this particular case. As a general principle, I think transparency is a good thing, but in practice it may make people reluctant to do the sort of sausage-grinding necessary to generate compromises. My sense is that the House will need to establish firm protocol to deal with acceptable mobile device use, and soon.

Twitter / johnculberson: @maslowbeer We (Rs) had TV ...

Opera Mobile usage report is out

Who's browsing the mobile web? Mostly males 18-27. I'm among the mere 4.4% of users 38-47 years old. Some interesting variation by country too.

Mobile Browsing Report

GDocs torpedoes Yep

Well, that's one possible implication. Yep is OSX software billed by some as "iTunes for your PDFs." It scans your hard drive, finds PDFs, and puts them in one searchable, tagged interface. I used it for a while, but was unimpressed with the tagging and search functions, so I just use Quicksilver now.

But today GDocs announced PDF support. As in, you can upload PDFs. I just tried it and it works very well. You can't edit the PDFs -- yet. But you can upload and search them, another differentiator with MS Office.

Google Docs Get PDF Support

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Reading :: A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge

A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge
by William R. Duncan

A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge, also known as the PMBOK Guide, is the frequently cited guide developed by the Project Management Institute Standards Committee. This edition was published in 1996 and supersedes PMI's Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK); the third edition, which I believe is the most current one, was published in 2004.

The PMBOK guide aims to set out the principles of project management so that this young field can establish standards. To that purpose, it is divided into the following sections:

I. The Project Management Framework
II. The Project Management Knowledge Areas
III. Appendices (which contain information on processes, additional sources, and a summary among other things)
IV. Glossary and Index

In other words, the PMBOK guide is definitely on the reference side, giving an overview of the basics of project management, an overview that should be supplemented with other texts as well as specialization in one's own content area and organizational structure. It's a 50,000 foot view. And as such, it's quite valuable for anyone who wants that overview. But it also introduces challenges for anyone who needs a closer view.

So, for instance, the PMBOK guide is especially valuable when defining project management as "the application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to project activities in order to meet or exceed stakeholder needs and expectations from a project" (p.6), and when explaining basic concepts such as the difference between projects and operations (p.4). It also diagrams the knowledge areas and processes of project management (p.7) and explains what stakeholders might be involved in the project (p.15).

In one really valuable part of the PMBOK guide, the different types of organizational structures are described:

• Functional: hierarchies in which staff are organized by specialty and have distinct superiors (p.18).
• Projectized: focused almost entirely on projects, with relatively independent project managers drawing on resources across the organization rather than siloed into functional areas (p.20).
• Matrix: a blend of the functional and projectized organizational structures (p.20).

The PMBOK guide is geared toward supporting projects across the two extremes of functional and projectized organizational structures. However, as I've discussed elsewhere, the projectized organizational structure is not an extreme: we are starting to see much looser and more distributed organizational structures such as federations and coworking as well as (arguably) agile organizations. The PMBOK guide, with its emphasis on processes and structures, is not well positioned to be extended to these looser organizations. More thoughts on this point as I continue to read the project management literature.

T-Mobile Plans to Release Android Phones in July? - Google Android Mobile Phone

Thanks to the good people at Filtrbox, I've been keeping up with interesting Google Android news. Today's unconfirmed rumor is that T-Mobile will bring an Android phone to market as soon as next month.

T-Mobile Plans to Release Android Phones in July? - Google Android Mobile Phone

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LiquidPlanner - fuzzy project manager

Like other project management systems such as Basecamp, but built to deal with uncertainty and contingencies.  

LiquidPlanner: Project Management That Deals With Uncertainty

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Microsoft Develops Workstreaming

Although that's not the term they use:

The system is said to resemble Facebook, but with a slightly less entertaining intention. Its goal is to let employees stay up-to-date with industry news as well as their own colleagues’ work and progress. It even has a feature that can let you see when someone has created or updated a document — something that may give bosses an added way to monitor progress.

But also a way for loose teams to collaboratively check status, something that is currently done using IM, Twitter, project blogs, RescueTime, and various other services in different work contexts.
Microsoft Develops Corporate Social Networking Tool

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