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Editor’s note: This is a guest post from Cornelius Fichtner.

Leadership is one of the important skills that a good project manager must possess. The reason for this is that in many cases, the project manager doesn’t have any authority over the team members for a project. This means he or she must manage the project through leadership.

Although it can be more difficult to manage through leadership rather than authority, it is usually more effective because it is built on trust and respect.

A leader is especially important at the beginning of a project to define the vision of the project and communicate this vision to the team. This helps all of the team members to get on board with the goals of the project. Good leadership skills will also keep the members inspired and motivated to do their best work.
Unfortunately, leadership is difficult to teach from books (or tips like this one). You can learn the basics from the written word, but then you need to show that you “have it” by applying it on the job. For the PMP exam it is important that you recognize situations that require leadership and that you are able to select the appropriate action.

I really like Google+. I like it much better than Facebook. There are though two features that I really miss and I'm sure I'm not the only one:

Short coming 1: Exclude streams

I have a bunch of circles: Friends, Family, Followers and there's also the public one. So here's the usecase. I post an interesting blog post about project management. I set visibility to public. This post will also appear in my Family circle. I'm 100% sure my dad and grandma don't care about that (they actually get annoyed by it). So I would like a feature that allows to specifically exclude circles, but still have the post be public.

Short coming 2: Modify the default stream

When I open Google+ in the morning the stream is filled with crap. I could block all those people, but then again I'm not seeing anything from them. I would actually like to sift through the extended stream when I have more time. That said. It would be really helpful if the mainstream could be customized, so that it shows only the posts from the circles I want. That way I can ensure that I actually don't miss important information.

Just recently I was preparing for a mountainbike tour. I was though not sure about the weather. Dark clouds were at the horizon. Rain or not that was the question. For about 10 minutes I consulted several webservices. It didn't look good. I figured I would try it anyway. Going outside I had to realize that it's already raining.

Projectmanagement is the same. Reading countless reports and analysis that should facilitat making a decision. It's though not enough to base decision on reports only. After all it's about people. We as project managers are in the people business. People have to carry out decisions. People will have to live with them.
Going out and getting a real feelig of what the situation is like is easy, fun and in many cases much faster than just reading and analyzing.

Google had a pretty amazing stuff. I can understand that it is a little bit confusing. I found this really cool video explaining what it does and why it's better than facebook.

 

Just found this interesting graph today on the web. That's just really insane!

 

I'm wondering how the whole Google Suite could be used as a Project management tool. I would imagine it being really powerful. I might even try this out.

Open Source software is secure and of high quality. Everybody who tells you differently doesn't really know what he is talking about.

I was just reading the article "The risk of using Open Source Project Management Software" on blog.projectmanager.com. I'm sorry, but I totally disagree! This seems to be someone who has never seriously worked with Open Source Software. I don't even know where to start at. Let's first establish common ground: There's plenty of Open Source Software out there. I'm going to referen to well established projects. Projects that have a large community that contributes code to the project. I'm not talking about a small niche SourceForge project with a handful of developers. Since I know Drupal, let's take OpenAtrium (Drupal based solution).

Open Source Software doesn't care about privacy? Are you kidding me?

Projectmanager.com wrote:

Since the open source project management software is open and available for anyone to look inside to see just what type of programming is there, it is the responsibility of the user to do so. If there are programs inside the software are made to send back information to the creator of the program, you need to know this. Most of the time this type of sub routine is written to help the creator of the program to improve their product.

Yeah right. And just because you can't see it in closed source software it doesn't happen? You will need tools like package sniffer to find out what kinds of data the closed source software is reporting home. Aren't they just as interested in how their software is being used? That information is just as valuable to them. The difference. You can either accept it and buy it or leave it (if you actually figure out).

I actually wrote once an open source module for Drupal that was reporting back to me (just that it has been installed). After two months I received an e-mail from Drupal's security advisor team to kindly remove that line of code. Can you say the same thing about a closed source software? I hardly believe so (especially if it's a hosted solution!).

Open Source Software is unstable and needs testing

Projectmanager.com wrote

One of the leading reasons the open source project management software is available for free on then internet is when the creator of the program is looking for help developing the program or looking for guinea pigs to help test it out. These are the two leading reasons since the internet has been a functioning tool for the software business.

At least that way you know it gets tested ;). So basically they are saying that Open Source software is buggy. Yeah right. I'm thinking of Sharepoint 2010 it's not exactly what I call a bug free software. How many times has Windows crashed (it has gotten a lot better with Windows 7). So this is not really valuable. Any software has bugs, but with Open Source Software they are found and fixed quicker.

What are the leading reasons for open source software?

1. Higher securiy (more eyes looking at the code)
2. Higher quality (more eyes looking at the code and better modularized)
3. Flexibility (you get lots of input from different developers)
4. Lower development costs

Open Source Software is Insecure? Are you kidding me?

Yes it's true. Anybody can have a look under the hood. Everybody will see when the coding is crap and insecure. It's open for everyone. Drupal has a security advisor team. If anybody sees a whole in the code he can submit a ticket to the that team. They will then inform the maintainer to fix it. If it doesn't get fixed in time the module will get disabled for downloading. Every software that gets written has bugs/security issues. That's a fact.

Now tell me. Who will find more bugs? A bunch of developers sitting in the same place or thousands of developers scattered all of the globe? Tell me, which software is more secure.

Conclusion

This is a typical management view at open source software. Looking at the shiny marketing brochure of closed source software and being convinced by some sales babble. If I had the choice between Open Source Software and Closed Source Software I would much rather take the Open Source version and spend the money I can save on licenses on making the software do exactly what I want it to do. With all the other solutions you will have to live with the sentence: "So this is what xyz can do out of the box, if you need functionality abc this is going to cost you z $" (and that z amount of $ will always be higher than in an open source project, because in open source software you have actually people who know the software by heart!

I think I should write a post on all the advantages of Open Source Software!

I'm sure the software of projectmanager.com is good, but please don't write that marketing crap about closed source software being better!

Incredible. There is an Anti Powerpoint Party! Awesome. The worst is a PowerPoint presentation via phone conference with 15 people. You know for sure that at least half of the participants are doing something else besides that, which leads to awkward situations: "oh, ähm, hum, … Can you please repeat that again?"

There are tons of presentations on how not to use Powerpoint on slideshare and how to rather use it. And yes there's a flipchart aswell, why not use that occasionally and when the audience is not too big?

Nevertheless neat things can be made with PowerPoint when used correctly. Just have a look.

Death by Powerpoint

You Suck At PowerPoint!

Stop Killing Students With PowerPoint

Don't Be A PowerPoint Felon

Some good points… this is the bonus

A Project Manager is a Person who thinks nine Women can deliver a baby in One month

Thanks to @corneliusficht. That's just so awesome that I'm devoting this quote it's on blogpost!

Lets not get deceived by the shiny brochures and the hot marketing air offered by propriety system. Open Source systems have a lot to offer.

A couple days ago, Google opened up it's social network platform Google+. I've already seen modules/plugins for WordPress and Drupal (both open source software). Quality of the plugins is not yet great (already discovered some bugs, that I will need to report), but the software is running. I'm feeling bad for those poor people that are on a propriety system like Sharepoint. Those poor users will have to wait 1) forever and will 2) have to probably pay extra and that's why nobody wants the feature.

Top Management Does not acknowledge Open Source

Problem is: In the heads of the top management, open source software is still not mature and inferior to propriety software. Just compare Sharepoint and Drupal. There might be usecases where Sharepoint is superior, but then there's also many usecases where clearly Drupal is better suited (yes also in the industry). In the heads of the top management they know Microsoft, they know it will be around in a couple years, they have nice brochures and they have a special enterprise solution (that probably just has a higher price).

The Role of the Project Manager

Lets not make the same mistakes. Lets not get deceived by shiny brochure and hot marketing air. As project manager we might not be able to choose the system but we can at least try to influence it. I have now seen projects from both sides. I have worked for many years with Drupal. Not everything is gold! I have worked with Sharepoint from a project management position and believe me: there's much room for improvements! Lets give Open Source Software at least a chance.

The success of an using open source software (lets assume it's a well established OSS) in the enterprise depends on the quality of the team/vendor supporting the system and their knowledge. In the wrong hands this can go totally wrong, but if you have a good team and lots of knowledge you can pimp that software in many ways to do things beyond your wildest imagination!

 

Google+ allows Google to further improve it's mission to organize content and make it accessible and useful, as it can rely on the people doing that work.

Facebook is all about connecting people. Google+ goes further. It connects people and content.

Let's have a quick look at those two giants. Zuckerberg developped Facebook to stay in touch with friends. Probably it was all about finding a date and staying in touch.

"Facebook's mission is to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected."

Google on the other hand was founded by Page and Brin. They just wanted to improve search results provided by search engines.

"Google’s mission is to organize the world‘s information and make it universally accessible and useful."

What Google+ could do to search results

Google has a very waste ecosystem of applications: Gmail, Google Reader, Google Docs, Picasa, Maps, News and a bunch more plus their latest baby Google+. Google is all about organizing content and making it accessible. Looking at all those applications it could be scary to see how much Google knows about you. Using all that data allows Google to create a nice data profile.

Google+ will take Google a step further, by allowing Google to connect those data profiles. With Google+ the user actually orders the information. The user does Google's work, by sharing content, by commenting on content and by liking content. Obviously an article/website that is much liked and shared seems to be more relevant -> this will influence search results. Google could even analyze how content is being shared in circles to affect search results. Example: A circle called "friends". Most likely I have some common interests with the people of that circle. Let's use that information to display search results, by using content friend B and C has liked.

The next Google search interface might be looking like this

SEO will be hard to control

A couple years ago SEO it was all about keywords. Keyword density and the kinds of keyword you chose. This will soon be over. Search results will be highly customized. There won't be a single user having the same results as they are all based on their social profile and their activities in Google+ and friends activities. It will all be about "how much has the article been shared".

So, these were just some inputs. I'm not a fortune teller, but these are things how they could become. We will see very soon.

Cloud computing is a very easy and cheap way for running software, but be aware of what's happening when the service goes down or you loose your internet connection.

trying to access my web todolist (http://t.co/NJfBLsQ), but 502 bad gateway that's the #problem of #webapps #blogpost #fb

The cloud is in. The cloud is cool. Apple has the iCloud coming very soon. Amazon is doing cloud computing for quite some time with its EC2 service. Amazon is further having a cloud drive. Google is one big cloud company. With Gmail, GoogleDocs and Google Calendar they provide some very popular software that only runs in the Web/Cloud. Microsoft is going to start it's cloud service with the Office 365 solution, which is going to be some hybrid solution (I actually haven't looked at it closer). Chrome OS is going even further: The whole OS is based on applications running somewhere else.

The dark side of the cloud

I'm a big fan of software in the cloud. No more worries about updates or about not being able to use the date at work or while on the road. But beware, there is a dark side: What if the service goes down? A couple months ago a big part of the Amazon cloud service went down. Just last week my todo list service went down. You can't do anything. It's out of your hands and you just have to rely on others.

The cloud for me as PM

It's affecting me in my life. Am I going to use some service somewhere in the cloud or rather rely on inhouse software? Am I going to use a project management tool like basecamp somewhere out there or rather setup something on my own servers? Am I going to use some Todo list that runs on my phone only or am I going to use a webservice? It's up to you. I though believe that in the future cloud services will become more stable and with HTML 5 and it's local storage it should in the future also be possible to build service that can run without internet connection.

What do you think? Cloud or back to earth?