College Professor uses Tried-and-True method for Encouraging Knowledge Sharing

via Slashdot a few weeks ago, and Ars Technica; at the University of Washington-Bothell, Martha Groom recently assigned her students to work on Wikipedia entries, and add to the knowledge base. An interesting approach; I found the reaction of the Wikipedia community most interesting, in that the entries were aggressively edited and commented upon - sometimes "rudely". It's a common theme in many KM discussions, as early adopters enter their first Trough of Disillusionment, and see these wonderful tools languish…

Defining the Business Value of a Project

25 October, 2007
Project Management, Business Value of IT
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I'm following a project management meme lately; while freely admitting that I'm oversimplifying some complex topics, I will forge ahead with ... project "value". At work, we've been talking about the classic challenge of putting a business value on a project. I call it a "classic" challenge because it's a basic requirement for every prioritization exercise that I've been exposed to. You know the drill - we have 10 projects, but only time and resources to do 5. How does…

The Five Fundamental Rules of Project Management

15 October, 2007
Project Management
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Okay, the title is a bit of a false advertising. I'm not revealing the top five rules - I'm actually looking for help in defining rules #3-5. Any input is appreciated - care to weigh in with an opinion? I've had a number of discussions, with some of the best project managers I know, as we discuss ways to simplify methodologies and streamline our delivery process. Many organizations are trying to train their next generation of project managers, and all…

Interesting How the Mind Works

My mother has always been an accomplished letter writer - her travelogues are definitely worth keeping. Lately, she's adapted her flair for the written word to email, having amassed a healthy mailing list of relatives, grandchildren, etc. Here's one she sent last month - I thought it was an interesting insight into the nature of learning. She's taking care of my aging grandmother, and writes ... ... when I was cleaning out mother's [room] ... I found a pile of…

Communication is the responsibility of …

Corporate Knowledge Management (KM) is hard. Hard to introduce, hard to teach/coach, hard to require, hard to create. Which, added all up together, often make it hard to use. It may sound like unfounded pessimism, as the Internet is loaded with examples of successful collaborative sites that aggregate and repackage knowledge - it's been doing that for years, ever since there were Compuserve forums and bulletin boards. Unfortunately (for the corporate environment), the Law of Large Numbers takes care of…

Thoughts on Why Tech Folks Need to Sweat the Administrivia Details

As I've noted in the past, it really helps to understand the techies' way of thinking, especially when trying to get work done on tasks that are decidedly non-technical. Here's two more recent stories from work, both hinging on the common desire to just "git'er done". Why do we waste time removing obsolete code? Just hide the menu option ... A few months ago, we had a task to decommission a chunk of code that was calculating some elapsed time information…

Driving Participation and Contributions on Internal Blogs and Wikis

It's much easier to install the software than it is to get participation ... you need to put some thought into the why? and the who? ... Why are we doing this? Jack Vinson posted this list from C.G Lynch (CIO.com): Seven Reasons for Your Company to Start an Internal Blog Your enterprise e-mail applications are not easy to search - access to "buried in a colleague’s inbox" Your e-mail is lost in the eye of the "cc storm" -…

More Challenges for Applying Web 2.0 inside the Firewall

After my last post ... more experiences at work, and observations in the trades and other blogs, regarding Web 2.0 tools for use in business ... Improving Knowledge Capture is Half the Battle In last week's Information Week magazine, the story of Procter & Gamble's push towards collaboration - the tools can meet some resistance. A critical quote: We consistently hear that information posted to the intranet is incremental work. Similarly, in my organization, I have folks continuing to send…

What’s the Difference between Announcements, Blogs, Discussions, Wikis?

Alternate Title: Battling Collaboration Memes As mentioned previously, we are trying out SharePoint where I work, and I'm finding it interesting, maintaing 3+ blogs, including this one. Actually, the focus of the internal stuff is quite different, as Dennis McDonald and others have been noting. Lot's of details and stories to write about, but one key learning we've captured recently ... With the SharePoint toolset, we can set up Announcements, Blogs, Discussion Forums (Fora?), and Wikis - sometimes all on…

Five Key Skills for Successful Project Managers

Just a quick post this evening, capturing some thoughts that have been forming over the past week or so. When evaluating people for a role as project lead or project manager (PM), what exactly does one look for? I suppose many will point to PMI certifications, adherence to principles in the PMBOK, "excellent communication skills", and multiple, complex, high-profile, high-quality projects under their belt. But what about the intangibles - the stuff you can't really learn from a book? I…