blog

Project Management Course

Last week I had a lot of fun - imagine me sitting in the same room with 24 project managers, talking about how to manage projects, risks, scheduling, sizing etc. All other attendees have been project managers, I was the only specialist who just wanted to learn the basics. And get a check mark. But that's another story.

Nevertheless it turned out to be a lot of fun - our instructor Darryl (who reminded me about Matt) teaches project management since he is literally 3 years old and he is really (and I mean really really) good at it! So even "the programmer" in between the serious project managers learned something about how projects *should* be managed.

In the evenings we went out for some beers - actually and unfortunately the only sightseeing I did. No time for anything else, one evening it was too late for a walk, the other day it was raining... no luck this time. At least I had a great view out of my hotel room.

So there are many valid and good reasons to come back to the beautiful city of Amsterdam, maybe in spring next year?

Labels: , ,


Posted by Michael Baierl on Wednesday, September 10, 2008, 0 comments
Link: http://mbaierl.com/blog/2008/09/project-management-course.html

TLA. Three Letter Acronyms....

I was once been told by an IBM HW engineer that one of our System 38s "had ceased to be operational because of an AMD failure"

"A what?" i replied
"An AMD failure" He restated
"Woz that?" I asked
"An Air Movement Device" He said
"Oh you mean a fan" sayz I
"No I mean an AMD, Fans just blow air, AMD's move air in a predefined and expected way"
I beat him soundly with a dead haddock sadly this only resulted in yells of
"Hit the BRS!"
"What is the BRS?" I enquired as the haddock once again smacked up side his head
"The Big Red Switch" He replied spitting scales from between his teeth
"The Big Red Switch? What Big Red Switch would that be"
"The Big Red Switch that stops you battering me on the bonce with a dead haddock"
"Oh" I said continuing to belabour him with the haddock only stopping when he promissed me a boondoggle, mind you he did have to explain what that was aswell
From Steve McDonagh. I'm not going to comment this, but read on:

A "stretch target" is defined as a "goal that probably is impossible" as in: "We're setting stretch targets next year".
Read more about the fact that "IBM employees are said to have a language of their own" but "have a 'Can Do' attitude taking personal responsibility for resolving issues and urgent service requests"...

Labels: , ,


Posted by Michael Baierl on Sunday, August 17, 2008, 1 comments
Link: http://mbaierl.com/blog/2008/08/tla-three-letter-acronyms.html