Adam Kiu

Document re-iterations and resets feel like one of the most time-consuming and energy draining exercises that there is to encounter.

Having to reset means that most, if not all, of the work already done will be discarded. For the work that can be salvaged, energy must be spent rummaging through the words, ideas, and sentences that can still apply. Once new ideas are flushed out and applied, and ideas are carried over from the first set, then the re-work is done. While all this goes on, the time to completion has doubled. The ideas and final revisions go through the long process of approvals and reviews, and go through more iterations before the final product comes through.

Painful.

In economic terms, this is a terrible opportunity cost price to pay. Picture having these ideas reviewed early on, before any words and ideas are on paper, and all stakeholders have approved. The final edits are complete, reviewed as a formality, and the document is signed off and ready to go. Time can now be spent on working out other open issues, producing more documents, researching more features, and on quality areas.

Resets are so so so expensive.

Thus, avoiding resets and re-work needs to be a high priority topic and continue to be refined in the software development process. From my recent experiences, here are some ways to avoid resets and having to do major re-work.

1. Identify the right people approving your work early, and sit them down and get their ideas and buy-off on things. I did not do this soon enough and only too late into the process do I now face major feedback where things need to be re-written, and ideas need to be salvaged.

2. Understand your role and don’t sway from it. As a PM, your job is to ensure the functionality is complete, and aligns with the product vision. I spent too much time digging into the implementation details, and arguing about the best way to do things. If there are implementation questions, save that for the dev team to resolve.

3. Don’t start going into details until high-level ideas are completely bought off. I had a functional spec, and went deep into the details, only to realize that the supporting high-level scenarios may not apply, given the product vision. Now, all those details have gone to waste, and work is re-done. Now, don’t make the mistake of not WRITING THINGS DOWN. Just, make sure that everyone’s bought off into your vision before you write anything down. So, write down bulleted list or walkthrough on a slide deck, or create pictures, whatever works for you. But stay away from details until your high-level vision is achieved and everyone’s on the same page.

4. Do the right thing. It goes without saying that if you are implementing the right thing, then you likely won’t reset. Continue to ask yourself, what’s the customer value? What’s the best thing for customers? Why are things being done this way? What is the product vision? Does this align with the product vision? As long as you continually ask yourself these questions every few days, you will likely be on the right track to avoiding a reset.

5. Practice, and get feedback. If you find yourself resetting, figure out why. Look inside into yourself to see what you’re missing, what steps you’re skipping out on, where things are not going right. If you reset, it’s okay. Don’t expect to be perfect. Perfect is unattainable, for most normal people like us. But make it a goal to continue getting as close as you can.

Designing software is never an easy task, and resets are the most costly things that can happen to any of us. Delivering solid specs and documents that can quickly be signed off is one of the key attributes to a strong and successful PM.

We lost in the semi-finals of our company Ping-Pong tournament.

I’ll tell you why it was a heart-breaker: we’re a solid team. But we lost because of a bad 3rd game breakdown. Somehow, when it came down to the wire – it must have been the pressure, the nerves, or the fear of losing getting into our heads – we choked.

To give you a little background – when I say we’re good, what I mean is that we’ve been playing for a few months now and faced off against over 20 different teams. Of the hundred or so matches we’ve played, we probably lost less than 10. So of course, entering this competition, we expect to be up there.

Anyway, the point is, we lost. And my partner took it really hard. I don’t blame him for taking it hard – the game took an emotional toll on him and he just started playing uncharacteristically more so than I did. Easy shots missed, serving badly, hitting balls into the net. It was bad.

But the fact is, it happens. It happens in sports and it happens in life. Take the 2007 Dallas Mavs. Best team in the league, loses in the first round of the playoffs to the lowest ranked playoff team. Take the 2007 Patriots. 16-0 for the season, loses in the finals to the (at the time) measly NY Giants.

And the fall hurts, but you have to pick yourself up. And that’s what the winning mentality is truly about. Being able to cope with loss, maintain your confidence, and go back in there with double the amount of effort, strength, and focus.

When we talk about winners, Michael Jordan comes to mind. And his Nike commercial stated it the best – I failed over and over again in life and that is why I succeed… I can accept failure.

Winners don’t win everything. Winners have the mentality of taking failure in stride and using it to improve. The mentality to learn from past mistakes and step up again, with the same amount of confidence you had. Winning is playing as though there is nothing to lose.

If you want to be a winner – it’s true what you have to do. Learn to cope with failure and loss. Learn to adjust to plans when they don’t go your way and re-seize the plan.

As humans, we can’t expect to be perfect. It’s unreal to believe that we don’t make mistakes, and hence, unreal to look down upon ourselves everytime we screw up. The best are just the ones who cover their mistakes and learn for the next time.

Ping Pong. We will play again, and next time, we can win.

I was browsing my Facebook feed prior to sleeping tonight and found a link to this:

I’ll remove the mystery: It’s a powerpoint presentation about personal branding.  “From who am I, to Here’s who I AM.”  As much as this slide is basic without the accompanying presenter speaking on its points, there’s definitely a lot of great takeaways here.  I’ve always been an advocate of working on your personal image; i.e. your “brand”.  Being an expert at something is half the battle; without a clear statement about who you are and what you’re good at, your knowledge will be lost.

Take time out of your life to reflect on who you are, what you’re good at, and act consistently with it.  For example, if you think that commitment is something you would like to brand yourself as, then show commitment in everything you do.  Commit yourself to being on time, completing your work well, following through until you finish.

I’ve always felt that life is one big business pitch: it’s not about who has the best business idea; it’s about who can market their business idea the best.

About 3 months to be exact, from when I first started working.  And hey, I’m still alive!  Doing… okay… still trying to do better.  I don’t really have any crazy updates.  I mean, a *lot* has happened since I’ve last written.  And I mean an incredible amount.  I could talk about a year’s worth but now’s not the time.

Usually after taking a break from blogging, I need to reset and write one of these “It’s been a while” posts to get the ball rolling again.  It sort of mirrors the way I think and do things: I like to do a reset, reflect on what happened, and start fresh, with a new set of goals.  I guess this proves that achieving personal goals must be a low priority for me, huh? 

On to the resetting…

Life has moved insanely fast since I last blogged.  A lot of my personal life’s challenges (Ex. my girlfriend finding a job, finding an apartment, furnishing the place, transportation, etc.) has been overcome.  I’m blogging from a completely different place in a completely different time zone.  It seems like what I wrote before was foreign.  I wasn’t even sure what I was looking to achieve there.

However, I think I know what I want to achieve here.  A lot of what a PM does involves written communication skills.  Our role is mostly about filling the gaps between the developers and the customers, and completing all the other not-so-cool tasks that the devs and testers don’t have so much time for.  Well, I don’t give PMs enough credit – because the success/failure of a feature can rest at the hands of a PM.  So I’m just playfully bashing a PM because, well, I can, since I’m one.  But you, cannot.  Sorry

Anyway, you can bash me because upon writing my first document and going through several iterations with my managers on the content, one thing becomes abundantly clear: I need to improve my writing.  I need to write wherever I can and whenever I can.  Looking at where I am weak in writing, the immediate gaps are in my ability to communicate to the point, to state things in a formally, and to write meaningful sentences as opposed to fillers.  Also, I must improve my ability to convey ideas from my head onto paper. 

It has been said to me many times that a PMs legacy, after they leave a place, will forever lie in the documents, so the document that you write better be the best damn thing you ever had or the trail you leave behind will be a pile of… you get where I’m going.  So what I am trying to say is (ironic how I can’t have said what I’m trying to say earlier), I will be using this as one of the mediums to hone my writing skills.

Hmm, I feel a lot more personal in this post than I’ve ever felt writing before.  Pat on the back?  Sure, why not.

Half of the team is on vacation in August.  Scratch that – I mean half the town.  Thinking about Boston, my morning commute is uncharacteristic of rush hour traffic.  People wear slacks to shorts to work; the sun is slow, and most of all, it’s empty.

Once I get into work, the office is quiet.  People aren’t around – they’re all using their vacation time now – so it becomes difficult to track the people you need to get your work done.  So while you’re in the office, it becomes a struggle to be productive.

This actually falls at a very convenient time for me because it gives me time to familiarize myself with our product.  I can read through the documentation, install it and run into issues on my own.  I can use it, test it, and report any problems I see.

It’s easy to ease myself into this job because of how relaxed work is.  Everybody’s happy so you get to see the real bright side of people – not the busy, stressful sides.  This is a great time to network and go to patios and do lunches and learn about them.

Aside from that, I’m also beginning to think about my career path.  I’m not quite sure what road to take, but a few nights ago my goal become clear to me: to become a key contributor.  It is my next life milestone.  I’ve had several in the past.

First was to get my lifeguard license.  After that, it was to get into Computer Science co-op at UW.  While in UW, the next milestone was to get into IBM or Microsoft (yes, can you believe I managed to achieve it?).

Now my next goal is to be make a difference.  It is to do something that bears weight in this world – something with value.  And a way I can do that is to become a contributor.  I want to help people, work with people and be able to contribute my ideas and see them propagate out to others.

That’s my idealistic next goal.  To be able to say I made an impact on this world and did something real, that’s what fulfillment I seek.

So I’m really looking forward to setting the goals and taking the next steps to achieving that.  Life is a game of competition and improvement and I love working on it everyday.  Even on Saturday.

So I was typing in my search query in the IE8 browser window and it found me the exact match I was looking for. To the right, text that said Shift+Enter appeared.

In other words, if that’s the match I am indeed looking for, a shift+enter will go directly to it.

Another little keyboard trick to save me some more time in my day. Awesome!

At work, I have a desktop and a laptop computer. I prefer to use the desktop computer at work so I don’t have to crouch over and ruin my back all day. However, I also like doing work at home so I need the laptop.

So it’s incredibly useful for me to be able to type my notes on my desktop computer, then take my laptop home and be able to read and type more notes on my laptop.

The beauty of it is that when I type on my laptop, it automatically updates on my desktop OneNote. And to grab notes from my desktop computer, I just press Shift+F9.

Here’s the steps to do it:

1. On your desktop computer, open your OneNote Notebooks folder.
2. Right-click -> Share -> With specific people
3. Just leave sharing permissions as yourself. Click OK.
4. On your laptop, right-click your notebook -> Properties.
5. Change the path to the one on your desktop notebook.
6. You should get a confirmation message saying it is now synced.

And that’s it. Now I can make notes from meetings on my laptop and come back to my computer and see it all there. And before I leave work, I just hit F9 and sync up my laptop again.

That’s all! Please leave me a comment if you run into any errors!

Saw this on our internal front page as news headlines: Win7 could be the best OS yet.  I haven’t fully read it through yet but there’s a line that says going from Windows XP to Win7 will be like “ditching your old Toyota Camry for a sexy, new Nissan GT-R.”

Well done sir.  You got me with that car analogy.  Well done

If you ever want to be in business in some point in your career, then this book is a must read.  I already knew it would be good, having it recommended to me by my GPM, but I didn’t know how good it would be.  From the moment I picked it up, I couldn’t put it down.

The point is, meetings are a waste of time, these days.  And they are – you could be doing something else, you’re just reporting your status, and frankly, no one really pays much attention.  But why are they like that and what can be done about it?  Patrick Lencioni uses a fable to powerfully illustrate a simple and effective solution to this problem that haunts Corporate America.

Upon reading this book, it should become clear to you why meetings are critical in a company.  There should be no doubt in your mind that successful companies have mastered the art of the meeting.  Just as the tennis player trains for the Grand Slam, the golfer trains for the PGA tour, the leader must train for the meeting.

The meeting is where the most important conversations must happen – and where all the decisions need to be made.  It is where people need to discuss, debate, and argue until there is a consensus made – similar to a jury trial.  People’s needs and thoughts must be heard to avoid redundancy, overlap, and to hear great ideas.

Patrick Lencioni is the founder and president of a management consulting firm that specializes in executive team development and organizational health.  He has worked with Fortune 500 companies – Microsoft being one of them.

In the end, it’s a fun and easy to read book that provides value.  What more can you ask for?

Starts now.

It’s so crazy to wake up in the morning and think about where I am today.  Freshly graduated out of school and already employed.  Especially employed in the States, where the recession is affecting many many people.  Though I am certain I lucked out, that’s not what this post is about.

This post is about starting a new chapter, having a fresh beginning.  Equipped with everything I’ve learned in the past 5 years, I’m now in the midst of the real world – the working world – where I will get a chance to start fresh with a fully new challenge.  That challenge is, how well will you do with your career?  How well can you manage your personal lifestyle?  And I love a new challenge.  Don’t get me wrong, school had its challenges and fun.

Back in school, the main concern is the learning.  It’s getting your assignments finished, your CS labs done on time, your essays written.  You did not worry about money – mainly because you didn’t have any.  You find the cheapest bars, the cheapest food, and places where you and your friends can share a room to split the rent costs – that type of fun.  But those challenges got old quickly.  By 3rd year, you already knew where to find $7.99 pitchers.  You could plot out the dinner specials of every restaurant.  Heck, you even learned how to survive on $3/day for food.  School and studying also lost its fun.  Getting high grades was no longer a challenge – learning in class was easy.  There was no struggle anymore, just a grind.  It got boring.

Now, everything’s new and different, and the world has been shaken up.  Firstly, the start of your career path.  Starting at the very bottom – my favorite place to start.  Then questions and challenges come up.  Can you do well at work?  Can you succeed?  Can you contribute your ideas and put it into use.  New goals are set in place – goals to do well, goals to help the company, goals to network and make friends.  Help run projects and facilitate product development.  Like I said, a whole new set of challenges. 

Your career will be the biggest thing that occupies your thoughts and your time.  This will be the thing you spend 40 hours a week doing, so you better love it.  And right now, I love the things I’m doing and the challenges I’ve been given.  I was actually excited – yes excited – to come home this weekend to do more research and planning on how to solve the issues that came up at work.

When work cools down and you have time to look outside of that, there are many other things to occupy your mind.

Like finding a place to live.  Finding a nice place that you can just kick it after work, when you need to unwind.  A place you can call your bachelor pad, where people come over and just admire it for how beautiful it is.  Looking for that perfect plasma TV that stream basketball in HD so crisp you can see the sweat dripping off Kevin Garnett.  Shopping for a nice, large, couch.  Buying dining sets, cutlery that matches your place.  Buying bedding and a mattress that makes your place feel like you’re living in the Hyatt.  Looking for lamps and candles that will help set the mood in your place.

Or finding a cell phone.  Now that tuition’s not a worry, you can afford a larger cell phone bill.  Blackberry, iPhone, HTC?  So many options.  Sprint, Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile?  So many providers and choices to pick.  Data plan, voice plan, text messaging?  MSN at your fingertips, twittering from your phone?  How exciting is that.  Seeing something I like, taking a picture of it on my phone and immediately sending it to my friends to see.

Savings.  How much of your income do you save?  10%? 20%?  When are you going to put a down payment for your house to grow your asset?  Vacations?  How about thinking about buying actually nice gifts for your family for once so they can enjoy your successes with you.

Clothing.  You just can’t wear the same pair of  sweatpants everyday and get away with it anymore, bud.  Sorry, but you’re getting paid now.  It’s time to dress more maturely and begin the big transformation over to yuppie life.  It’s time to shop at Banana Republic, and get a couple of nice vests, or sweaters.  Levi’s for a fitted pair of jeans.  H&M for nice european fit dress shirts.  Of course, a nice classy pair of dress shoes too.

So many others that will come up eventually.  And at the age of 23, there’ s still so much time to go out and enjoy all the nightlife entertainment the city has to offer.  Baseball games, basketball games, football games, sailing, hiking, canoeing.  Travelling as well – to any city you want, with the vacation holidays you’re allotted.

This is an awesome, if not the greatest, start of something new yet.

My second week working full time has finished so I should probably reflect.  Some of the things I noticed:

Working as a full-time employee is a completely different experience from working as a co-op.

First of all, the full-timers don’t ignore you anymore.  People actually stop to try to get to know you and learn more about you.  As a co-op, you’re generally ignored and people will talk to you out of courtesy.  Which sucks but at the same time, is understandable.  Why would full timers waste their time talking to a bunch of people who are there for such a short time?

Secondly, you get toys.  Lots of em.  When I arrived at my desk, I had 4 big Dell boxes waiting to be cut open.  It was my dual 22″ monitors and my desktop computer.  Opening more toys, I got a keyboard and mouse.  A week later, my GPM Lidiane dropped off 3 more boxes at my desk.  This was my new laptop, the IBM Thinkpad X301.  The X301’s are super slim, super sleek, light-weight and ultra low power consumption – I know because of how little heat it produces.

Third, the work and commitments are different.  Obviously.  But it is nicer as a full-time.  There isn’t that same pressure to put forth as big of an impression as when you’re in co-op.  In co-op, you rationalize for 4 months and give it the best you have.  As a full-timer, my mindset’s much different.  The goal is not to produce what they ask me to for the next 4 months.  My mindset is to evaluate what projects they ask me to do, evaluate the big picture and help find ways to improve it.

The differences are abundant, and I’m really enjoying being a full-timer.  It’s nice to start to build relationships with the team and network.

Right now I rent a room in a house from a distant family friend.  She’s 78 and an incredibly caring lady.  She takes out my garbage, reminds me to not get home too late, and even cooks dinner for me.  She’s like my grandma.  And it’s just me and her in the house – she sleeps in the dining room (converted into her own little bedroom) and I take the entire upstairs so we don’t get in each other’s way.

The master bedroom’s really nice; large, bright, clean, and comfy.  It definitely has more size than I can fit furniture.  Well, I don’t have any furniture actually – I’m just using what she let me use, which is a bed, couple of night stands, and a Mahjong table I use as my desk.

It’s spacious and nice and this room would be an awesome place to live in except for two things.  One, it’s far away from work.  It’s a 60 minute commute.  It’s also far away from anything really (convenience stores, grocery stores, shopping malls, etc).

Secondly, there’s no air conditioning.  Not upstairs at least.  There’s one in her room but not here.

So here I am melting away on a Sunday afternoon.

I took my tee off,  I’ve got the second-hand fan blowing full blast at me, and I’m still sweating.  I’m feeling borderline sticky.  It’s definitely not comfortable to be up here when it’s 30 degrees outside in Boston.  I got the windows open and the blinds closed but it’s not helping.  Man I really hope August isn’t like this but checking the weather report for the next week, it’s only looking just as hot.  Maybe I’ll stay at work later.

I’m just feeling really toasty and probably going to border dehydration soon.  Anyway, it’s not that extreme.  Just think of it as moderate discomfort.  Not that I have a choice – I have some work to ramp up on tonight.  Our team just released their latest build so we have lots to plan for the future.

Plus, I have my own little side projects to work on.  So heat it is.  Now what to eat for dinner?

Testing this from Quickpress. This seems pretty handy dandy for super quick posts. Like a mini-twitter for WP.

I wonder though, if we type enough is it ok to off set it?

Like if we keep going.

A bit further now…

A bit further…

Done.

Testing the posting from Windows Live Writer for compatibility.  Let’s see how this turns out.  Does not look good so far on the WLW page.

testing the tag cloud