3 Keys to Effective Project Management

I was recently a part of a project at work that went sideways pretty much every way it could. Anybody that has done any kind of installation work, whether it's IT work or otherwise, you know that these things just happen sometimes. Even so, it has brought about several conversations about project management. I quickly started to realize that project management is definitely a skill that takes training and practice to develop. So who am I to talk about project management?

I have supervised people in the two most highly regulated industries in the country; securities and nuclear power. I have trained on and overseen the transfer of millions of dollars of other people's money. I have supervised maintenance evolutions on multimillion dollar pieces of mission critical equipment. Evolutions that halt operations of organizations that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars per day to operate. So now that you have my qualifications, here are my top 3 keys.

1. Make a decision, move forward.

There is saying by an Army General (if you can help me cite this, please do)that goes something like "I'll take an 80% decision now over a 100% decision any day". I figure if it's a good enough theory to stand up under fire (literally), then it is good enough to hold true for more menial projects.

Many times when we hit a snag in a project, we don't have the answer right away. So what happens next? Analyze, analyze, analyze. Stop right there. Now I'm not advocating you just react without thinking, but there is a point of diminishing returns in this scenario that is reached very quickly. Within a few minutes you need to take the best idea and drive it forward. If your decision isn't correct you will know fairly quickly and you will have narrowed your choices by one. There is nothing worse than a stalled project.

2. Perfection is your enemy.

I'm sure that one probably got your attention. It has to be said though. When a major operation is halted awaiting your project, and your project is halted, it's time to find the fastest route to a stable state. A stable state in this case means an operating condition that will continue to operate safely, without jeopardizing personnel, equipment, or the integrity of the overall project. Once operations are back online, you have the time to rethink your approach and figure out how you should proceed at the next opportunity. In addition, removing the pressure to produce a solution immediately will often times help you produce a solution. Kind of like when you can't find your keys anywhere and the minute you stop looking you find them.

3. The details will make or break you.

At first glance, this seems diametrically opposed to #2. Here's the difference. #2 is a damage control technique. For some projects, you will be in damage control mode for most of the project. But those are hopefully the exception and not the rule. Once you have a direction and you are moving forward, each step of the project deserves attention to detail.

I used to do a lot of dirt bike riding and with a lot of dirt bike riding comes a lot of dirt bike repair. A two stroke dirt bike needs to have the engine rebuilt every 80-100 hours. During the process of rebuilding an engine it can be easy to miss a step. We would always joke that the more parts you had left over at the end the better job you did. It was always pretty funny, but the truth is that engine probably won't hold together very long without all the proper parts. So now a you may have turned a two hour job into an hour and a half, but that left over part just forced you to start that two hour process all over again.

Most of all, good project management takes time and practice. Any experienced project manager will have their fair share of war stories about projects gone horribly wrong. The key is to reflect on the project, figure out where you went wrong, and decide how you will avoid making the same mistake on the next project.

Utilizing Cisco's Debug Commands

For a few days last week I had to travel to Sacramento for a network upgrade and installation for a customer. Pretty much everything that could go wrong did. Some days life just works that way. In the mess of having a customer's network down, I got to utilize some tools that I have only really worked with in the lab.

If you have ever typed debug ? in the Cisco CLI you have seen a plethora of available commands. If you are like me, you have hardly even scratched the surface of the possibilities. The one I found to be particularly useful was the ability to debug an interface. You can narrow down your troubleshooting quite a bit just by finding out if a particular interface is passing traffic or even attempting to communicate. If you are an IT person or network tech that deals with Cisco, I would highly recommend playing around with the debug commands the next time you are in the CLI.

A word of caution though. Some of these commands can produce a very high volume of output. If you try a debug ip packet command, you will see every ip packet the router passes. Chances are you will find it quite difficult to issue any other commands after that. If you do get in a bind, I recommend typing out the undebug all command on a text file and trying to paste it into the CLI. You will have a much better chance of getting it in there than if you try to type it in the CLI.

Digium

I said before that I would have another post on Digium, and here it is. Sorry it was so delayed, I was re-modeling my kitchen.

If you don't already know, Digium is a VoIP phone system based on the Asterisk platform. Asterisk is a Linux based open source VoIP program. What Digium has done is taken the Asterisk platform, created the hardware to place the program on, and added support for it. Digium gives the average joe the ability to have a Linux based phone system with no programing experience and very little technical know how.

The majority of customization done to the Digium system is done via a web interface, so anybody that can browse the web can get started customizing their Digium phone system. This is a huge change from the old guard of business class phone systems like Norstar, which I have had some experience selling. With traditional pbx systems like that, it takes a tech to make even the most basic changes to the system. Good for a vendor like me, because we charge a fair amount of money to make basic changes like moving and extension. Bad for the consumer, as even the basic changes can be costly. Digium easily puts those type of everyday moves in the hands of the owner, rather than the tech.

Not to mention, Digium offers just about every feature under the sun. My favorite feature was almost useless in my opinion, but the fact that it was possible blew me away. You can actually set up your Digium phone system to track incoming phone numbers, and if they are listed, you can have their myspace or other social networking page pulled up on your computer screen as they call in. Useful? I doubt it. Cool as hell? Absolutely!

There is one other very enticing attribute to the Digium system. Price. It is priced well below what you would expected to pay for a phone system with the features it has.

Social Media and Branding

I'm really not the expert on this topic, though my good friend Eric Odom is. It has become very apparent to me in recent months that these social media sites can play a huge roll in branding yourself or your company. I just jumped into Plurk, and you can find me there.

There is plenty of information on the web about branding yourself or your company. I believe Darren Rowse has done some writing on it. If you haven't started using these social media tools yet, I would definately start.

NXTcomm08

This post is a little late, but what the heck. I was down in Vegas at NXTcomm08 for the day on Tuesday. There was one big theme that really stood out; ethernet switching.

I have a pretty good knowledge of the ethernet switching market since I sell, install, and maintain these products for a living. Let me tell you, there were probably several dozen ethernet switch companies there I have never heard of. I was really starting to question the viability of having so many new companies in the same industry with very little to separate them from the big boys like Cisco, Juniper, Foundry, and Adtran.

My highlight of the event was the demo we got from Digium. I was familiar with the technology but I had never seen it up close and personal. I will have more about Digium in a future post, but I will say that we were so impressed, we became Digium re-sellers immediately after we got back.

Welcome

To my newest blog. As you can see, we are still under construction. Unlike my previous blogs, this we not contain a political focus. This blog will be much more about what I do; technology, business, sales, and marketing. I should be fully up and running within a week.