An open letter to Those Fathers Who Has Teenager Kid At home?

Dear Fathers,

What do you think about Mark Twain’s saying “When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years.”

Photocredit : Father son 

Have you felt the same way at your teens?

In my adolescent years, I used all tricks so that my father didn’t get to know that his little boy tested Charminar cigarette or got poor marks in Sanskrit or trying to get too close with a girl in the building. But, for me, my father’s word used to be final saying like a verdict by the chief justice of India.

I realised the profoundness of Mark Twain’s statement on a chilly December evening after altercations with my sons.

We were waiting for our son who will be returning home after three months from his college.  He was late. We all joined in dinner and started some small talks.

He looked at the packed baggage at the corner of the room and asked “Are you going anywhere soon? When you will return?”

My wife briefed him about our travel plan to Goa in minute details the way she always used to explain him earlier like where we stay, where we will go etc..

After a while, my son asked rolling his eyes why we didn’t inform him earlier. He had a plan to go to a college in Trivandam for a coding competition along with couple of his classmates. He passionately argued why he should go for the competition rather than joining us for a trip to Goa.
We were upset.

We had a bad argument. His mother cried, and I started screaming and blaming him.  I couldn’t accept that our son is not considering our wishes albeit this is the first time he did.

My son stormed out of the apartment in the night. His mother was upset and started blaming me for all these occurrences.

The evening for which we were waiting for weeks became a disaster.

After an hour, my wife went to search for our son. I threatened her that I will not go to allow my son to step into MY apartment. I was enraged. I believed my son has no right to say “NO” to my plan.
I went to bed. I thought I do not need both of them in my life. They just don’t care about my feelings.
Outside noises gradually reduced.

More than one hour passed. I might doze off.

Suddenly I got alerted with the knocking on the door. Reluctantly I went to open the door. I again decided I need to teach them a lesson for their audacity.

But…

My wife was alone. Her eyes were red and swollen. She was looking completely exhausted. She entered the room slowly and somehow managed to throw her body on the sofa.

I looked at her and the unfinished food on the dinner table. I looked at the mutton curry, the favorite dish of my son which he didn’t get a chance to taste even.

All on a sudden my anger disappeared.

I started worrying about my dear son in that night. An all pervading dark fear came into my mind. It is almost 2 hours he left home wearing just a pajama and T shirt in the winter night.

I was scared to ask anything to my wife.

My wife slowly said she couldn’t find him anywhere. We should contact police. She broke down in tears.

I felt my knees were trembling. I remembered the day he was born. All those fond memories came to me as a flashback movie. I suddenly remembered how he loved to play “police and thief” game with me, and he used to jump on my lap as soon as I returned home from the office.

I hurriedly came down with my car keys. I drove around one kilometre and looking around both the sides of Palm Beach road with a hope to locate him.

“Dad!” I heard him. I found he was sitting at the edge of the road. I rushed to hug him.

“Dad! Am sorry. I won’t go for the competition. Forgive me.”

I felt the pain in his voice. I looked at him.  His eyes were red. I could see the dry tear drops at the corner of his eyes.

“It’s OK my son. It happened. I’m also sorry.”

He sat in the back seat of the car, and we drove back home.

My wife hugged her son tightly and burst into a tear.

He said “Am sorry ma. Forgive me.” and slowly entered his room.

I felt tired. I sat on a chair on the patio to unwind myself looking at lights of the steamers at far in the sea.

I rewind all the events of last few hours in my mind. I was disturbed because my son didn’t listen to me. After all, he is my only child, and I only think about his benevolence. I was surprised to see his rudeness and anger.

I started justifying my act.

I needed to be strict to control a teenage son. Isn’t this an age old advice for parenting?

Suddenly, the sad look on my son’s face flashed in my mind. A new thought crept into my mind “Did he accept our decision or just did a compromise?”

Suddenly, I found that I started analysing the whole incidence from my son’s point of view. I went into the room and picked up the details of the competitive examination. I was shocked to find that this is an international competition and sponsored by top companies like IBM, Google, Microsoft, and SAP. There was an opportunity to get sponsorship for short term courses in some reputed college in USA and Europe.

My thought process got a jolt.

I started thinking “Was I wrong? Am I not over-reacted after knowing his desire?”

After some time, I felt very disturbed and tiptoed to my son’s room to check whether he is sleeping or just lying in bed. To my surprise, I found he was awake and watching motivational speeches video clip by Wills Smith in YouTube.

I asked, “Are you hungry?”

He asked me “Why did you say that I never listen to you? I just wanted to participate my first international coding competition. Where was I wrong? Could not we go to Goa after a week also? We together went Goa earlier also.”

“Let’s go to the kitchen and have the sweets which your mother prepared this afternoon for us.” - I replied slowly.

He went to call his mother. We had a very late dinner or very early morning breakfast.

His questions were so poignant that it strummed few chords inside my heart.

We agreed that he should go for the competition and cancelled our trip.

Years passed. My son forgot the incidence. He is busy in his studies and work. Thank God! we never had similar issue after that.

The whole occurrence was a great lesson of parenting. I did soul searching , read books and scientific journals on parenting teens. Now, I help people and friends who found themselves in this odd situation,

Read the rest of the article to know what you should do to avoid being a toxic parent.

Times changed. There’s a generation gap. We need to adopt ourselves to make us understandable to our kids.

An actionable  step by step guide for better relationships with your teenage son

photocredit:shutterstock

1. You need to give time to your kids. Engage in fun activities with them. Just because they are growing, doesn’t mean they are not still children. Some of your best memories are probably playing outside with your child, going to the mountains, the park, or to do some fun activities. Take a day and sneak away to the theme park, go for a hike, book a hotel and get away, just for the fun of it! Be a kid with your kid. Remind them of your pleasure in their company. We all get busy, as do I, but making the time for these little memories is not time-consuming, but life changing.
2. You need to accept that your children are a separate person with his desires. You should avoid giving them your "little wisdom" always. You have to give plenty of space so that your kids can fly to strengthen their wings and apply the knowledge they acquired in life.
3. The best way to manage mouthy kids is not to engage in verbal arguments with them. You shouldn't respond to a rude behaviour and give it power. A very powerful way to answer to sarcasm is to say just, “Don’t talk to me that way, I don’t like it,” and turn around and walk away. That way, you’re taking all the power out of the room with you. If you argue or try to make a point, you’re giving your child more power. Try to be an assertive teacher and give them clear, firm direction and correction, but act respectfully. Please remember that as your kids grow they may forget what you said, but won't forget how you made them feel.   It is important for you to understand the difference between criticizing and correcting 
4. You need to have empathy to consider what teens’ lives are like in digital age with pervasive technology, where every good and a bad day has the potential to be broadcast to hundreds and thousands and bullying no longer confined to the schoolyard. You need to educate them on possible risks and how to manage those issues in real life. The empathetic experience allows you to connect with others by pushing your mind into a new realm and enabling you to see the world and ourselves in a different way. Digital empathy is the key to build a strong bond with your kids.
5. Always keep the communication channel open with your kids. While communicate and talk to address disputes you can teach your children problem-solving skill. Adults who are willing to walk around in their teenagers’ mental shoes tend to raise teenagers who return the favor.
6. Need to aware of your anger and direct the same in a constructive way. You as a parent need to express your emotions without damaging teenager's (often fragile) self-esteem. You might say: "When you speak to me like that it makes me so angry I find it impossible to be helpful. I expect you to rephrase that." instead of saying "You are so rude. When will you ever learn? ... And you think I'm going to help you now?". Learn to use power words.
7. Feelings are never right or wrong. Only actions need to be limited. Feelings should always be accepted. As a parent, you need to be a perfect listener and acknowledge your kids' feelings.
8. Here is an odd one but a serious issue. Teenage boys often sleep long hours even in the day time. Please note they are capable of sleeping 16 hours a day, and it has nothing to do with ambition or the lack thereof. It just a biological need for them. The National Sleep Foundation suggests that teenagers need more sleep (8-10 hours) than adults (7-9 hours). Teenagers often feel sleepy in late night.
9. You should get super, super interested in what your children are interested.
10. Teach your teen on how to deal with toxic and difficult people.
11. Teach your kids to be satisfied rather than successful. Competition is steep, and there will always be someone who is further along. That’s the beauty of human potential.
12. You can consult an NLP practitioner to create an anchor, link, and association. I am adding this as an extreme measure as I witnessed the benefit of the same to manage a teenage daughter of my colleague who has a habit of partying late night and drinking.

Being teenagers are hard as their brains are going through massive changes. So, follow Elaine M. Ward’s saying “the rules for parents are but three… love, limit, and let them be.” There is no such thing as a perfect parent so just be a real parent.

Suggested reading on how to deal with adolescent boys: 

• Social cognitive development during adolescence
• Secrets of the teenage brain: a psychologist's guide for teachers  
• Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior
• 10 Simple Steps to Stop Toxic Parenting

Yours sincerely

A Satisfied father

Manage Stress at Work

How terror attack survivors taught me the secret to overcoming stress?

Our generation is impacted heavily by workplace by stress. I was one of the worst sufferers of this pervasive, persistent and insidious psychological threat for years. I consulted neurologists, psychiatrist, nutritionist and personal fitness trainer in addition to countless hours of searching for find the magic solution for improving my condition.

List of things which I tried to get rid of stress and anxiety:

•    Started circuit training and running in the early morning to increase my endorphin level naturally.
•    Used to play and cuddle my pet dog to get enough oxytocin
•    Tried Reiki and other meditation technique to control my mind
•    Changed my diet pattern. I added dark leafy greens, nuts to increase intake of Magnesium, include eggs for breakfast, milk before sleep along with multivitamin capsules.
•    I tried all these options along with taking daily prescribed medicine- Pexceps.

But, my life was not exemplified by abundance, happiness, and joy.

The problem became acute once I moved to Kenya in 2012. Workload and continuous traveling in African countries took a further toll on my emotional health. My existence became crippled. I became heavy smoker and alcoholic.It went to such extent that I started contemplating to quit the job.Some of friends told me that I am suffering from mid life crisis and time is the best healer.

One evening I tuned to the local English Channel to know more about the terrorist attack in Lamu, Kenya by Al-Shabaab. TV journalist was interviewing a young girl and her grandmother who not only survived the brutal attack but also walked whole night through the forest to reach a safe place.

The journalist asked the young lady “How they managed to remain calm and escape scratch free while such macabre murderous spree was going on?”

She responded in her broken English “My grandma told me to take deep breaths and move one step at a time. Thank Jesus with each step. I did that.”

“How did you gather such courage?”

“My grandma was continuously whispering not to think about the terrorist attack. Keep walking. My throat choked with fear. The whispering of grandma helped me to gather enough energy and courage to move ahead in the night.”

The old lady said (as translated by TV journalist) “The thought of saving the life of my granddaughter didn’t allow me to think about fear, shock of losing family and year old knee pain which restricted my movements for years now. I prayed for her safety and Jesus helped me.”
I switched off the TV, came to the balcony and started thinking about the news. Words like “don’t think”, “acceptance”, “thanks to Jesus” started reverberating in my mind. I was amazed by the power of these words which helped these two ladies to overcome all challenges including fear of death in that night.

I started asking myself “Am I not driven by the negative thoughts of the random chattering of my mind?”

I started walking up and down on the patio and started thinking how I can master strength to overcome the depressing and negative thoughts.  I used to build confidence and courage by strengthening positive thoughts.

Once I started accepting my situations and surroundings, my circumstances improved. It took me almost two years to transform myself. Doctors reduced the dosages of my medicines. My blood pressure became normal and started sleeping well without any medicine.

The clue for my transformation was forming new habits.

Five Habits To Manage Stress At  Work And Stop Damaging Your Career & Life

1.    Stress a great motivator

I realized whenever I blame my luck it’s nothing but my unfulfilled wish or expectation mismatch. I came to Africa for exciting and challenging work. And, personally, I wanted to experience wild Africa. It was my decision. I started owning my decision instead of blaming others. Once I gave permission to myself to be stressed, the rush of Adrenaline improved my efficiency level.
The key here is to remember life is a marathon, not a sprint. It took me six months to have the paradigm shift of my mind. You can refer to the Theory of Positive Disintegration (TPD) by Kazimierz Dąbrowski to understand more about personality development which I often consulted during my transition.

2.    Become a morning person 

“A man paints with his brains and not with his hands” - Michelangelo
I inspired by Robin Sharma’s “holy hour” concept. I start my day with a cold shower after getting up early morning. Next, I use visualization technique to make my day a perfect day in my mind. I identify possible stressors of the day and visualize how I manage those stressful situations.
Next, I identify my top 3 tasks for that day. I visualize all the activities for that day and see the proper closure of each activity.  Following these principles of laws of attraction, I found my daily life become less chaotic. I complete these rituals everyday morning because the consistency on fundamentals gives success.  This process helped me to find a new mantra of a happy life - celebrate now! Tomorrow is Mystery and Yesterday are Histories”.

3.    Practice a habit of gratitude and acceptance 

Rising demands at office required longer working hours in a very competitive environment. It took a toll on my emotional health. I fought and complained the same but didn’t help.
I finally decided just to come and do the work the best I can do. I started to focus only things which give positive feelings. I started accepting what is required to concentrate on resolving the current job at hand.

I taught myself to take the harsh words of my seniors and clients not literally.
After few months, I found that this habit of the conscious practice of understanding and empathy improved my relationships with co-workers, and I am much less stressed. Over time, I learned to focus only good things at work and started sharing good events of life among ourselves.

All these practices resulted in a more expansive mind which is not narrowly focused on its little story of how things should be, but can see those small incidences as a part of a bigger picture.
I recommend you to have a feeling of the attitude of gratitude. You should feel everybody important with a genuine smile, show warmth by gentle tap above the elbow and direct eye contact for 100% attention the person. And always be an optimist.

4.    Declutter your work area and life

I influenced by Henry David Thoreau statement “Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify.” I create a motive to remove all unnecessary things from my life so that necessary can enter my work and I can give full attention to those small details of necessary things. I make a habit of cleaning my desk, drawers of the table. I started keeping minimum necessary things. I deleted the useless contents from my computer also. I removed all digital garbage from the hard disk. Now, I clean my work space once a week and often decorate my office room with the personal touch.
The information is the biggest clutter in today’s life. I put a block on information flow which reduces chattering of my mind, and also it increased my personal productivity.

5.    Adapt to changes

This one was difficult for me. Any change used to trigger panic button within me. After several months self-introduction, I started accepting changes proactively. I used to remind myself that the change is the architect of future.
I recommend you to evaluate your coping strategy for any change. You should eliminate the idea of avoidance of any change. I followed Richard Lazarus and Susan Folkman’s approach as documented in "Transactional Model of Stress and Coping".
Whenever you feel an internal resistance in accepting a change, go for a small walk, and play with some apps on the smartphone to divert your mind.

Learn to have a fica moment daily in office - pause for some time and relax in the company of colleagues

6.    Be a good communicator and be more social 

I used to feel uncomfortable in meeting and social gatherings. I consulted life coach Dolly Manghat on how should I be more assertive in social groups and meeting. After few sessions, she advised me to try to become more influential rather that get mired in tactics. I took few lessons on how to have small talks, be a good listener and use nonverbal body languages from her to improve personal effectiveness.
Almost after one-year active practice, I became more socially active and assertive in my behavior. My individual and professional contacts increased many times. My confidence grew, and I worked in a more relaxed way.
In summary, stress is a response to challenges in life. A life without challenges is too tedious to contemplate. You need to learn to use stress as your friend. It can’t be accomplished overnight — I’ve been eliminating stressors in my life for a while now, and I’m still not done. But I think it’s a worthwhile goal.
These habits helped me to have a happy life. I have more fun in life as I always try to be happy at that particular moment and space.

What is the secret?

We live in two dimensions i.e. mind and body. We need to start living in three dimension where the third dimension is our intelligence. Using knowledge without ego is the key to having a Zen-like life in today’s  life.


“There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that’s your own self.   “- Aldous Huxley

Role of EA in India

Future of Digital India  in the era of Modi Economics

There is a direct push by PM Mr. Modi on digital India. It's indeed an encouraging for us Indians. But, will they consult real hands on technical people. I hope it will not be another story of big dream only.

I think to make the concept of digital India reality, Government of India needs to think about followings

1. Digital India requires  real enterprise architects who will do the skillful manipulation of the enterprise  structure and behavior within this complex environment.

Otherwise executives will run after behind frameworks like TOGAF, Zachman Framework because frameworks are cocaine for executives 

2.  A big push requires Big Data filed and for all government departments. Truthful data provide EA with the pulse of the enterprise and its environment.

3. Government should focus on continuous business transformation supported by Agile program management.

4. Need to grasp ( cautiously )  the deeply transformative nature of the Cloud which is a true disruptive technology. Several technocrats can start their small but highly profitable business on cloud platforms.

Why posture shirt

Do you want to reduce fatigue by 30%

Today, average person sits 70% of the time and this is as bad as smoking.  Sitting for long term is bad for your health. 

Evidence is growing that computer users are at increased risk of developing musculoskeletal disorders (especially those involving the upper extremity), resulting in health problems for the workforce and financial/productivity losses for employers. Blame it on bad posture,

Alignmed’s Posture Shirt is the easiest answer I’ve found. Just put it on. It does all the rest with it’s sewn in neuro-bands that provide controlled resistance and create a form of passive therapy to fix poor posture. The products have been FDA registered, granted prescription approval and vetted with research and over 80,000 users to date.

I found this shirt brings my neck into a better position so it relieves neck back and shoulder pain.

You can buy  Posture shirt from Amazon

 

Why Failures are Good For You?

 Ups & down are the paths of life. I too experience a fair share of that.



I know the feeling of failure is how devastating. Over the years, I learned why it is called failures are failures of success.
 
Here are 5 reasons 

1. You went for it instead of just sitting around envying others or having a pity party.
2. You proved that you have characteristic traits like courage, determination, patience, willingness, initiative and a bunch more.
3. You made yourself vulnerable, which later will make you powerful. Just watch!
4. You completed something – because you can’t fail until you get to a certain point where you determine if you have won or lost. So you have completed something but the results were not in your favor. Still, you get points for completion.
5. You decided that it was worth trying something and failing instead of not trying at all. This is huge.

Share your opinon

3 Tips for success in customer facing role

What I learnt after working as a customer facing executive program manager?

1. Let customers know you in person  - Make sure you are in touch with them. Talk to them. It doesn't matter how sincere you are unless your customer feel that & believe that.

2. The customer should know how to reach you - Customer should able to reach you the moment they think they need you. This gives a confidence to customer that you are with them. This will help you to avoid several escalations to your seniors.

3. Offer your expertise  & advices without being pushy - Give suggestions and try to lead them in the best possible way instead of trying to just manage them.

Golden Rule : Please note Escalation doesn't help, but talk & sincere listening helps.

Microsoft Project Tutorial 5 - Project Resource Calendar

7 Tips for Resource Scheduling  For Geographically Dispersed Teams

In 2001, I was doing a large Billing transformation project for Telefonica, Madrid. It was a complex project and that was also first time I was working with distributed team.

There is a strict delivery date from the project because it’s a fixed cost project with agreed delivery timeline but the challenge was to get proper resources with desired skills. Finally we, build our team with people from all continents.

Our billing team was from Israel (their availability during September is a challenge), Mediation & rating team were mostly Indians (it was tough to get majority Indians working during October/November due to Navaratri & Diwali & some Indians preferred to take vacation in mid Jan), our OS/390 mainframe  experts were from  west coast USA & Sao Paulo (Brazil) . Our DB2 expert was from Russia.

There is also a difference in working time like people at Tel-Aviv development center used to work on Sunday but not on Friday, testing team at Cyprus worked in two shifts and UAT support provided in three shifts from Cyprus, Tel Aviv development center along with local support  from Madrid.

Our business transformation team was stationed in Madrid and their first language was Spanish. I found from experience not to schedule any onsite work from 2PM to 5PM !!

So, challenge was different work time along with different internal charge rates.

To plan & track these types of projects, require hands on working experience on how to build a program plan with multiple resource calendars, task calendars along with judicious using of “critical resources”. 

A regular tracking of burn rates for in house teams & external consultants who were charging based on hourly engagements is also important for better financial managements.

Let’s demystify the resource calendar

1.    Go to Project -> Change Working Time & click the Create New Calendar... button.

2.    Give a proper name for new base calendar using make a copy of standard calendar

3.    Create  a separate calendar for each team in all countries along with proper setting for working time & week.

4.    Next make the project critical dates like delivery to ST, delivery to UT, going production and post production warranty support as working time and create a separate calendar. This is true for all.

5.    Create an exception to model an irregular change to the normal pattern of working hours or non working hours. Always put details for an exception for easy understanding by everybody. You should revisit your exception report every month and use report tab to check assignment report.

6.    You also have to adjust work contour for some resources based on the stage of project. This is a powerful tool for finer adjustments for very costly resources.

7.    You also need to define a separate task calendars for back up, Database maintenance or patch upload. Always apply those tasks neglecting resource calendar because in resource calendar those might be nonworking time.

Please ensure that everybody has training on MS Project and team has access to Microsoft Project Server. In absence of MS Project server, you can use liquid planner or Gantter, a free project management collaboration tool that is described as a "web based Microsoft Project.

We will discuss financial management using EVM in next tutorial of these project tutorial series.

Author is Prince 2, PMP (Project Manager Professional), COBIT, TOGAF and Microsoft Certified Technical Specialist. In past awarded with MVP (Microsoft Most Valuable Professional - Microsoft Project)!

Other articles on our project tutorial series 

1. 10 Tips for MS Project 13 users 
2. Best Practices For Building & Tracking MS Project Plan 
3. MS Project Tutorial 3 - 15 tips to create a project schedule
4. Top 10 Best Practices for Making an IT Project Successful
5. Top 7 reasons why large IT projects fail
6. Microsoft Project tutorial on how to track completion of activity in MS Project plan. 
7. What are the necessary skills of a good IT project manager
8. How to manage project resource calendar in MS Project 13

 

7 Tips for job interview in 2k14

Are you feeling jittery for your job interview next week?

We interviewed Mala, an experienced career consultant on how executives should prepare for job interview particularly after

In this article, we'll share Mala's best 7 tips on answering interview questions.

She told us that as a general rule interviewee  have to accept his/her anxieties . Interviewee  need to prepare herself  to build quick rapport with the interviewers because interview process is all about building effective relationships. It's the responsibility of you as an interviewee  to impress the recruitment team by experience & behavioral skills.

Are you over 50 and preparing for interview?

Here are 7  Tips For Better  Interview Preparation

1.    I say punctuality is must to young people. But you are over 50 and you need to use smart talk effectively for your success. It helps you to build  relationship. This will help your likeability factor.

You need to prepare your own brand statement. Present your strength with a proper story to address the exact needs of your would be hiring manager. Who won't hire a person with an unique skill to reduce his/her pain?

2.    Get dressed properly for the interview though English saying goes ‘You shouldn’t judge a book by its cover," people tend to do that and it is human tendency to do that. So nobody can be blamed and it is wise to act accordingly and go properly dressed for the interview.

>> Click Here to download the ultimate interview book and get 11 powerful closing statements you can end your interview with

Irrespective of whether you believe in this philosophy, the world today revolves around this principle, which is, “Appearance is of great importance. Appearance is the first thing people notice about you and first impressions are usually formed within the first 30 seconds”, says Brenda Ferguson Hodges, a California based image consultant and career coach. “Appearance affects hiring decisions and plays a major role. You need to wear power outfit ".

3.    You should research the company. You need to know about the position and job description. In the sense you should know about its various branches, it’s owners, directors, products it manufactures or sells or the services it offers and last but not the least it’s clients.  Try to find a company insider from your network to know more information about the position and management expectation from the role, is it a new position/role created, if it’s an existing position why the vacancy created, company bonus & promotion policy etc. This research is crucial for you to ascertain whether you are fit for job.

A good research will definitely help you to get creative ideas to answer recruiters' questions

4.    You need to be quick at answering.  Avoid hesitation because it creates the doubt about your verbal communication skill.  Sometimes, it might have given a terrible answer and you are in a facepalm moment.

In such circumstances, just take a deep breath, backtrack your words and rephrase your answer. You can even ask for an opportunity to repeat the answer. Certainly I don’t think the interviewer would be upset, instead would appreciate your smooth recovery, instead of a scared look. It will moreover be appreciated because this is an important business skill.

5.    Here is the most important tip i.e. salary negotiation. You should be talking about salary or total cost to company very carefully, in the sense very sensibly. You should never give an impression to your interviewer that you are greedy for money and money is the only criteria for you to take up a job or this particular job, even if this the real reason that you are  looking for a change, you shouldn't show off what is in your mind.

Even if in between the interview the interviewer asks what is the salary you expect?
You should avoid that question by saying that can be discussed later once we mutually agree that I am fit for the job.  You must try in every way to make the interviewer give his or her offer first and this is must for job offer negotiation.

6.    During interview try to project how you progress in your career with time, what skill you have acquired. You should subtly emphasize your skills and experience which are very much required for the position under discussion. You should also figure it out before the interview how you can add value in the position and you need to present or demonstrate those skills during the meeting


Use story to address competency based questions. Always build your story based on a situation/context where you took some definitive actions to accomplish some critical tasks . Explain how your actions and results benefited the business.

In this regard Ramit’s brief case method works wonderfully. You should carry resume, appreciation letters from your old customers and few critical documents which you may present to them to explain some specific points/achievements  to make a positive impact.

7.    You also should prepare for other tricky questions like how you manage the strong criticism from your co-worker, your key weakness, what make you frustrated or how you work in a company with strong matrix culture etc.


Firstly, you should not say you never had a problem with any of your co-workers. You need to tell a story on how you sort out differences with your colleagues in past.

Always mention how you take feedback from your seniors and from your team on how we as a team can do better and what they all expect from you.


Also, craft a story to show you can work in a collaborative way which is a MUST in  a matrix structure . Try to emphasize your skills to win argument with various influencers to take a conclusive decision quickly.

Have you ever left a job interview knowing you completely flopped?

If you feel you have just given the worst interview of your life, don’t just blow it off out of proportions.  There is no hard and fast rule to correct an interview gone wrong, but still you can send a thank-you  email for calling you for an interview. The next best thing you can do is

•     Briefly explain why the interview didn’t go well.
•     Stress on the point that you are very much interested in the job.
•     Request for a second chance or a phone interview.
•     Ask to refer to your references again.
•     Forward your well structured resume highlighting your qualifications, problem solving skills & accomplishments which are relevant for this particular opportunity.

Last but not the least be polite at all times in the interview, be honest and ask questions where required. This is important to enable yourself to understand whether you are the right fit for the job as well as whether the company is right for you and how it’s going to be working for the company in question.

In summary, be polite, ask questions and be honest because this is another great place to do networking with people. Remember, you need to figure it out whether you are fit for the job, company for your own self interest.

About Mala - She is qualified HR professional,career psychologist & has 25 years of experience in career consulting, job interview coaching, resume & LinkedIn profile editing. Subscribe to Mala's online coaching to get the secret of success for interviews at  top-tier companies like Microsoft, Google, GM, Goldman, McKinsey and other extra-ordinary companies. She works closely with  Mr. Ramit (Author of I Will Make You Rich), Fred Ball (career coach) & other internationally famed expert.

You can set up a 20 minutes call with her where she will assess your skills and advice you based on your particular situation or you can connect with her in Linkedin.

Latest news on job interview software

1) David Dewey developed ‘Shortlister’ developed at York St John University. This software simulates
real-life interviews, managed liaison and feedback with candidates.

2) Mr. Brown has launched an iTunes app, myPitch, (99¢) for smart phones to help people develop, rehearse and video their answer for "Tell me about yourself".

This article is part of series of our article on "The Rule of The Games" to build your career in corporate or get a promotion.


To get more useful information, visit Passivepanda.com  where James recently published an excellent article on  "99 Interview Tips That Will Actually Help You Get a Job".I found this article is very good for ansering interview questions.

Share  your best answers for the toughest job interview questions below.

https://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20140418050226-52594-don-t-give-it-all-away-at-the-job-interview?trk=tod-home-art-list-large_0

Disclaimer : If you buy the book from my link, I will get financial incentive. The profit will be donated to"CRY" - a child welfare organization.

MS Project Tutorial 4 on Tracking Project Plan

Project Tutorial On How To Calculate & Report Percent Completion

I got several requests to publish a tutorial on how should a project plan should be tracked in most realistic way. This is more critical for a development work which follow water fall methods.

Regular tracking of software projects and reporting the aberrations in must for managing the project.

Top 3 reasons how ms project baseline tracking  

1.    To know whether all activities on schedule? If not what’s the estimated impact on critical path and overall budget.

2.    Are all resources engaged and delivering as per plan?

3.    To forecast impact of new CRs on schedule & cost.

Thought tracking of project plan depends on stakeholder needs but more detailed planning demands more work from resources. So, it’s necessary to optimize the tracking details. 

Normally, project manager reports percentage of completion, either at precise values or at increments such as 25, 50, 70, 75, or 100 percent. In this article, we’ll discuss various options to calculate % of work completed assuming task performer is responsible for baseline date.

(1)    % complete calculates based on activity duration.

I use this for fixed duration project. During discussion, I try to get remaining duration required to complete the task and allow MS Project to calculate the % of work completed. Concept of remaining duration for the pending work helps in better cost & time tracking.

(2)    % work complete calculated based on estimated work for the activity.

This calculation depends on task distribution per day. I normally use liner distribution so the formula for % of work calculation is

Expected % work complete= 100% (Expected work to date/ Expected total work)

(3)    % of physical work completed is another option if you do EVM (Earn Value Methodologies). This calculation considers budget at cost and total cost.

Another important tracking method is Schedule variation index which you can use to report RAG status. You should use ms project progress line and status date.You can add a column in your MS project plan to calculate SVI and put a flag against each activity.

Here is the formula for schedule variation index without any cost factor.

SVI = Calculated percent complete/ Expected percent complete

Next lesson on project tutorial , I will show how to customize and a formula to present RAG status against all summary activities.

 Related articles on project tutorial series

1. 10 Tips for MS Project 13 users 
2. Best Practices For Building & Tracking MS Project Plan 
3. MS Project Tutorial 3 - 15 tips to create a project schedule
4. Top 10 Best Practices for Making an IT Project Successful
5. Top 7 reasons why large IT projects fail
6. Microsoft Project tutorial on how to track completion of activity in MS Project plan. 
7. What are the necessary skills of a good IT project manager
8. How to manage project resource calendar in MS Project 13

 

My Career

How Do You Discover & Speed Up Your Career in 2k14?

Last week I asked Dr. Sumit, President & CIO of Reliance Industry on what improvement I should plan in my career for 2k14.

He smiled and gave a short response "You learn new rules of the game every day".

Here is a brief of our discussion on how to do career planning in his own words.

I have been interviewing at all the IIMs and top business schools in India for the last 3 months - first for summer interns and then for regular placement and I must admit that I am inclined to prefer those candidates who can tell their life's journey and the purpose of that journey consistently.

In my upcoming book titled "Rules of the Game", I take a good look at how and you should be liking yourself and continuously changing yourself till you accept yourself.

What is your Raison d'être?

 What defines your core essence?

 This is your ‘inner brand’. After you have discovered or invented this, the consistent public presentation of the product is creation of ‘outer brand’ ‘you’. A strong brand ‘you’ requires weaving a strong personal narrative about yourself. This is a rule of the game that few have mastered since it has to be real, relevant and repeatable.

Few things that you have to look out for:

•     How to recognize that you are unique and distinguished from all others, and discover your authentic core essence?

•     How to internalize personal branding into your personality? How to build the product ‘you’, keep it relevant all the time, and present it well to make it build-to-last?

•     How important is personal credibility for your brand? How to build and maintain your credibility and character?

•     What is the importance of networking in finding, creating, maintaining, and propagating your brand? How contributing to the network finds you returns in the long run?

At the end of the day, this is also a game and you need to learn rule of the game.

You will win some and you will lose some opportunities but if you are consciously going about thinking about yourself as a company that has a product (you) and a brand (you), you will go about managing the product and the public perception of this brand continuously. As any marketer will tell you, "a Brand never sleeps".

Do you want to unlock your hidden potential NOW?

Pre order Dr. Sumit's book  on The "Rules Of The Game" now and take control of your career right now for 2k14 and beyond.

Related articles : job interview tips 

Responsibilities Of A Good Project Manager

"Importance Of Having A Certified Project Manager  for Complex IT Transformation projects"

Mr. Vivian, CTO of "QFone", a multinational company, approached us to analyze what is going wrong with one of his ambitions IT transformation projects, asking us to recommend how he can still complete the program so that the business benefits can be realized.

Why  Governance & Transparency  is critical for success of a good Project Manager

Here is the description of the project:

Ideation of the program took place in 2005. Orders were placed to an international company "SOX" who is a dominant player in that market segment for 2008. QFone also appointed "CT", a reputed company, as master system integrator for the program.

SOX stopped the project in 2010 due to quick scope creep, yet resumed in 2011 after a long commercial negotiation. In 2013, only 30% of the project was completed, so the project is once again in hot water. There is a scope increase and it currently requires additional funding.

We started our analysis by interviewing Project Managers of "QFone", "CT" an "SOX".

Let's share our findings on their project and program management skills, then we can analyze what went wrong in this key area.

Here is a great video on how to be a great project manager 

1. Professional Certification in Project and Program Management

Today, between 10% and 11% of job postings for Project Managers require, or prefer, a PMP. The reason is because the holder has, or should have, a reasonably normalized vocabulary and should at least be aware of established best practices.

This does not mean, however, that the holder actually knows how to manage a project in the real world, or is a "good" Project Manager.

In this project, none of the Project Mangers are PMP or PRINCE2 certified.

They have technical operations or business analyst backgrounds. They frequently focused more on how to build a legacy requirement in a new system. There was also no proper agreed upon schedule to be tracked or updated regularly. Today's certified project managers must be familiar with online project management tools like Liquidplanner, ZOHO, Teambox, Lighthouse etc.

Lack of  an integrated plan, fails to give early alarm of critical risks with high probability & takes more time in issue resolution. In  a high demanding work, project manager need to focus on vital view rather than trivial many.

2. Alert and Conscious

A project manager must be action-oriented. They must be dynamic enough to turn their decisions into plans. Most of the time a disaster or failure happens, not because of external chaos, but internal confusion. This was a challenge, since the three Project Managers never seemed to align, so they failed to steer the project in the right direction, instead, choosing to escalate each other.

3. Mentor & Mentees

A good Project Manager needs to be mentored and he should be the mentee of the young Project Managers. This is critical to the success of a Project Manager. During an interview, we finally understood that they have a 'boss', but no formal mentors.

4. Relationship

One of the Project Manager's most important roles is to build relationship. Since this team of Project Managers was unable to build good relationships amongst themselves, the three organizations were never able to fully align. For this reason, they failed to do any work collaboratively.

None of the project managers were socially active or mobile enough to be available to the performing teams. The next critical problem was a lack of availability to a unique decision maker. If Project Manager are not decisive and resolute enough, there will often be issues, scope creep or slippage of schedule.

Communication is key responsibility of a PM

There was never any formal agreement about a communication plan, except ad hoc preparation of reports. As a best practice, progress reports should be derived from MS Project Plans. Project Managers need to prepare a sample dash board for the decisions taken, decisions required, top issues, top risks, etc.

In summary, all three Project Managers failed to lead the Team/Manage the Team.

In summary, 6 essential skills of a GOOD Project Manager are:

1. Professional certification in project and program management. Project managers should have great hands on experiences working within ITIL Frameworks apart from formal certification in Prince 2 practitioner certification.
2. They must be an active person, ready to move around and available for the team.
3. Should be skillful enough to work in a demanding situation, yet in the most collaborative way.
4. Must be decisive & resolute in their actions. A good project manager will possess quick sifting abilities, know what to note and what to ignore. They should be able to function easily with horizontal and vertical communication. Project Managers should adhere to predictable communication schedules.
5. Effective delegation is key for success in project management. 
6. Should follow direction set by project governance body or project steering committee.

More than anything, a Project Manger should be a Fantastic, Optimistic, Goal-Oriented leader!

However, project manager is in execution or more preciously operation  level. His job is to get instruction from management level and execute.

The major non conformance happened in Management and Governance layer in setting direction, appointment of project manager, instructing the executing team and bring  alignment  between business and various performing teams.

Next article, we'll discuss how & why project management & program management both failed in this project.

Do you want to know how to use Microsoft Project 13 ?

Visit our project tutorial on Micro Soft Project 13.

Related Articles in our Project Tutorial :

1. Top 10 Best Practices for Making an IT Project Successful

2. Top 7 reasons why large IT projects Fail

Leave comments below on how to become a good project manager and project manager jobs

Author, Mr. Somon is ITIL Master, COBIT 5 & PMP trainer. He is working as consulting program manager at Nirobi, Keyna.  His primary responsibility is to set up COBIT5 for IT governance & ITIL for service operation, service transition.
He successfully roled out Rational Tool or tracking for requirements, managing story boards in current assignment.

 He has been awarded MVP in projects two times by Microsoft.

He worked with companies like Siemens, IBM for 10 years. He is accredited  trainer from APMG & member of ISACA. He conducts face face to project management certification training on PRINCE2  from his Bangalore office.

Disclaimer ; Please consider this article for information only. Any partial or full resemblance with any real life incidence is accidental coincidence. This article purely reflects my personal opinion only. 

MS Project Tutorial 3 - project schedule

15 Tips To Create A Schedule In MS Project

1. Create a detailed activity list or a deliverable based work break down structure. Group them under a summary task like design, testing etc.

2. Instead of understanding & negotiating on mythical man months, I recommend to take optimistic, pessimistic & most likely hood estimation for work/duration. I derive the expected duration using pert formula and put that in work/duration column.

Here is a great video by Dr. Pamela Zelbst on the Critical Path Method and the PERT Method 

3. Always put a proper successor & predecessor for all activities. Insert lag, where ever requires, while linking two jobs. Don’t link a job from middle of any job like start to start + 5 days. It is recommended to split the tasks for better project control.

4. Customize the calendar as per your resource and use resource calendar. This will really help in managing finance and charging overtime rate (if require).

5. I advised to consider 6 hours per day during planning. I found this gives a much realistic plan because people spend time on meetings & other necessary activities. Keep all your resources evenly loaded. You need to be flexible enough to move resources between activities to keep the program on schedule. But, always ensure people move to other task only after completing the current task.Now a days resource hand over is critical for any project manager.

6. Understand the resource overload using Microsoft automatic leveling feature but manually fix them. I recommend using network diagram which will really help you to optimize resource planning & scheduling. This takes time but worth to do it.

7. Find the critical path using MS Project wizard and evaluate the same manually using project network diagram. You need to find actual critical path of the entire program/project and get it agreed with others in the program. Critical path is not fixed and it gets changed during execution of the program. I personally put 2/3 days slack while calculating critical path because this work as project buffer.

8. Present the plan and get it approved by all performing teams & stakeholders. This is required to baseline the plan. Set up a status date for the program. Baseline & status date is required for reporting & tracking the plan.

9. You should put Risks & Issues as additional column in the Gnatt chart. I will teach you how to build an add-in to track Risks visually in one of the forth coming tutorials.

10. If your program is duration based use % work completed or if your program effort based use % of actual work done to track progress of work. Always re-estimate the remaining work/duration and update the same in remaining work/duration field.

11. During tracking always capture actual start and finish date for reporting purpose. Always question person why the activities got delayed, what artifacts they produced from last review, details of remaining jobs. This will help you in risk management.

12. Put actual cost of resources or a value to calculate CPI & SPI for your program, These are necessary to “build & report S curve”.

13. Check your schedule for probability of completion the project in the given time frame. This important but seldom followed. To  know more on Z scope of operation research , watch the above video.

14. You should maintain the master copy & never allow anybody to update the plan. You should distribute the updated plan along with basic reports in PDF format or store them in a designated area. Will teach you how to send weekly status using email automatically.

15. The 'Notes' field, accessible via the 'Task Information' dialog box, can hold very useful information that does not belong in the task name, including where or how the task should be performed, as well as other scheduling considerations. Also add task notes to indicate unusual scheduling situations: If you or one of your colleagues is reviewing your project schedule at some point in the future, it may not be obvious why a constraint was imposed on a task.

Tutorial on how to create a schedule using Microsoft Project 2013 

Default configuration of MS Project for better scheduling

• Always add new task in automatic mode.
• Adjust the time scale to weeks view
• Adjust the color, font for activity & Gantt chart as per your preference. Here is a good article on MS Project tips & tricks.
• Avoid using resource names to summary tasks or milestones.

"Failing to plan is planning to fail," So, follow the above tips to make a robust plan which is easy to track but can also support the agility of business.

Write your comments on best practices on scheduling

IT Project Success

Top 10 Best Practices for Making an IT Project Successful

The purpose of a project is to build compatibility in IT, in order to meet your business goals. According to Ross, from MIT, only 11% of companies worldwide are currently building IT capabilities that are successfully using a mature architecture framework.

A mature architecture road map is necessary for the success of any IT project.

Enterprise Architect plays a key role because they service the entire business, including strategy and execution well beyond IT and IT solutions delivery. 

Role of Enterprise Architect in Project Management

1. Focus on business intents and convert them in a storyboard. Allow Enterprise Architect to focus on business & System architecture to cover business needs at least for next 2 years.

Project Evaluation Matrix

This is the job of EA to analyze the success factor of a project along with business team, project manager , subject matter expert & organization culture. Organization should focus on strategic projects.

2. EA & IT teams should focus on COTS product deployment instead of a general requirement based on custom development. Subject matter experts, integration & functional architects should work on finding out how quickly the storyboards could be configured in the COTS product directly.

EA needs to play a crucial role in aligning IT with business.

Process Chain & Framework to be followed for successful
completion of large IT transformation projects.

COBIT : Business & IT alignment. Mainly for Governance i.e. direct

Next Architecture blueprint & service strategy finalization. This is most critical. TOGAF & ITIL framework both are applicable here. PRINCE2 or PMI methodology for managing the change.

 Service Transition & continuous  will be applicable during operation.


  Key focuses should be quick deployments of the available functionality quickly. EA teams should work with senior users and members of supplier teams, in order to include non-available requirements/intents in product road maps. This approach will give the required agility when addressing business needs by the IT team.

3. EA teams should prepare business cases along with estimated efforts (pessimistic, optimistic and most likely) for critical deliverable to project bards for approval of the initiation of projects. This is important because a good architecture means reusability of components and architect teams should justify the range of the estimated effort.

Role of Project Board & Project Managers/Team Managers

4. Project boards should appoint a project team and a project manager. The project manager will work with multiple teams in order to build a complete business case. The project manager should also prepare details for various stages of the project, how each stage of the project will be executed and allow tolerances for each stages boundaries and include an exception management plan for each stage. Project managers should now submit the entire business case to project boards for approval for the formal initiation of projects.

5. Next, project managers need to prepare a detailed project plan using Microsoft Project. Project managers should follow PERT CPM methods to build the schedule & to optimize the projects plans and identify at least two critical paths, major constraints, or dependencies.

6. Project boards should agree and approve of the project plan, stage boundaries and exception plans for each stage: Risk, Issues and Quality Management & Reports Dashboard, along with reporting frequency. Project boards should be direct on following certain methodologies and frameworks and need to periodically check the process adherence and revalidation of business care. Project managers need to create a project team and assign them a work package.

7. Project boards should agree on project governance & management report.

(a) Governance reports should include Z score, CPI & SPI along with trends in an agreed frequency. The purpose of this step is to improve the probability of completing the project on schedule and within cost. 

Z score helps predict any delay based on the estimate of remaining work, whereas EVM method forecasts
based on actual work completed.

(b) Weekly project report dashboards should present risk statistics. There need to be clear risk mitigation & contingency plans for risks above the agree tolerance. A root cause analysis should be available for any violations of any SLA/OLA. This helps with the early arrest of any potential issues.

(c) Project boards should know key decisions taken when, why and by whom.

(d) EA & SME should ascertain the quality for products, any deviations from previously agreed product descriptions and product acceptance criteria.

8. Increase the communications within team members because this will create an engaged workforce. This will also help to create a more cohesive and motivated team.

9. Find the influencers and the connections within the organization who may be able to help you move the project along. The more people talk who talk about the program will encourage others to participate in the program voluntarily, increasing the acceptability of the project. Project managers should learn to avoid/neglect few people, mainly because they are destructive critics.

10. Always, think about what could go wrong and how you could act quickly to mitigate the problem.

Related Article: Microsoft Project Tutorial

About the author : Arindam has spent 23 years of his career managing large and complex IT transformation projects. He is a telecommunications engineer & PRINCE2 practitioner. Arindam has hands on working experience with ITIL, COBIT & TOGAF. He has completed more than 50 projects total, worth more than $150M USD around the globe.
 

IT Project Failure

Last week we had a discussion at our local PMI chapter on key reasons why large IT projects fails, especially projects that require 12 months to complete or more, and cost in excess of $5M. We invited CIO’s from a few Telecom and Retail Companies for this particular discussion.

Here are some interesting statistics on IT project failure

• Only 40% of projects are completed on schedule, budget and meet quality goals.
• Between 65 and 80% of IT projects fail to meet their objectives, also running significantly late and/or cost far more than initially planned.

Everyone on our panel has agreed these are the top 7 reasons why large IT projects fail

 1. During project initiation, the program’s management office or corporate office, signed an agreement with the suppliers without detailed technical scope.  Neither end users, nor the subject matter experts were consulted, or there was inadequate attention paid to their recommendations.

Dilbert on why IT projects fail




2. Projects often start in good faith and quickly progress until a major disconnect occurs. The major disconnect might be a change in business priorities, inability to show incremental progress, few changes in executive sponsorship or immature organizational capabilities.

3. In some cases, project boards and executives failed to resolve conflicts. Most of the time, executives approach the conflict in a highhanded manner without having to address the root of the cause. People agree to align, yet do so without ever actually aligning. One Canadian study has actually stated, “Bad communications between parties are the cause of IT project failures in 57% of the cases we have studied.”

4. Management does not want to make decisions on a large project. Rather than accept authority and responsibility, they would rather get consensus and agreement.  This can reduce the impact of failure to any specific manager. Nobody is fired for screwing up; however, this kind of consensus will always produce a sub-standard design. Having shared authority for large decisions is bad. You end up with results that are not designed, but voted upon.

5. Large projects have a massive scope, partly because of integrating several systems. Here, project managers do not deliver on just one product, but deliver the entire system that talks to this new product(s). Any change in suit to BAU can cause scope creep in the main product. This triggers cost overrun and can influence quality.

6. Most of the time there was no designated Enterprise Architect or they are part of the IT team managed by the CIO, leading to improper planning, inadequate budgeting for performance, security testing & end user training.

7. Frequent status review by senior executives often takes too much time, including the preparation of status reports and presentations, rather than actual work. Remember a project might be technically successful but that does not mean it meets stakeholders need.

Everyone in the enterprise is responsible for a large part, not just IT. The failure of larger IT projects is a business failure that is the shared responsibility of the entire senior leadership team. Seldom do projects fail due to technical challenges, but mainly due to personnel issues.

Here is a great video on top 10 reason why project fails

Now that’s enough discussion on IT Project Management Failure, so here is a list of the Top 10 Best Practices or Making A Successful IT project.

Reference on IT project management failure:

• Why Project Fails?

• What makes "big" projects fail?

About the Author: Arindam has spent 23 years of his career managing large and complex IT transformation projects. He is a telecommunications engineer & PRINCE2 practitioner. Arindam has hands on working experience with ITIL, COBIT & TOGAF. He has completed more than 50 projects total, worth more than $150M USD around the globe.

MS Project Tutorial -2

 Best Practices For Building & Tracking MS Project Plan

 Have you read  "Top 10 tips to new MS Project users” ? If not, click here to read it.

Now, you will learn top 16 best practices to make an effective project plan using MS Project 13. You can use them during preparing the plan or for tracking the plan.

1. Always track actual start and finish date. Actual dates must reflect when a task started and or completed. They should not be auto-generated and should not exist in the future. An actual finish date cannot be earlier than the actual start date for a task.

2. Ensure that all next level tasks all roll up to summary tasks. The calculation compares the baseline start and finish dates of the summary tasks to those of the lower level details tasks.

3. Always set a status date to get Cost Performance & Schedule performance Index against a chosen baseline.

4. The Critical Path is one of the most important areas of the program schedule. It is usually the most difficult, time-consuming, and technically challenging portion of the schedule. It should represent a small portion of the overall program schedule.

5.The schedule should be primarily made up of discrete tasks that have work associated with them. Summaries and Milestones are needed for reporting and program tracking but should not be the majority of the line items.

6. There should not be any missing predecessors and missing successors.

7. Please always careful during update of tasks that have begun when their predecessors or successors are not 100% complete

8. Schedule progress should drive the end dates of the program. Not scheduling forward or leaving incomplete work in the past does not allow for a correct picture of the project status and projected end date.

9. There should not be any summary tasks with resources because they are strictly an outlining or rolling up feature and should not drive schedule dates or resource loading. There shouldn’t be any summary tasks with predecessors or successors

10. Task duration should be within 5 to 20 working days

11. All schedules should have a reasonably small amount of slack or float. Large positive or negative slack values may indicate a poorly constructed schedule.

• Large negative slack indicates a logic error or a program that is no longer on track to meet its commitment dates.
• Large positive slack may indicate poor or missing logic.

12. Resource planning requires that all discrete tasks be resource loaded in order to analyze and identify resource constraints or overloaded resources.

13.  Baseline dates for tasks and milestones should be established in the project schedule early in the program. For large projects involving a customer, the contract may require this to be done in 60 to 90 days after the start date and prior to a formal review.

14. The majority of the task dependencies should be Finish-to-Start. Since most of the tasks represent work that will have a start and an end date resulting in some product or document that is needed by someone else, the work is performed in some sequence most of the time. 

15. Remove tasks that are missing links to its start or finish points.  These tasks can change duration without a detectable impact to the schedule.

16. Avoid inactive tasks and manual tasks to the extent possible. You should select auto schedule as default option.

In summary, You need to follow current, actual & baseline start, finish & duration. Always prepare based on initial effort and update the remaining work and reestimated duration based on remaining work. Never allow very short or vary long duration for tasks. Put resources and maintain resource calendar. Get the CPI & SPI ( will discuss them soon) based on baseline & status date.



Till now, you learn top tips on how to make a plan and best practices to build and track the plan. Next we’ll discuss & demonstrate how to make a plan in MS project for simple SDLC.

Next Article :  MS Project tutorial 3 on Microsoft Project schedule

Related Articles in our Project Tutorial :

1. Top 10 Best Practices for Making an IT Project Successful

2. Top 7 reasons why large IT projects Fail

 

Share your comments  on best practices for building & tracking MS Project Plan