I am staying in Boeblingen Germany this week visiting a client for work.  This is my second visit here.  I was out running the other morning and discovered a US Army base only a few miles from my hotel (Hotel Boehler http://www.hotel-boehler.de/eng/index_eng.htm)  The hotel is very nice but that is another story.  I was surprised to see the base and wonder what actually goes on there on a daily basis.  It made me feel good in a way that it was there.  While I enjoy seeing the sights of Germany I am comforted by knowing that there are so many people close by that I have a connection to.  I have two more nights here before I head home and I am looking forward to seeing my family.

Review of Not Everyone Gets A Trophy

Yammer on my Blackberry

I have owned my current Blackberry for a little over a year.  I love the email, calendar and contact list integration with Microsoft Outlook.  I have only installed two apps that I use fairly frequently: the Wall Street Journal reader and Google Maps. 

Some folks at my employer Foliage Software Systems have been experimenting with some social networking applications.  First we tried Twitter and now we are trying out Yammer.  Yammer seems to offer some privacy features over Twitter that make Yammer more appealing.

Setting up my Yammer account and profile was a straightforward process.  Of course I wonder how many minutes of my life I have lost to typing out my work history and educational background.  It’s great that technology has allowed us to live longer but what good is it if we spend all our time filling out profiles.

I decided to try the Yammer application for my Blackberry.  The install was simple but when I ran the application is kept crashing.  It turns out the Yammer app will only run on a newer version of the Blackberry firmware (version 4.2 or higher).  I went to the Blackberry desktop manager to perform a firmware update but the Desktop Manager kept saying that there were no updates available implying that I had the latest firmware.  I knew this was not true as I had gone to the Blackberry site and found out that the latest version is 4.5.  Then I tried to run an update from the Blackberry site.  During the process I was told that the Desktop Manager would have to be upgraded so I let the process continue.  It appeared as though the process was starting with the downloading of the newer version.  I expected that upon completion of the download that the install would automatically start but this did not happen and I was at a loss for where the downloaded image was located.  I went back to the Blackberry site and downloaded the install myself and ran the update manually.

I thought I would be all set now but when I tried to have the Desktop Manager upgrade the Blackberry FW I received the same message indicating that the FW was already up to date.  I did a search to see if others had similar issues and discovered that I really needed to be working from my wireless carrier’s website for these types of upgrades.  This led me to the Verizon website where I was finally able to upgrade my Blackberry FW.  The process was fairly straightforward from this point but it did take 45 minutes and it only upgraded me to 4.2.1.110.  Apparently Verizon does not support revisions beyond this. 

Once the upgrade completed I was finally able to run Yammer on my Blackberry.  The experience was a bit of a letdown because the Yammer app does not keep up to date with the feed in real time.  This seems extremely lame as other apps seem to be able to keep up with real time information.  The Blackberry upgrade also reset all my Blackberry preferences and changed the look of my display.  I manage to get things back pretty much to the way I had them before but I still would prefer my previous interface.  One thing they changed that is a real pain is that with the old FW I could set my Blackberry to lock the keys upon holstering the phone.  When I took my phone out I could unlock it with one keypress.  Now I have to use a two key process which is much more tedious.  My last gripe is that the upgraded FW is slower.  On the old FW I could select a button to change the volume settings to any of a number of different profiles.  I basically only ever used there of them.  Normal, Vibrate and Quiet.  This list use to come up instantly when I pressed the button.  Now it takes three seconds for the list to come up.  I guess the Blackberry FW guys tore a page from the Vista developers handbook.

We are finally pulling the plug on our family pc.  We have had this machine since 2002 and it is really hurting.  It’s been through many upgrades but it just does not seem worth it to go through another rebuild. 

This will also mark the first time I am buying a fully prebuilt system as I have placed an order for a new machine from HP (HP 9510f).  I did not even customize the machine during the order process online.  The off the shelf system with no customization was $200 cheaper than anything I could have built from scratch so it seemed the way to go.

I am also planning to get more serious about backing up all the PC’s in the house.  Backups today consist of an ad-hoc system of burning DVD’s and running around with USB drives.  The solution will hopefully be the Windows Home Server machine that I added to the PC order.  The server will have 1.5T of storage to start with two additional drive bays for future expansion.

I will post updates on the Windows Home Server experience in future blogs.

Jim Johnson in a recent blog entry lamented on the mistake of trying to run though an injury only to succeed in making it worse.  Now he is forced to take cut back on his running.  In the book The Lore of Running (see below) the author examines the running logs of world class runners prior to record setting performances.  He concludes that there have been a significant number of world records set by runners who experienced a significant injury leading up to a major comptetion.  His conclusion is that many runners are overtrained and that their performance suffers.  By getting an injury and cutting back on their running they actually perform better.

Here is review of another PMP exam prep book I posted to Amazon.com

I am amazed so many people liked this book.  It shows the power of marketing and advertising.  I bought this book based on verbal recommendations from coworkers and members of my local PMI chapter and was very surprised at how quickly I came away feeling that I was misled. I have three major issues with the book.

1) It is overly wordy yet still leaves you needing the PMBOK guide as well to make sure you have all the inputs and outputs for processes covered.  The book is at the opposite spectrum from the PMBOK guide which has too few words.  Perhaps a merger of the two books would be the optimal solution.  The entire book has the look and feel of a rapidly written 1st draft.

2) The exercises are not really exercises at all.  In most cases an “exercise” is simply a question such as “What do you think you would need to know or have before you initiate a project?”  You are given 10 blank lines to fill in your answer.  Another frequently used exercise is to ask you to list all the actions for a process.  Again you are given some blank space to write your answers as if this is a workbook.  This is followed by a table containing the “answers” with a column for you to check off the activities that you currently do in your own project management.  The suggestion is that you only need to study the items you don’t check off.  No consideration is given to how well you perform the activity in real life.  You might execute it in an extremely poor fashion and think you know it yet if you try to answer exam questions on the topic you will find you have no idea what activity is really all about.

3) The final major issue I have is with the tone of the book.  At times there is a childlike attitude toward the reader.  For example there are several times in the book where the author states a “trick of the trade” and then writes “Now aren’t you glad you bought this book?”  Too bad every time she asks this in the book my answer is: “No!”

As much as I am tempted to give the book only one star I have to admit that if I had to choose between the PMBOK guide and this book I would have to go with Rita’s book mostly because Rita’s book does provide some useful insight to the exam itself that you do not get form the PMBOK

I have been a pretty big fan of “social networking” since I started with LinkedIn in 2004.  I was nearing the end of the Executive MBA program at BU and it seemed like a good way to remain in touch with my classmates.  Over time I have added many former coworkers and professional contacts.  In 2007 I joined Facebook to follow my nephew Adam as he was spending his junior year of college in France. 

I enjoy the way the sites have given me a glimpse into the lives of people I have met and let me stay current with what is going on in their world.  I figure that in the long run the time I spend putting my own updates on these sites is about the same as the effort I would put into sending out scattered emails to folks over time catching them up on things. The benefit of the social networking sites is that I don’t clutter up your email inbox.

Another benefit that I can see in the long run is that I assume over the generations that all my digital data that I hope to pass on like pictures etc will be lost.  By putting stuff up on sites such as Facebook and letting is get sucked up by sites like Google I leave the door open to keeping a part of me preserved for eternity on the internet.

While on a recent run with my buddy Dave the subject of Marisa Tomei came up and he loaned me the movie Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead.  If you are a fan of Marisa you will want to catch the opening scene of the movie.  Let me just leave it at that.   

I had not heard of the movie when the subject came up.  I was expecting a movie based on the overused theme of selling your sole to the devil.  Surprisingly the movie was an intense drama that had more in common with theme of Thelma & Louise.  It features two brothers who make a series of bad decisions and spiral ever deeper into a hole that they cannot climb out of. 

Although the movie was good, I tend not to enjoy this level of intensity in a movie.  I do not need to be reminded how the choices we make can impact our lives and those around us.  That’s why I haven’t looked at my 401k statement lately.   

The movie leaves us hanging regarding the fate of Hank, the younger brother.  To offset the tragic events of the movie I would like to think that everything turns out okay for Hank and that he ends up with Gina (Marisa Tomei) It would make for some nice symmetry for the movie as they could have had a closing scene with Marisa just like the opening scene.

I attended the PMI Mass Bay Chapter meeting last night.  There was a sold out audience of over 200 people for the event, most likely because there you could earn 2 PDUs for attending.  There were two speakers discussing the topic of SCRUM, a form of Agile development.  Both speakers gave an overview of the subject and took questions. 

I sensed a certain level of skepticism bordering on hostility towards the speakers.  I think it is somewhat natural because as project managers we are often trained in traditional style project management and are told that this is the tried and true way of ensuring our projects are successful.  The speakers throw all this out the window and tell us that traditional project management only works for a small subset of projects. 

It is difficult to sit through this and not feel doomed.  While you might remain skeptical that SCRUM is the answer, you find yourself acknowledging all of the typical problems that the speakers bring up of many projects today, mainly that the projects have very dynamic requirements and that there are fewer dollars and resources available to execute the projects.  At the moment I am intrigued enough to want to know more and can see that SCRUM could be used to resolve some of the problems with traditional project management.