She is mine again

Those of you who know me have most probably realized I talk about a book, the car but I usually say my blackberry, I am indeed a power user of the blackberry and I have it at hand at all times, yes, all times.

In order to make my job easier, I connected it to the BES (Blackberry Enterprise Server) of the company I work for and, this way, I can read my business related emails anywhere and at anytime and it worked fine quite some time.
I learned what "IT policy" means and how it blocks the access of your device to some applications and services but I got round of it in different and always creative ways but slowly, slowly, the restrictions were too much. I could not read my Gmail, I could not check Facebook and I could not report on Foursquare, suddenly, I realized the blackberry was not mine anymore and I decided to get her back to me at the expense, if necessary, to stop reading my business related emails on it.

How? Let me show you:

1) Backup your device using Desktop Manager

2) Download and install JL_Cmdr from here http://www.blackberryfreaks.com/JL_Cmder.html  select the option 5) "resettofactory" of the JL_Cmdr menu and follow instructions, it will require remove the battery to reset the device completely.

3) Download and reinstall Desktop Manager from here http://na.blackberry.com/eng/services/desktop/  and make sure you select you want to use your private email and not your business / work email. This option happens to be selectable only at installation time, which is why you must reinstall it.

4) Restore your device from the backup of step 1)

5) Now, the blackberry should be all yours and...
... you should be able to disable the firewall in Options > Security Options > Firewall.
....you could make sure your APN is set in Options > Advanced Options > TCP. If you are uncertain about your APN, username and password, check here http://forum.nimbuzz.com/index.php?topic=545.0;wap2
... you could download latest version of Foursquare http://appworld.blackberry.com/webstore/content/6921
... you could download Google Mobile App in http://www.google.com/mobile/
 and through it, the latest version of GMail for Blackberry.
... you could use your Facebook for Blackberry client from ... somewhere ;-)
You will need to remove (and put it back) the device battery after setting are changed, do not be shy on that and, most importantly, be patient, it will work.

I suggest you to read some of this f...ing IT policy in http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=remove+it+policy+blackberry

 And you do not let the IT guys take control of YOUR blackberry, take her back to you ... as I did. 

Creating internal project management communities: experiences from government and private sectors.

The experience from the European Commission was very interesting, the management does not fund the project management community although agree and support that some volunteers organize meetings, presentations and conferences to spread and discuss the PM subject.

They arrange the conferences and debates for lunch time and the European Commission project managers, most of them located in Brussels and only a few in Luxembourg, listen to the speaker while eat their sandwich. With such weak support, the community is growing and maintaining their activity, actually, it is really a community as it is always optional for the members to join or not every event. If at some point, there is not enough attendees, the community will be discontinued but, from Robert Maclaren's words it is far from happening as their colleagues are contributing more and more to the community of practice

The second speaker, Michael Söderberg, told us how Siemens in USA has created a community, PM@Siemens with a completely different approach. In this case, as the company is project oriented, being part of the community is not an option for the project managers, they have to. On the other hand, they are geographically distributed and meeting all of them together is almost impossible. They created a website, using sharepoint to share best practices, methodologies, share experiences and so on. They also have periodic video and audio conferences. So far, they are also doing well.


Notes from the PMI Global Congress EMEA Milano - 2010.
Presentation given by Robert Maclaren and Michael Söderberg

PMI Global Congress EMEA - Milano May 2010

I attended the PMI Global Congress EMEA in Milano, 10th, 11th and 12th of May.

Here it is the list of conferences I selected from the program:
- Benefits of Risk Analysis. Speaker: Wesley Gillette. My post on it.
- Creating internal project management communities: experiences from government and private sectors. Speakers: Robert Maclaren, Michael Söderberg. My post on it.
- Managing virtual project teams by using technology. Speaker: Thomas J. Mattus
- Too many cookd spoil the broth, or maybe not ? Speakers: Konstantinous A. Kirytopoulos, Dimitra Voulgaridou
- The PMO as a centre of excellence: virtual community or physical unit ? Speakers: Maria Cristina Barbero, Giuseppina Copetti.
- Project complexity: the stakholders' world. Speakers: Walter Ginevri, Maria Moresco
- Extreme project management in Telco industry. Speakers: Francesco Ludovico, Francesco Petrarca
- Pros and cons of Agile project management methods, from an experienced project manager's viewpoint. Speakers: Mattias Georgson Petren, Bjorn Granvik
- Project modular risk-based closure process. Speaker: Olivier Lazar.

More than 800 people from 57 countries attended the congress and the countries with higher participation were Italy, USA, Germany, Switzerland and France.

I also participated for two days in the Translation Verification of some PMI questionnaires from English to Spanish.

Fuzzy project schedule ... but realistic

Risk Management is one of the main process of the Project Management discipline and consists of a number of activities, Risk Planning, Risk Identification, Risk Analysis, Risk Response and Risk Monitoring amongst others.

In a usual or deterministic schedule, each activity starts and finishes on specifics dates, for instance, design activity starts on 3rd June and finishes 30 of June.

What happens in the real world? The contractors might have monthly contracts and they might be available on 1st June and the design can start earlier than schedule or, the project manager only get resources starting on Mondays so that means the team will start either on 31st May or 7th June. With regards to the design completion, other stuff might happen that makes it to be completed earlier or later than scheduled.

What all that means is that whenever project milestones are set to a specific date it means that the project manager states that date as the most likely to happen and it will happen, in reality, some days before or after that date. Actually, it is more realistic to plan in terms of optimistic, pessimistic and most likely date of every milestone and calculating those in terms of the risks related to each one.

When risk management is applied to project schedule preparation, the usual deterministic schedule becomes fuzzy but more realistic at the same time.

One interesting side effects of this fuzzy project schedule is that the critical path happens to be multiple and depending on which risks finally occurs. The activities to watch are not the ones on the critical path any more but those that are most often in the critical path and that is detected running simulations of the occurrence of the various risks identified.

This post consists of a few takeaways from the presentation of Wesley Gillette at the PMI Global Congress – EMEA in Milano on 10^th May … awesome presenter, by the way.

Nokia sells more handsets than any other manufacturer in the world

Nokia sells more handsets than any other manufacturer in the world. Who has not ever had a Nokia? Look at your chargers drawer and you will find one or two Nokia chargers. They have been very successful so far but there is a “but” here, they do not seem to be the industry visionary, they look more like the big fish who will follow other's innovation trend and mirror their successful products. I am sure some bells are ringing in Nokia's strategy steering committees, they do need Marketing driver, something that makes customers to feel identified to the brand, something that makes a difference and keep customers loyal to their products.

Maybe, a key differentiator is one can buy and use all Apple's products (iPod, iPhone, Mac, …) but there is no way you will do same with all Nokia products, unless you are manager of a mobile's shop ;-) When Nokia launches a new product there is not big expectation unlike Apple's product launch big shows chaired by the great Steve Jobs.

Nokia products are, most of the time, excellent quality and worth the price but customers don't come the shop with the purpose of buying a Nokia but the one they favourite, happens to be a Nokia handset. That makes Nokia their own worst competitor, the quality / price ratio is the measure of the their success and if they launch a handset with that ratio lower than average, it will become an immediate failure.

Apple is the fashionable company

Apple is the fashionable company, the trendy, the one to imitate and follow when we talk about design and usability. They launched the iPod, the iPhone, the iPad and are probably designing the iWho-knows-what-else.

Their business model is shocking and very very successful, based on a few principles: a) scarcity marketing, b) high quality hardware and wide offer of software applications through the App Store and c) high edge prices. They sell a expensive product but customers perceive it is worth the price. Reason for that is not easy to explain but very real though.

We all know where Apple comes from, they were defeated by Microsoft in the PC software market and, as a side effect, in the hardware market too on the 80's. In those days, using an Apple product, namely, a Macintosh computer, was only for a minority and rare (strange?) group. They even had specific group names (Maqueros in Spain) and they became the “indie” version of the personal computer's users, they did differently for years because they did believe their product was the best. That conviction makes a difference on marketing.

When an Appler pays for an Apple's device, they purchase something more than the product itself, they buy the right to be part of a group of people who deserve the best devices on earth, who will enjoy the best customer experience ever imagined, who will consume the most creative applications and trendiest content offered by the App Store and who do not mind to pay a higher price for that.

Is it all against all ?

It just came to my mind when some time ago (wow, almost two years already passed) I launched a blog to gather posts on how mobile, internet and software industries were nearing each other and creating a wider market where the competition was more open and less constrained to their respective vertical markets.

After the two years have passed – so quick and nice – I would like to come back to the topic and see who is competing to whom and in what markets.

Let me limit the scope of this and upcoming posts on the big players: Nokia, Google, Yahoo, Vodafone, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple and Dell – although maybe Samsung could be a better one to follow.

... more posts to come on this topic ... stay tuned ...