Presentation skills and feedback

I've had a few presentations at work, but often I feel that they could be more focused and clear. Recently I also got feedback that I was saying some words as "Hmm. What is it I'm going to say..." or similar. And today I came across the stop, start, continue technique over at Dwayne Melancons blog.

People should be better to give feedback to people that holds presentations. In this way one might be given a chance to improve instead of making the same mistakes again and again. This is in a sense knowledge sharing. The have a different perspective on the whole presentation that you have. Things you find easy can be difficult for others, but it is often difficult to get people to actively participate in the presentation. Lets hope that when I next time pull out my paper with the stop, start, continue notes on it, people will laugh and point out when I do the mistakes. Hopefully I will then learn more and even get the audience to participate in -at least- some way

Scrum - something for maintenance projects?

Phew.. Been a couple of busy weeks. I have just become the project leader in a 5 person project. I've been in this project with various roles since I started in May last year. This is a great opportunity for me to be part of something and to change it to something better if possible. Not that you always need change, but I tend to think that change is good in so many ways that some changes should be made in order for people to stay with a project over a long period of time. I really wonder why so many people do not want such a job. The possibility to be a change-maker!

The challenge in our project is that it is an "old" project by IT standards and it is in maintenance phase. The project consists of 5 people in a good blend of experienced and not so experienced. Me being part of the latter when it comes to my new role. What I find interesting is the energy I feel about this! I've always felt that I put out the questions to my surroundings. It now seems that I will be put to the test myself and have to do action based on others questions and requirements.

Hopefully I will be able to change some elements in the project so that we can work in new ways and see change bring new energy in to the project. I have a dream about an energic group of people working together to make the best they have ever made. When we deliver we should be proud of what we have done and feel that it was worth it. This is a bit childish and naive, but I think it is possible if one can create the right circumstances. It can happen! I really look forward to work with the people, the environment and the product from within this role.

With this perspective I have looked to Scrum. I see elements in Scrum that can be usefully applied in our project. These elements being the product backlog, sprint backlog, daily scrum and burndown charts. Especially the sprint backlog as this will allow developers to focus on these issues and then the burndown chart to see the progress and make it possible to feel that we are moving toward a goal.

Our project is in maintenance phase which I find exiting for this kind of "method". This means we have bugs being reported as well as new functionality into Jira. This will be our starting point when we begin to work on our product backlog.

So there you have some of my thought on change in our project. Maybe someone have seen Scrum used in maintenance projects earlier and would like to give a comment?

Work Environment

On Friday we got a presentation at Computas by Sintef. The topic of the presentation was work environment and workspace. By this meaning office layout and its implication on efficiency, productivity and identity. They had an interesting perspective on how we where behaving in different workspace solutions. One of the points i picked up was the difference between a workspace geared for communication versus concentration. Cell offices works best for the latter and they had seen increase in communication with open office solutions. This created reactions in the audience which today have cell offices, but often with an "open" space between their offices. The offices are also occupied by people working on the same project. It was mentioned that the walls toward the open space was made of glass. Only that most people sit with their back to the door and the glass wall and the open space between the cell offices.

I think moving around is healthy for your own motivation and inspiration. I also think that open office solutions is one of the better solutions for knowledge workers. Here is what I wrote in my master thesis on the subject:

Work Environment
As an important facilitator of knowledge sharing Davenport and Prusak (1998) mention the work environment. They claim that changes in the work environment may cause loss of knowledge and it can also disrupt the existing sharing process. Knowledge has a tendency to thrive only in the environment it develops. Elements mentioned are, “organisational size, focus, management and intangibles as trust and atmosphere.” In the previous section organisational structure and size was described as an influential element to the way a knowledge worker performs. Knowledge workers often collaborate in different ways and use communication tools as well as face-to-face communication.

Office environment needs to facilitate the collaboration and exchange of tacit as well as explicit knowledge, Davenport (2005) mentions meeting spaces and conference rooms as a minimum. He goes further and suggests, based on findings by Thomas Allen (1984), that knowledge workers who need to communicate should be located physically close to each other. Becker and Sims (2001) claim, “The more open the environment, the more frequent the communication and the shorter the duration.” In addition to this they say that the communication in such an environment is “not viewed as interruptions, but these short, frequent interactions provide very fast feedback and shortresponse times, allowing work to move forward overall.” The data from Becker and Sims’ report also suggest that more visual contact actually contributes to fewer unwanted interactions, by “changing not so much the frequency as the timing of serendipitous communication.” By this they mean that by having visual contact the workers can see if the others are busy and not interrupt. On a more organisational level Allen (1984) claims that knowledge workers work environment should have aspects from the departments that work with Human Resources (HR), Information Technology (IT) and facilities organisations. These aspects together can create a thriving working environment with elements important for atmosphere, communication and the use of process supporting tools.

References

Davenport, T. H. and Prusak, L. (1998) Working knowledge : how organizations manage
what they know, Harvard Business School Press, Boston, Mass.

Davenport, T. H. (2005) Thinking for a living : how to get better performance and results
from knowledge workers, Harvard Business School Press, Boston, Mass.

Allen, J. T. (1984) Managing the Flow of Technology, MIT Press, Cambridge.

Becker, F. and Sims, W. (2001) Offices That Work - Balancing Communication,
Flexibility and Cost, October, Cornell University.