A professor stood before his philosophy class and had some items in front of him.

When the class began, wordlessly, he picked up a very large and empty mayonnaise jar and fills it with golf balls.

He then asked the students if the jar was full. They agreed that it was.

The professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured it into the jar. He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles rolled into the open areas between the golf balls.

He then asked the students again if the jar was full. They agreed it was.

The professor next picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of course, the sand filled up everything else.

He asked once more if the jar was full. The students responded with a unanimous “YES”.

The professor then produced two cups of coffee from under the table and poured the entire contents into the jar, effectively filling the empty space between the sand. The students laughed.

“Now,” said the professor, as the laughter subsided, “I want you to recognize that this jar represents your life. The golf balls are the important things – God, family, children, health, friends, and favourite passions. Things, that if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full. The pebbles are the things that matter like your job, house, and car. The sand is everything else — the small stuff.” he said.

“If you put the sand into the jar first,” he continued, “There is no room for the pebbles or the golf balls. The same goes for life. If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff, you will never have room for the things that are important to you…” he told them.

“So… pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness. Worship with your family. Play with your children. Take your partner out to dinner. Spend time with good friends. There will always be time to clean the house and fix the dripping tap. Take care of the golf balls first — the things that really matter. Set your priorities. The rest is just sand.”

One of the students raised her hand and inquired what the coffee represented.

The professor smiled and said, “I’m glad you asked. It just goes to show you that no matter how full your life may seem, there’s always room for a couple of cups of coffee with a friend.”

Wrong, bad, go to the naughty step; hate that, hate hate hate.

My job is to deliver the project, successfully, not win a p*ssing contest with the supplier/customer/partner PM.  I’ll not compromise my employers position, but my first and foremost is to deliver a profitable project, with a happy customer and partners who want to work with us again.

It should be yours also.

In order to do so I used the metaphor of someone who, looking into the distance can see their immediate destination close up, they can see the fences that bar their way, or shortcuts that will save time and effort and can plan their route in detail.

However as they look further into the distance and towards their eventual destination, the detail to which they can plan their route gets less and less.  It’s only as they travel their route that they get to see the new barriers, new paths to tread and that they can plan the route for the the next phase in detail.

Have a view of the long term goals of your project but you can’t plan the whole thing in detail as things change was you go, plan the next phase in detail using your experience to make informed decisions, defining the detailed requirements for the each phase in turn refining your understanding of the project deliverables as you go.

And remember, the methodology is a tool to achieve the end goal not the goal itself.

The course runs for 5 days well 4 and a half and there are two exams in that.  During the classroom sessions you go through the methodology in full and that’s good, you need to so that you understand the how the Process, Themes and Principles work together properly.  However most, if any projects that the candidates run will never use the entire Prince2 process in full.  To their credit, the change on 2009 made allowances and put more focus on embedding and tailoring the methodology, but it’s not really covered in the course.  As a result there is a separation between the application of Prince2 and the classroom. Candidates are cut loose after taking the course and expected to tailor the methodology without it ever being shown how.

This is where the Prince2 process falls over, the result can only lead to badly tailored projects that use some of the principles or use the methodology incorrectly breaking the processes to suit the needs of the project, this may work with varying degrees of success but it’s little wonder that there is some confusion, even ridicule for Prince2, which is a perfectly valid methodology, when two companies’ can have a completely different idea of what Prince2 actually is.

So where does that leave us, Prince2 is a valid and useful means of getting things done, if applied properly (a whole different subject), its definition however has lost its way a little, time to get back on track fellas.

The manual.

Let’s start with the manual, as it’s likely anyone’s first exposure to Prince2 will be through the manual.  Be it guide or manual the tome reads like a book written by a crowd, a crowd that like to use a lot of words.  As a result the manual is badly written it, repeats itself often and end up confusing the reader rather than informing and assisting. Even if you make allowances for the fact that it’s written as a reference guide not a linear read.  The manual desperately needs to be designed (note, designed not re-designed) the structure needs refining, information design is vital in products like this and this needs to be added as part of the requirements for future editions, the methodology may be mature but the reference manual most definitely isn’t.  But then you need to reference it on the exam, and that’s where it gets really interesting.

The course

Firstly the course, it’s taught in a classroom environment which on the face of it seems to fit the material, which can be bland and confusing and does not do the methodology, which is not bland and confusing, justice.  There seems to some room to spice things up a little, one of the elements of the agile movement that make it so attractive to its advocates, is its user friendliness. It set outs to make the Agile fun right from the start and its courses are designed to be fun (and a little embarrassing) Prince2 could do with adopting some of this learning, information is easier to assimilate when learn by doing as opposed to being lectured to, maybe that would help the bad rep that prince2s has as a boring management tool.

The exam

Finally you get to the exam, firstly you need to suspend reality for a while to believe that any exam is an adequate method for testing a candidates understanding of a subject.

In Prince2 you face a test the reaches new level of confusion. When you take the course they allow a day, yes a whole day, on how to sit the exam, on how to interpret the questions and decipher what they actually mean. Now, any exam that needs a day to explain how to answer the questions to relatively intelligent, mature candidates has a problem. The real scary thing is, you need that day, the questions are designed to confuse the candidate, the format, though based on a prescribed testing method, has been skewed to fit the ideas of the examiners.  The English used is deliberately confusing and as a result the test becomes more a test in your English and your ability to just pass the test, your Prince2 knowledge becomes of secondary importance, and your ability to apply the methodology isn’t tested at all.

Prince2 is a valid management tool with useful if a little over complicated processes, if it’s applied correctly but that’s a whole different discussion.

He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say ‘To-morrow is Saint Crispian:’

Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars.
And say ‘These wounds I had on Crispin’s day.’
Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot,
But he’ll remember with advantages
What feats he did that day: then shall our names.
Familiar in his mouth as household words
Harry the king, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester,
Be in their flowing cups freshly remember’d.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember’d:

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:

And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.

very very good, for more information go to :

http://www.informationarchitects.jp/en/

http://twitter.com/iA

If only desire of it
Makes you quite mad enough
Never to tire of it,
Makes you hold all other things tawdry and cheap for it

If life seems all empty and useless without it
And all that you scheme and you dream is about it,

If gladly you’ll sweat for it,
Fret for it,
Plan for it,
Lose all your terror of God or man for it,

If you’ll simply go after that thing that you want.
With all your capacity,
Strength and sagacity,
Faith, hope and confidence, stern pertinacity,

If neither cold poverty, famished and gaunt,
Nor sickness nor pain
Of body or brain
Can turn you away from the thing that you want,

If dogged and grim you besiege and beset it,
You’ll get it!

Berton Braley

It’s a difficult age, I remember the turmoil of teenage life (just) and dread what adolescent treats we have in store, but my most immediate problem is, now he is ‘of age’, he has an argument against my stance that he being underage (according to the terms and conditions of Facebok) can’t have a face book page until he turns 13, didn’t think that one through fully.

Facebook is not evil, nor is the internet, but doing what I do consider myself savvier than the average parent, and, judging from conversations with my boy, this would seem to be a well founded assumption.

The internet is not a playground, there a risks associated with its use, just the as there are risks in most things, and whilst we cannot (and should not) fence our young of from these risk completely we do have a duty to teach them and mentor them in the best practices. The net it is not a safe environment on which to publish your details, and Facebook most certainly is not place for a new netizen to cut their wings.

We, as parents,  can only do so much to protect and educate our kids, we talk to them about  cyber bullying but have no control over whether we are listened or  heard, than same goes for the  discussions on publishing personal data .

There are rules in our house when it comes to the internet, we  do not allow access to the net in the bed room, access is monitored and software is installed to block inappropriate content where possible.

He will get Facebook, the digital world is the world he will grow up in and he must be savvy to all its opportunities, but it will be under certain conditions,

1. He will not publish his birthday, holidays,  address, telephone number, school info or age
2. He will not ‘friend’ anyone he does not know
3. He will friend his mother and me.
4. He will continue to be limited on how much time he spend online
5. I will set up his account and privacy settings and he will not change them
6. He will be wary of the images he publishes and only publish them to friends

It seems draconian but until the sites themselves help us the parents, protect our children, we the parent need to proactively monitor our little ones and make sure they understand the risks, a responsibility to many parents seem less keen to address.

It is my hope that he will discover all the great stuff out there, and become interested in adding to it, creating new experiences  and getting beyond just consuming, IM and games…..which are fun as well

We shall see.

it never works,  when I was on the other side of the line writing code and being ‘the resource’  I often encountered tow types of PM, the ‘badgers (?)’ and the guy / girl who knew how to get the best from their team, the ‘badgers’ task where always at the bottom of the list, same is true now I am the guy.

• Trust your team
• Set up your communication lines and trust them
• Ask yourself who is this meeting benefiting, me or the project *before* you call it.
• And leave the guys alone..

*caveat this assumes you have a team of competent staff, if this is not the case adjust your communication lines and project protocols according