Structurer pour mieux planifier

Le WBS ou Work Breakdown structure permet de faciliter la planification du travail à effectuer, d’estimer la durée totale du projet et de déterminer les ressources nécessaires pour chaque étape.

Ces différents objectifs sont atteints en divisant le travail à effectuer pour le projet en des segments de plus en plus détaillés. Je vous conseille de structurer d’abord par domaine, livrables, et/ou principales fonctionnalités. Une fois ce premier WBS validé, je conseille de restructurer le contenu par phase projet, afin de construire ensuite votre planning projet.

Pour vous aider à créer votre WBS, voici un très bon outil que j’utilise depuis des années: Xmind et Mind-Mapping-exemple un exemple de carte heuristique générée avec l’outil.

 

Vous pouvez vous arrêter de diviser votre travail si les 4 critères ci-dessous sont atteints:

  • L’activité résulte en un livrable
  • Le temps et le coût de l’activité peuvent être déterminés
  • L’activité possède un événement de départ et un événement d’arrivé bien clairs et définis
  • Lorsque l’objectif est atteint, vous le saurez facilement

Source

Make effective meetings

Have you asked yourself « why am I in this meeting? » Or « what this meeting for? »

If so, Al Pittampalli (http://modernmeetingstandard.com/) created a framework that will help you to be more effective in organizing meetings.

His concept is to treat different decisions differently (DDD) as summarized in table below.

  • First question to ask yourself is « How consequential is this decision I want? ».
  • If none, you don’t even need a meeting.
  • Then based on Low or High consequential of that decision, Al propose us to put in perspective 4 areas to understand really what’s important.
Consequential No Low High
Priority N/A Speed of the decision Accuracy of the decision
Function of the meeting N/A Coordination
of activities
ConflictBecause debate lead to better decisions
Goal N/A Buy-in
give me your concerns
Consensus
open mind
Deliver of the meeting (output) N/A Action Plan
with commitment
Final decision
don’t care yet about the coordination yet

The full video is there:

And if you want more food for thoughts on meetings, here is his website http://modernmeetingstandard.com

On this same area, I recently found a complementary decision graph.


Last let me share a one pager of key things about meetings if you really need it:

EffectiveMeetingsTips

 

When China lights my Christmas Tree

As a global customer we often forget from where ordered products come from. For this Christmas time, while not happy with the delivery time of an Amazon order, I was positively surprised with level of emphasis of that Customer Service Rep. This post of for Eva.

So let’s come back on what’s happened.

As Christmas is coming, it was time to make my Christmas Tree. And the joy of my kids would be less without lights. So as a connected and lazy father I used my favorite Amazon App to get me one set of fairy lights, click submit and …. what a shame just saw the expected delivery date from Dec 23rd to Jan 10th while the product was « in Stock ».

2 options: cancel the order or send an email to the vendor.

I decided to ask the vendor (in French) if they can improve the accuracy of that estimated delivery date.

Bonjour

Pourriez vous m’indiquer si l’estimation de livraison peut être affinee?

Merci
Chris

Now the next day just got a nice, professional and so fun answer from « Eva » (from China – Honk-Kong) who deserves this post today. Happy customer I didn’t cancelled my order who was shipped the same day of her answer but I bought a new set of fairy lights for this year (to make my kids happy) and will use that Amazon one next year:-)

bonjour,
merci pour votre e-mail!
proche le noel, je sais que vous avez besoin les décorations de Noël. et aussi comprendre vos sentiments, parce que j’achete aussi quelque chose sur internet. je voudrais bien que vous pouvez recevoir le colis soon, mais expedie par la chine de hongkong, sans surprise 10-25 jour de travail, vous pouvez le recevoir.
amazon donne un delai de livraison est 23 déc. 14 à 10 janv. 15, donc avant le noel, c’est possible. mais je ne suis pas tres sure pour ca!
s’il vous plait attendre avec patience! si vous avez des questions, contactez-moi, s’il vous plait!
joyeux noel par avance pour vous!
eva

Happy Christmas Eva!

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Mon premier Forum Ouvert

Yesterday I went to my first Open Space on Agile.

In few words the Open Space concept is to allow a group of people with a common interest to meet, propose their topics they want to discuss, split topics into groups and rounds, discuss together 40min per round and each group wrap-up 1min after each round.
Three behaviors are possible: two steps (listen and contribute or move on), butterfly (you move around groups and listen only), bee (you move around groups and share contributions).

Finally what I loved the most was the 4 statements that drive this open space meeting discussion:
1. People that show-up are the right people
2. The best time to start is when it starts
3. What happened could not happen differently
4. When it’s finished, it’s finished

So yesterday the Open Space was on Agile. We met for 2h30 in Paris with 15 people. I proposed two topics for rounds:

  • how/should we convince Agile detractors?
  • What are qualities/duties of a Product Owner?

And I joined a round about « Short projects and unrealistic plan »

Attached are the 3 flipcharts with our notes.