Stacy Randolph

7 days 'til Peru: waiting for grapes

I'm in the last week's countdown until I leave for Peru. This means getting and organizing all the 'stuff' I'll need for living out of a suitcase for 21 days in a variety of climates and altitudes. It also means making sure my yard is in tip top shape because by the time I get back it will be October, officially fall weather, and it's cold working outside.

I have been anxiously awaiting the arrival of my grapes. What if they don't ripen before I leave? Oh, the tragedy!

This year produced 4 times the amount of grapes as last year and I didn't cut any of them back in a greedy attempt to harvest as many grapes as possible. Now, I'm thinking that perhaps that too many grape bunches don't allow the vine to put enough energy into ripening all of them. We had some great warm, sunny summer weather although the last month has been colder and wet. But last year was so wonderful! I had about ten sweet ripe bunches of grapes to eat, make grape juice with and share with friends. I thought that it would just be better this year!

Well, we'll see what happens. I might get wild and crazy and cut some back or just have patience and let my house sitter note if and when they ripen (and if they do ripen, she'll get to eat all the grapes, no fair!!).

Hey, today is Earth Day! How's this for a good idea: unplug your X-box when not in play

Left plugged in all day, every day of the year, a game console uses twice as much energy as the TV it is hooked up to. Leaving a game console plugged in all year is equivalent to having over 200 cell phone chargers left in the wall!

How about something easy for Earth Day--unplugging your game console when not in play? I did. My Wii goes dark unless I am playing it. I have to admit that this started because my Wii glowed eerily at night, like a blue Cylon. I just don't trust toasters. But I'm happy to reap the energy rewards!

Consumer electronics are the biggest user of electricity in the home, and game consoles are often the biggest offenders. Unplug unused electronics save $256 per household per year! [source]      

What's in a program manager's tool belt?

Developers get to talk about their fancy coding tool kits, the creative folks are Photoshop whizzes, Test has bug tracking systems. So, what tools does a program manager use?

Contrary to popular belief, it's not a whip. That's only used on people who don't communicate well.

We PM's have to know a bit about everyone's job in order to anticipate the needs of a project, so it's best to know a bit about all the tools that the project team uses. But we have our own needs too. Communication is your name and service is your game. With that in mind, here is what is in my tool belt-->

Everyone has these, but they are critical for a PM

1. Phone. Like, duh, right? Email and IM are SO much easier and less scary than talking to real people, but that's the lazy way out. I'm guilty of this, I'll admit it...I have to remind myself to pick up the phone and get things clarified.
2. Email. It's a staple, these days. PM's tend to over communicate with email, though. That's because we know about lots of details and we want everyone to be informed. But folks won't read your long email, I guarantee it. Keep it short and sweet. 
3. Browser. You have to stay on top of trends out there. Telligent works in social media, so our clients expect us to know what's going on in that world. Check what's going on in the industry as well as your interest. For example, I am into User Experience and I follow User Interface Engineering by reading their articles, blog posts and listen to their podcasts.

Must have tools

1. MS Visio. A picture is worth a thousand words. Visio is the tool to get you there and you don't even need to be a graphic designer. It's all about shapes and text. I use this for concepting with clients and the project team.
   
   
2. Techsmith's SnagIt. I couldn't live without SnagIt, period. This puppy not only does screen grabs (you can target areas of the screen OR grab a full scrolling window), but you can draw arrows, cut items, add text, etc. I use this to create bugs, communicate UI issues and in my specs & requirements. SnagIt is a beautiful thing and it's my ALL TIME favorite tool.
   
   
3. MS One Note. Someone at MSFT wrote a song and created a video about how much they loved this application--it must not be available externally because I can't find it now. At the time, I thought it was crazy, now I want to join in and sing! Note taking is at a whole new level with One Note. I used to open a Word doc or a Notepad doc and take notes that way, now I use One Note because you don't have to save! It just happens automatically. Also, you are no longer forced to follow a linear, paragraph spaced document--you can type wherever your cursor lives. If you want to get really fancy, you can easily link meeting notes to your Outlook calendar and even audio record the conversation.
   
   
4. MS Word. Requirements, specs, how to's, all require Word. Page headers and footers are important--it gives user direction on things like page numbers and polishes the doc.
   
   
5. MS Project. Everyone wants to know when things are due and who needs to do what. Over the years, I have learned to bubble up the right set of tasks depending on the audience. For example, clients need to know when the project ships and when their deliverables are due. They don't need to know when a developer is due to work on a particular control.
   
   Most folks' eyes cross when they look at a project plan, but you REALLY need them to look at it because meeting deadlines is what professional projects are all about. Project is a PM tool and it's really for us to plug in the estimates and see what story comes out, it's not the best thing to communicate with. I recommend taking screenshots of the project plan (with SnagIT!) and tailoring the view of tasks that to the audience.
   

Nice to haves

1. Adobe Photoshop. It can't hurt to know how to create a graphic here and there. I used to use Photoshop all the time in writing my specs, but Visio is just much simpler. I now use Photoshop for when I need to fill in (badly) for a designer role. 
2. Adobe Acrobat. I don't use this as much anymore, but it's handy for exporting project plans (instead of screenshots, perhaps) and delivering non-editable statements of work or change requests.
3. MS PowerPoint. If you give presentations, you'll need this. Some PM's like to use this as a wireframe tool because it has nice shapes. I don't like it because you don't have as many options as Visio like page size and shapes.
4. Instant Messenger. Before working remotely, I refused to use IM, it was too distracting. Now, I use it all the time to talk to my co-workers. Live Messenger even allows you to transfer docs back & forth. 
5. MindJet's MindManager. This is great for visualizing your thought flow, especially while brainstorming.    

I've said this once and I'll say it again: There are lots of tools that can help one serve people--email, web sites, project status reports, file sharing, ticketing systems, bug systems, etc. Those are just tools, though. An "in service" attitude is the foundation of it all. Well served people makes good business.

Application attitude

I think that an application has done its job when it delights you. Sometimes it's very very simple and that scores brownie points, IMHO.

Check out the message I received from Plaxo (I changed some info for anonymity):

This cracks me up.

While designing applications, we attempt to pull apart the ingredients in the secret sauce of good apps. Is it the code? The platform? The screen flow? The copywriting? The graphics?

I think it's all of the above and the magic happens when the balance of those things are contextually relevant. The Plaxo message works because its wit speaks to the type of folks who use this app. We're likely techy or in the techy friendlly and we are extremely sarcastic. But this message wouldn't work in MS Office. MS Outlook is the application who should be seen and not heard, you use it all day long and it just needs to work, not trade smarmy remarks with you.  

I have been observing user interviews during a project that we're partnering on. The interviewer is amazingly skilled, he's able to get out of his own way--he doesn't project his own thoughts or ideas into the interview. He's listening and calmly tailoring the pre-set questions based on the interviewee's responses. This is a skill I admire, I personally get performance anxiety and overcompensate by giving them the answer I want to hear.

Anywho, by interviewing five or so different type of users now, we've exposed such a wide array of needs that hadn't even crossed my mind before. Now we're able to understand what will be contextually relevant to these users. For example, we found that the support manager truly needs to be one step ahead of bugs, he needs a platform like blogs to communicate upcoming fixes proactively--before users run across them and get frustrated. And since this site is self/service & support type, the users of the site need to feel like they have a relationship with the site owners. So the application attitude should be "we're here to help, here's how to dialogue with us".

So many applications are built without fully understanding who will be using them. When you know who the users are and have discerned their needs, then you have metrics to measure a successful design. Simple, but not easy!

Mouse woes delight

I have some strangers living with me. Well, they don't live with me, they live about 5 feet from my house in my hot tub decking. I generally wouldn't mind, however, they smell, break down my hot tub with their little gnawing teeth and keep having babies. That's just rude behavior.

Mice just don't scare me, I don't scream like a girl when I see them or anything. I have a soft heart and wrestled with the thought of killing them...although I knew I'd have to deal with them one way or another. You'd think that my cat would help me out here, but she doesn't like to deal with things like mice or flies. I would say she's tenderhearted like me, but she devours spiders like crunchy afternoon snacks...and well, she is a cat and they do like to hunt. So, I think she's just elitist and that this a job more suited for outdoor toms.  

So, I got some bait (after 4 agonizing trips to home improvement stores to find the most humane bait) and set out to put it in the bait box, but the box that Terminix left me last year apparently requires PhD to open it. Or a key. That's what I found out after calling them, anyway.

Well, so in making the call to Terminix to figure out how to open the box and they convinced me that they would be better equipped to deal with this problem than me--plus they will inspect all the spaces around the house that mice might have broken into. I have to say that it didn't take much to convince me that red-blooded hands look better on someone else. What can I say? I live in a paradox of eco-thinking and luxury-protecting. I'm not proud of it and quite honestly, this ties my human guilt muscle into knots.

On to the delight part. . .

So, I told Terminix that I would be interested in their service if they could tell me when the soonest that someone could come out--because I wanted to get this done ASAP. The gal I spoke to told me that she needed to check on the technician's calendar and that she would call me back in 5-10 minutes. I received a call about 5 minutes later that the other gal who runs the technician's calendar was out to lunch, but that she'd give me another call in 20 minutes or so. She called me back shortly and we got everything setup for a technician to come out on Monday. Easy schmeezy.

Here's what delighted me about this experience:

1. The gal at Terminix didn't have the answer for me. But, she promised to have an answer for me within a timeframe and her attitude was one of urgency. She understood that my time is important and that made it okay that she didn't know.
2. When the Terminix gal couldn't get the answer in the timeframe she promised, she let me know. This told me that she cared about my expectations.
3. Because I had confidence that she was working on it, it was not painful to wait for an answer. I had confidence because she communicated with me.
4. And ultimately, I have to admit that I have major relief in not having to kill whiskered things myself. That's my own thing and I'm paying a good amount of money to live in the illusion that it's not me who's harming furry creatures. Terminix knows this and so do I--and we're both okay with that.

The Terminix gal knows how to serve people. DELIGHTFUL!