This a very early draft of a chapter of “Tags: Living In A Virtual World“. I use this blog as a notebook for drafts, so you can provide me with feedback in an early stage. Comments are, as always, appreciated.
I have more faith in a friendly clean-cut doctor in a white coat, than one in a jeans with anti-social behavior. Although. For anyone remembering Dougie Howser, MD, the 1990 television series that starred a teen aged child as clean-cut white coat doctor, I would not want him to be my physician. I would prefer House, the grumpy but brilliant doctor, who “doesn’t do white coats”.
Why do you think a certain person is more “trustworthiness” over another person? This is a relevant question. Not only when dealing with television doctors but also when operating on the Internet, or working with people you have never met.
group Trusting People You Dont Know
Image by Sister72.
Let me illustrate this situation with a game called The Prisoners Dilemma. In this mental exercise two inmates are planning two escape from prison. They are unable to communicate to each other as they are located in different cell blocks. Both prisoners have two options: if they work together they have a chance of escaping together. If one of them tells the guards that the other prisoner is going to escape, he will have a very high probability of escaping while to other one is almost certain to be caught. If they both decide to defect and tell the guards, they are both caught.
Facing a certain situation, a person has to select a strategy to interact with another individual. They have two options: they are going to cooperate, or they are going to be egoistic (defect). In The Prisoners Dilemma the outcome depends on the strategies chosen by both parties.
In essence it is a situation where
* if people cooperate, both have success,
* if one person is taking advantage of the other (defect) this person has an even larger benefit, but the other suffers a loss,
* if both persons defect they loose both.
If you play this game over and over again with the same opponent, you can let your selection be determined by all previous games. If a person always plays defect, you can base your strategy on your mutual history. If you know someone for a longer time, history can provide you with enough experiences to draw some conclusions.
But what if you haven’t done multiple iterations? What if you meet a person for the first time and you are confronted with a Prisoners Dilemma? Researchers call this the “one-shot prisoners dilemma”. Michael Macy and John Skvoretz, two professors of sociology, model this game by introducing the notion of “telltale signs”. In a situation like this, people are trying to determine the “trustworthiness” of others. They are trying to read “telltale signs”, look for behavior or other marks that they identify with trustworthiness. This might be as simple as being friendly and saying “hello” every time you see someone down the hall. Perhaps you have automatically more trust in someone wearing a suit, or a person with PhD behind his name. The idea is that you are trying to detect signs of trustworthiness, whatever that may be for you.
Next to this detection, the projection of your own intentions plays a role in the decision of the strategy; if you want to cooperate you are more likely to be biased into “seeing” the other as trustworthy. So, we use projection and detection as a mechanism to compensate for the lack of history one has in one-shot Prisoner Dilemma’s.
How people detect the tell-tale signs of trustworthiness is not only based upon behavioral markers that society associates with it; it has also to do with the similarity of the other with you. Persons that are more viewed as being equal or “the same” or more likely to be considered honest and sincere towards you. Translated to terms of social networks: people closer in social networks are more likely to consider each other trustworthy than people further apart.
This is not a one dimensional thing, people are associated with multiple social networks and groups. And every social group has its own rituals and signs that communicate its uniqueness towards the world outside the group. If you have a lot of aspects associated with a certain social group, you will more likely be considered trustworthy by members of the same group.
In short, “trustworthiness” is in this view determined by association and similarity.
Association: is what I expect the other to be like.
Similarity: is to be like me.
Telltale Signs Of A Project Manager
This makes me wonder if Project Managers, as a professional group, have tell tale signs of “trustworthiness”. If you have never had any experience with a certain person, what are the labels, the social markers you associate with a professional Project Manager?
There is no way to avoid talking about and in stereotypes when discussing this topic. And not all stereotyping is the same. Signs determined by professionals, colleagues are different from the general public.
In 2007 I asked visitors of The Project Shrink blog, project professionals, this question: “If you have 10 minutes, how do you judge a Project Manager?” Although this was by no means a scientific experiment, it provided some interesting clues.
A summary of the responses is given by this statement: “If they just use jargon from a handbook, I put them on the lower end of the scale. If they talk about the importance of stakeholders and people in general I put them on the high end of the scale. If they talk about stakeholders, they must have been in the trenches.” Note the importance of language.
If one has only ten minutes appearances do matter. The respondents hesitate to admit this, because it sounds very superficial, but it is true; people are looking for visual clues of competence, confidence and calmness. Clothes have some importance in the first impression; dress with taste, clean cut and similar to what your client is wearing are the advices in this area.
It is a cliché that a Project Manager should be a good communicator. So this is the area that gets to most attention. In the interaction the new PM should good listener, a good conversationalist that doesn’t dive immediately into “shop talk” but can converse with confidence and respect about life, the universe and everything. He should under no circumstances have a loud-mouth, heated discussion about a topic. Knowledge and opinion is one thing, in control and respectful are considered far more important.
About the messages that are exchanged in the first ten minutes people are short: people are looking for words like “you”, “we”, “our”, “team” and “support”, and are absolutely allergic to buzzwords. “Plain English Please!” as one of the respondents wrote.
Artifacts can also function as telltale signs. We all have seen people spending days behind MS Project to create a proper Gantt Chart. I have witnessed adults getting all excited when they could inform me that their project “had a risk profile of 18%”. I smelled the sweat of humans trying to fill every box in a project plan template, relevant or not, just because it is in the template. People have seen me polishing up a nice, shiny Chart. I spent 3 days creating this Monster Gantt Chart that I had to plot on A2 to get it printed. I rolled up the paper and went to my client. This client was an senior sales person just before his retirement. He was old school, but one heck of a salesman. I rolled out my wallpaper-size plan, and guided the customer through the steps. All the time he was silent, he didn’t say one word. After a while he took the plan and threw it in the garbage bin. While taking his pen and paper he looked up and asked me: “What is it that you want me to do?” Point taken, Gantt is a Project Management icon, and not every one seems to be a PM.
Different people have different associations with tags. Because it’s all about perception, there is no “truth”.
How does this work online?
Online, the situation is not very different. Our LinkedIn profile has a picture, keywords describing what we do, associations with companies and professional organizations and badges of the LinkedIn groups you are a member of.
* Do you wear a suit on your picture? Or do you have an image of you going through the jungle?
* Is your name followed by a enormous string of credentials (MSc, PMP, LIVR)?
* Do you have a normal function description, like “Accountant”, or do you have one that sounds more deviant, like “Master Of My Universe”?
It would be fun if you would do this short experiment. Go through your LinkedIn or Facebook connections. Skip through the profiles and write down what determines a “good vibe” with that person for you purely based upon the information provided.
Sursa: http://blog.softwareprojects.org/trusting-people-you-dont-know-2463.html
luni, 8 februarie 2010
miercuri, 18 noiembrie 2009
77 Project Management Proverbs
1. A project manager should not be praised for starting a project but for finishing it.
2. To estimate a project, work out how long it would take one person to do it then multiply that by the number of people on the project.
3. The first 90% of a project takes 90% of the time. The last 10% takes the other 90%.
4. The person who says it will take the longest and cost the most is the only one with a clue how to do the job.
5. The faintest ink is more powerful than the strongest memory.
6. The project manager is the lightning rod for all problems.
7. Fast - cheap - good: you can have any two.
8. The more ridiculous the deadline the more money will be wasted trying to meet it.
9. Too few people on a project and they can't solve the problems - too many, and they create more problems than they solve.
10. Any project can be estimated accurately (once it's complete).
11. The project would not have been started if the truth had been told about the cost and timescale.
12. If an IT project works the first time, it is wrong.
13. Managing IT people is like herding cats.
14. A badly planned project will take three times longer than expected - a well planned project only twice as long as expected.
15. If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything.
16. A problem shared is a buck passed.
17. A good project manager adheres to schedule. A project champion meets the targets.
18. You should cut down the tree that you are able to.
19. The optimist says: We do our very best for the project. The pessimist is afraid this might be true.
20. It is human to make a mistake; it is stupid to persist in it.
21. If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.
22. If you don't attack the risks, the risks will attack you.
23. Planning without action is futile, action without planning is fatal.
24. Managers apply pressure when they are at their wits’ end.
25. If it wasn't for the 'last minute', nothing would get done.
26. If you don't know how to do a task, start it, then ten people who know less than you will tell you how to do it.
27. If everything is going exactly to plan, something somewhere is going massively wrong.
28. If there were no problem people there'd be no need for people who solve problems.
29. For a project manager overruns are as certain as death and taxes.
30. When the weight of the project paperwork equals the weight of the project itself, the project can be considered complete.
31. A project manager should not look where he fell, but where he slipped.
32. You can build a reputation on what you're going to do.
33. The sooner you get behind schedule, the more time you have to make it up.
34. Everyone asks for a strong project manager - when they get him they don't want him.
35. Good estimators aren't modest: if it's huge, they say so.
36. Metrics are learned men's excuses.
37. If you can interpret project status data in several different ways, only the most painful interpretation will be correct.
38. Activity is not achievement.
39. Never underestimate the ability of senior management to buy a bad idea and fail to buy a good idea.
40. The nice thing about not planning is that failure comes as a complete surprise rather than being preceded by a period of worry and depression.
41. It's not the hours that count; it's what you do in those hours.
42. Good control reveals a problem early - which only means you'll have longer to worry about it.
43. No project has ever finished on time, within budget, to requirement - yours won't be the first to.
44. Warning: Dates in the calendar are closer than you think.
45. There is no such thing as scope creep, only scope gallop.
46. Anything that can be changed will be changed until there is no time left to change anything.
47. If project content is allowed to change freely the rate of change will exceed the rate of progress.
48. The same work under the same conditions will be estimated differently by ten different estimators or by one estimator at ten different times.
49. If there are no more problems in your project, your boss will reduce your time and budget.
50. If you're 6 months late on a milestone due next week but really believe you can make it, you're a project manager.
51. A project gets a year late one day at a time.
52. Quality is free.
53. You can con a sucker into committing to an impossible deadline, but you cannot con him into meeting it.
54. Nothing gets done till nothing gets done.
55. The project manager’s most important organ is the nose. He must smell a stink bomb before it goes off.
56. It takes one woman nine months to have a baby. It cannot be done in one month by impregnating nine women (although it may be more fun trying).
57. A minute saved at the start is just as effective as one saved at the end.
58. There's never enough time to do it right first time, but there's always enough time to go back and do it again.
59. If you have time to do it over again, you'll never get away with doing it right the first time.
60. Good project managers know when not to manage a project.
61. Good project management is not so much knowing what to do and when, as knowing what excuses people give and when.
62. Projects happen in two ways: a) Planned and then executed or b) Executed, stopped, planned and then executed.
63. Clever project managers pass problems to others; smart project managers build a reputation as problem solvers.
64. A lump sum contract puts the buyer in the strong position - until the first change request is made.
65. If at first you don't succeed, remove all evidence you ever tried.
66. Quantitative project management is for predicting cost and schedule overruns well in advance.
67. All project managers face problems on Monday mornings - good project managers are working on next Monday's.
68. Nothing is impossible for the person who doesn't have to do it.
69. People under pressure do not think faster.
70. The conditions attached to a promise are forgotten - only the promise is remembered.
71. Of several possible interpretations of a communication, the least convenient is always the correct one.
72. If you are not fired with enthusiasm, you will be fired with enthusiasm.
73. The good project manager looks after his team; the perfect project manager takes care of his customer.
74. The most valuable and least created document in project management is “Plan B”.
75. The most valuable and least used phrase in a project manager's vocabulary is "I don't know".
76. The most valuable and least said word in a project manager's vocabulary is "NO".
77. When all's said and done a lot more is said than done.
© of this compilation: 2004 Oliver F. Lehmann, Ismaning, Germany
2. To estimate a project, work out how long it would take one person to do it then multiply that by the number of people on the project.
3. The first 90% of a project takes 90% of the time. The last 10% takes the other 90%.
4. The person who says it will take the longest and cost the most is the only one with a clue how to do the job.
5. The faintest ink is more powerful than the strongest memory.
6. The project manager is the lightning rod for all problems.
7. Fast - cheap - good: you can have any two.
8. The more ridiculous the deadline the more money will be wasted trying to meet it.
9. Too few people on a project and they can't solve the problems - too many, and they create more problems than they solve.
10. Any project can be estimated accurately (once it's complete).
11. The project would not have been started if the truth had been told about the cost and timescale.
12. If an IT project works the first time, it is wrong.
13. Managing IT people is like herding cats.
14. A badly planned project will take three times longer than expected - a well planned project only twice as long as expected.
15. If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything.
16. A problem shared is a buck passed.
17. A good project manager adheres to schedule. A project champion meets the targets.
18. You should cut down the tree that you are able to.
19. The optimist says: We do our very best for the project. The pessimist is afraid this might be true.
20. It is human to make a mistake; it is stupid to persist in it.
21. If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.
22. If you don't attack the risks, the risks will attack you.
23. Planning without action is futile, action without planning is fatal.
24. Managers apply pressure when they are at their wits’ end.
25. If it wasn't for the 'last minute', nothing would get done.
26. If you don't know how to do a task, start it, then ten people who know less than you will tell you how to do it.
27. If everything is going exactly to plan, something somewhere is going massively wrong.
28. If there were no problem people there'd be no need for people who solve problems.
29. For a project manager overruns are as certain as death and taxes.
30. When the weight of the project paperwork equals the weight of the project itself, the project can be considered complete.
31. A project manager should not look where he fell, but where he slipped.
32. You can build a reputation on what you're going to do.
33. The sooner you get behind schedule, the more time you have to make it up.
34. Everyone asks for a strong project manager - when they get him they don't want him.
35. Good estimators aren't modest: if it's huge, they say so.
36. Metrics are learned men's excuses.
37. If you can interpret project status data in several different ways, only the most painful interpretation will be correct.
38. Activity is not achievement.
39. Never underestimate the ability of senior management to buy a bad idea and fail to buy a good idea.
40. The nice thing about not planning is that failure comes as a complete surprise rather than being preceded by a period of worry and depression.
41. It's not the hours that count; it's what you do in those hours.
42. Good control reveals a problem early - which only means you'll have longer to worry about it.
43. No project has ever finished on time, within budget, to requirement - yours won't be the first to.
44. Warning: Dates in the calendar are closer than you think.
45. There is no such thing as scope creep, only scope gallop.
46. Anything that can be changed will be changed until there is no time left to change anything.
47. If project content is allowed to change freely the rate of change will exceed the rate of progress.
48. The same work under the same conditions will be estimated differently by ten different estimators or by one estimator at ten different times.
49. If there are no more problems in your project, your boss will reduce your time and budget.
50. If you're 6 months late on a milestone due next week but really believe you can make it, you're a project manager.
51. A project gets a year late one day at a time.
52. Quality is free.
53. You can con a sucker into committing to an impossible deadline, but you cannot con him into meeting it.
54. Nothing gets done till nothing gets done.
55. The project manager’s most important organ is the nose. He must smell a stink bomb before it goes off.
56. It takes one woman nine months to have a baby. It cannot be done in one month by impregnating nine women (although it may be more fun trying).
57. A minute saved at the start is just as effective as one saved at the end.
58. There's never enough time to do it right first time, but there's always enough time to go back and do it again.
59. If you have time to do it over again, you'll never get away with doing it right the first time.
60. Good project managers know when not to manage a project.
61. Good project management is not so much knowing what to do and when, as knowing what excuses people give and when.
62. Projects happen in two ways: a) Planned and then executed or b) Executed, stopped, planned and then executed.
63. Clever project managers pass problems to others; smart project managers build a reputation as problem solvers.
64. A lump sum contract puts the buyer in the strong position - until the first change request is made.
65. If at first you don't succeed, remove all evidence you ever tried.
66. Quantitative project management is for predicting cost and schedule overruns well in advance.
67. All project managers face problems on Monday mornings - good project managers are working on next Monday's.
68. Nothing is impossible for the person who doesn't have to do it.
69. People under pressure do not think faster.
70. The conditions attached to a promise are forgotten - only the promise is remembered.
71. Of several possible interpretations of a communication, the least convenient is always the correct one.
72. If you are not fired with enthusiasm, you will be fired with enthusiasm.
73. The good project manager looks after his team; the perfect project manager takes care of his customer.
74. The most valuable and least created document in project management is “Plan B”.
75. The most valuable and least used phrase in a project manager's vocabulary is "I don't know".
76. The most valuable and least said word in a project manager's vocabulary is "NO".
77. When all's said and done a lot more is said than done.
© of this compilation: 2004 Oliver F. Lehmann, Ismaning, Germany
Why this blog
i started this blog from 2 reasons: 1 i have a passion for project management and 2 i have a passion for learning
i invite you now to start with me a journey through project management ups and downs, joys and sorrows and learn from one another in order to become good-better-the best
i am also a believer in that we need to learn, to apply and to transform ourselves into what we want to be
:-)
i invite you now to start with me a journey through project management ups and downs, joys and sorrows and learn from one another in order to become good-better-the best
i am also a believer in that we need to learn, to apply and to transform ourselves into what we want to be
:-)
Abonați-vă la:
Comentarii (Atom)