John Burke's Education Project

LEAN in Education

2011-12-09T16:16:00.006Z

Recently I was asked to provide some training with reference to the Lean Methodology devised by Toyota.

As part of the exercise I contextualised Lean's Seven Wastes or Muda for the post-16 education sector and thought it may be useful to include that here.

Waste 1
Transportation

Overview
Inappropriate transportation

Example
Overuse of peripatetic equipment, Legacy systems requiring paper transfer

Waste 2
Motion of People

Overview
Unnecessary movement of staff / students

Example
Lessons timetabled to require movement between buildings / campuses, F2F meetings off-site or at one end of campus, specialist resources away from main teaching areas.

Waste 3
Overproduction

Overview
Unnecessary use of paper, materials, striving for perfection over fit-for-purpose

Example
prospectus, course materials, minutes of meetings, production of presentations, figures, data and information

Waste 4
Irregular Processes

Overview
Misalignment of steps in processes

Example
Retesting due to misplaced results. Use of expensive consumables when cheaper alternatives are available. Expensive local Vs central reprographics. Misallocation of valuable and scarce resources i.e. not spending the money where it is needed

Waste 5
Inventory/stock

Overview
Uncontrolled inventory (too much/too little/in the wrong place) and/or excessive Work in Progress (WIP)

Example
Paper and materials stocks, printed materials, production of course materials too early - particularly in areas where current state of industry includes rapid developments and change

Waste 6
Defects/Errors

Overview
Procedural errors, missing data, lost items requiring duplication

Example
Lost assignments, rooms or equipment double booked, inappropriate access rights, innacurate data

Waste 7
Waiting and other time-related waste

Overview
Delays, Misaligned requirements/delivery

Example
Long process cycles, over-dependence on committees when speedy decisions needed, Bottlenecks

JISC Regional Support Centres

2011-07-08T11:19:00.005+01:00

The last couple of weeks I've been doing the rounds of a few JISC Regional Support Centre "eFairs".

The RSCs, as they have come to be known, are a conduit between the JISC Advisory Services and learning providers, particularly in the FE, Adult and Work-Based Learning sectors.

They field queries and signpost providers to the appropriate service and they also host and administer a number of workshop activities that we deliver on their behalf.

Within each of the RSCs are a number of knowledgeable and skilled advisers who support use of technology in colleges and other providers in their region.

Many of them host an annual event where practitioners from the sector can meet, network, listen to experts amongst their peers, demonstrate what they have done, and learn what other support and resources might exist from the somewhat complex range of services that make up JISC.

This week I've been in Ipswich at Suffolk New College for the RSC Eastern region's eFair.

Together with colleagues from JISC Legal and JISC Digital Media, who together with my own service, JISC infoNet, come under the umbrella of JISC Advance, I ran a "Show and Tell" session throughout the day, talking to delegates and showing them some of the resources we have to offer the Sector.

It was good to talk to some of the other services and agencies working within the Sector as well, it being particularly nice to hear about our resources being used and promoted by others.

If you work in the UK post-16 education world and haven't come across your regional JISC RSC or other JISC Advance services then you can find out about them on this page from the JISC Advance website.

Business Impact Analysis

2011-06-14T10:55:00.003+01:00

I had a query from a college friend the other day who said 'We have been advised by our IT Auditor that we need to complete a Business Impact Analysis to establish the criticality recovery priority of systems, the nature of risk to which they are exposed and the contingency measures to be implemented. We do have a Risk registers where we have been documented all IT Risks and its calculated control.'

I've commented before ("What is the Real Risk?" May 2009) that whilst we tend to be good at identifying risks we can easily look at them from a personal rather than an organisational point of view. If you identify the risk of tripping over a wire you think of the impact as injury rather than thinking of it as the amount of work not done and the consequences of that because someone is off on sick leave with a broken leg.

My answer was, 'It sounds as if they are wanting evidence that you have identified what impact the loss of individual systems would have on the organisation as a whole – which would then allow you to prioritise systems against each other so that if you lost more than one you would know which to bring back on line first.

'We tend to think of risk in terms of things like “email system goes down” but they are asking what would the impact of that be – what would be impossible and what delays would alternatives bring?

'E.g. – loss of all email communications sent from external contacts until situation resolved or external contacts advised to send via alternative methods leading to delays from known regular contacts and total loss from unknown, new or occasional sources. Internal communications needing to be routed through other means – telephone, internal post, introducing delays up to one day.'

To register these details can be time consuming and involve careful thought. The JISC infoNet Risk Management infoKit recommends describing risks with a sentence construction such as: "There is a risk that A, caused by B, will lead to C". "C" may be more than one consequence and may involve writing quite a bit of text!

Gaining the Trust of the SMT as an IT Manager

2010-12-09T09:29:00.007Z

Yesterday I went to Manchester, having been called in at the last moment to substitute for a speaker who couldn't make it. The event was about Shared Services in Post-16 Education.

One of the comments made at the event was that senior management in colleges don't always make decisions based on sound knowledge of what technology is available and what it can do. But I had to wonder whether that was because senior managers simply didn't care (I don't think so!!!) or did they not trust the level or span of knowledge of their IT manager?

So it led me to follow that train of thought for a while and to start to identify how an IT manager should build that necesary trust if he or she wanted to be consulted as part of senior management decision making.

My own background contains several years as a Head of IT in a college and many more as manager of Management Information Systems. I was probably not the easiest of managers to handle as I constantly strove to improve systems for both SMT and users and that costs money and involves bending ears a lot. But I had the trust of the College Principals that I worked for.

Why? Because I demonstrated that I was keeping on top of new developments and had the good of the college close to my heart. Because I included within my remit (my decison - no one gave this to me) a responsibility to assess the background business processes of the college and I raised issues where I thought they could be improved.

Had I just sat and got on with running the IT team, making sure that systems were working and not trying to understand what others who used the systems were trying to do and how and why, I wouldn't have had the knowledge necessary to gain the trust of anyone outside my own team. And therefore, why should they ask my opinion on anything other than "We want this done, how long will it take?"

The job of an IT Manager should include the assessment of new technologies and I'm sure that 99% of IT Managers do this. But I wonder what percentage go to their senior management team and say "This technology is becoming available. These are the benefits it could bring us, here's what it would cost, here are the risks we would face and here's how we would have to change in order to exploit it."

Now if I was a senior manager in any organisation, that's the IT bod I'd want managing my IT department.

Evidence of Continued Impact of JISC infoNet Resources and Workshops

2010-10-13T12:16:00.004+01:00

Shrewsbury College of Art & Technology have already provided a case study of evidence of impact following the training of their Senior Management Team and Middle Managers, on a series of workshops from JISC infoNet.

The workshops included Project Management, Process Review, Risk Management, Change Management, Information and email Management and Managing Multiple Projects in a Complex Environment. Donna Lucas, Head of Human Resources at Shrewsbury, has recently provided an update to this.

She says, “The management of projects here at the college has improved no end. For example we now employ a project management facilitator who works with teams to ensure that they are managing their projects within the disciplines and that individual projects are coordinated from a cross college point of view. We have recently committed to a re build of our engineering block, a 3 million pound project and that will be the first big test of our new approach. Add to this new disciplines for risk management and a range of identified change programmes and the sense of progress is really tangible.”

Details of the events available can be accessed from http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/events/workshops with the related online resources available from http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/infoKits.

Please note that workshops are only available to the Post-16 Education Sector in the UK.

To Plan B or Not To Plan B...

2010-10-07T09:52:00.003+01:00

'I can't put a plan together, I wouldn't know where to start - I'm far happier just getting on with it...'

'It would be out of date as soon as we started working on it.'

'No one takes any notice of the plan anyway, they are all doing their own thing.'

Just some of the phrases I've heard as reasons for not producing a project plan. Of course plans change and of course this means producing another but let's put a few arguments forward for why you should.

I suppose the (almost) obvious one is that if you don't know how to plan, how can you 'get on with it'? Where do you start to get on with it? What do you do first? Isn't that the first thing that would go in a plan, then?

Plans fill a number of functions and are not necessarily just for the benefit of the project manager. They help others assess how well the project is doing against its targets, goals and objectives. Assuming it has any. I'm aware of a project recently that hadn't specified what the outputs would be other than that something would be 'better'. Of course the project manager claimed a success at the end of the project, but was it? There had been no plan so it was impossible to check whether tasks had been done. There were no stated tangible outcomes so it was impossible to check whether they had been achieved. The only outcome was that the process involved had to be 'better' but was that so because one or ten people thought it so? Had anyone checked to see whether anyone thought it wasn't better? Or worse?

If plans start out by listing all the things that must be done they can then be scheduled. Put in order. This can be essential if several or many people are involved and some tasks require other tasks to be completed before they can start.

Yes things will change and when they do everyone involved in delivering the project needs to know how it will affect them. So the plan has to be rehashed and the next version produced, circulated and the previous plan discarded.

The discarding of the previous plan needs to be formally dealt with. There has to be a way of knowing which version of the plan is current. Writing the words current or final version is stupid and meaningless because there is bound to come a time when they aren't. But the words will still be written on them!

So plans need version control. There will be draft plans being produced whilst previous versions are still current, so there needs to be a way of identifying a draft plan and an issed plan. There may be several iterations of a draft before it becomes an issue.

At JISC infoNet we use the following system. Each document has a suffix as the last part of the filename. d1a is a draft copy working towards issue 1 and is the first iteration. If I produce d1a and send it to someone else who changes it, they save it as d1b. Once agreed and issued it becomes version i1. If whilst everyone is working to version i1 another version becomes necessary, someone will produce draft copy d2a. That may go through iterations and amendments d2b, d2c etc. Until it becomes version i2 everyone still works to version i1.

If it is necessary to replan, then having the current working plan in front of us helps us to do that, because there is a list of all the things that need to be done and we can add new ones in the knowledge of where they are best placed and can predict how they will affect other tasks that still remain to be done. We can reschedule everyone's work (this being a draft copy until they have all agreed they are available at those times).

I had a long train journey yesterday and my second train was a little late into Birmingham meaning I missed my third train. Now if you were the train controller and your train was ten minutes late, how could you replan your journey without knowing when other trains were going to be crossing your track? In other words...from the current plan!

Self-Evaluating at Organisation Level

2010-10-05T08:53:00.000+01:00

There are many reasons for undertaking a self-evaluation and many different ways to do it. Let's start with an evaluation undertaken by the organisation with a view to improving it, making it more effective or more efficient.

Evaluating or reviewing a process would usually call for some investigation at different levels within an organisation. How well does the process involved meet strategic objectives? Is it catered for in written strategy and thus adequately resourced, or does it meet a more localised need, being resourced internally by a team or department? Even so, does it then feature in that department's strategy and do senior management accept it as a necessary process so that the department receives adequate funding to include it?

Who are the end-users and participants in the process? How is the process governed, resourced, managed, delivered and monitored? Do people within the process understand why it exists, how it meets strategic drivers, have access to written guidelines, have a process for giving feedback, raising concerns, suggesting improvements and are these things adequately monitored and actioned?

A while ago I managed a project called Embedding Business & Community Engagement Through Business Process Improvement and Internal Engagement. The Embedding BCE project was only concerned with one (albeit wide-ranging) type of activity within FE and HE institutions. Yet the process of managing and delivering services under the umbrella of BCE meant that we had to engage with senior management, central co-ordinating units, core business process delivery teams such as HR, Finance, IT, Libraries, Estates/Facilities, Information Systems and Marketing and with practitioners from academic departments, research institutes and business units from all over the institution.

No one person could hope to know everything necessary to conduct a self-evaluation on their own.

The interview process in the Embedding BCE project gathered perceptions. The views put forward did not necessarily reflect the truth of the situation - as we got conflicting views and assertions from different people within the same process. But the point is that each interviewee thought it was the truth, or more properly the true situation, that they were giving us.

So a self-evaluation should aim to bring these different viewpoints together. After our interview process we staged a half-day workshop using a workbook that is downloadable from the link at the end of this entry.

The workbook contained around 25 questions. The workshop took around 5 hours. The intention was to stimulate some discussion by allowing these different perceptions to surface and be challenged by a small group of around 10-12 people representing all levels from SMT to Practitioner and from a range of teams and departments.

It identified quick wins where one department was doing something really well, where this could 'easily' now be communicated and replicated across the organisation. Although the workbook asked for scores against questions, this was again aimed at showing that some departments would score differently to others. Improved internal communications would benefit just about every organisation of 5+ staff!

In several cases the workshop discussions involved raised voices at some stage. But the managed conflict sparked ideas and suggestions that were quickly turned into a list of potential improvements or developments. It identified both strengths and weaknesses. It stimulated and inspired many participants. It bored a few.

It made me wary of results of surveys where a single person had completed the questions, or where perhaps several people have completed different sections from their own perception without any interaction. And it made me think that any system that attempts to score an organisation as a whole is going to both short-change good practice and perhaps paper over cracks at the same time. Even with a scoring system of only 1-4 we had arguments over whether a question should be scored 2.3 or 2.6 as the department who would have scored a 3 were reluctant to accept a score of 2! In most cases where these surveys are made public, there is no option to split scores.

Self-evaluating and then acting on the findings are essential to ensure widespread uptake of good practice and that external evaluations find consistency

The methodology and findings of the Embedding BCE project are published in the Embedding BCE infoKit on the JISC infoNet website. I can be contacted through JISC infoNet to help facilitate reviews or self-evaluation workshops of BCE in UK Further and Higher Education institutions if required.

JISC infoNet Resources - Shrewsbury Case Study

2010-07-09T11:34:00.001+01:00

The online resources and training provision from my workplace, JISC infoNet is highlighted in this case study video from Shrewsbury College. We worked with the college and delivered a series of interactive workshops to both their senior and middle managers on:

Project Management
Process Review
Risk Management
Change Management
Managing Multiple Projects in a Complex Environment
Organising your Information and Emails

This service is available to all funded colleges and universities within the UK Further and Higher Education Sectors. Contact details here.

The End of Written History?

2010-07-08T13:38:00.000+01:00

I've just come across an article on the BBC News Channel - Post-It Notes and the End of Written History by Brian Wheeler.

Despite a decision by the last governement to reduce the 30-years secrecy rule to 20 years, it seems that we may have less access to information rather than more, as legislation such as the Freedom of Information Act has led to official records such as minutes of meetings changing from a full and detailed record to a series of bland statements of the obvious.

The Act covers all written material so notes in margins and post-it notes are covered just as much as the content of formal documents. Harder, however, to obtain evidence that they existed if the organisation claims they do not...

This isn't all that new though - I remember similar fears being aired by historians when the Data Protection Act came in. Claims that organisations would not formally hold any detail that could be subsequently demanded for disclosure by the subject and that might give cause for a claim.

Certainly there has been a great change in the detail you find these days when applying for references for staff. Many organisations have a policy now that any references given should only contain factual bare bones details such as date started and ended and job title. They are not generally worth the cost of asking.

So will future historians think of us as a bland and shallow people, incapable of emotion? Or will informal non-official documents and writings survive to give a totally different, more involved, more emotional point of view? What will have happened to all these blogs we write now? (I have 5 at current count!) Will we be seen as a community of individuals plaintively pouring out words in the hope that someone will read them, whilst retreating from closer forms of contact?

Do our online uses of social networking sites make us more incapable of interacting on a personal level face to face or do they open up new collaborations and widen participation so that geographical boundaries become meaningless?

Does the advent of self publishing, rapidly moving into multimedia with sites such as YouTube and the like, mean that writing may, after something like 9000 years since early mnemonic or pictogram symbols, start to be replaced by more personal, spoken or enacted forms? Certainly the language is evolving as it always has done. Will future historians wonder why there are so many letters to each word?

Yr m8, Jon...

Dashboards, Dials and Dilemmas

2010-07-06T10:05:00.000+01:00

There was a bit of a debate going on about Dashboards - providing top end information for senior managers from database sources - on the JISCmail mailing list for Information Managers in the Further Education Sector over the last couple of days.

It's perhaps a bit unfortunate that the term Dashboard seems to goad vendors into designing their products with dials and speedometers and the like to emulate the dashboard of a car. Circular dials are great for seeing how fast you are travelling but not much good for comparing values, say, between departments of a college.

To illustrate: a pie chart...

Here we have 9 departments, which I have imaginatively named 1,2,3...9.

Is Department 3 bigger than Department 1? Is Department 4 bigger than Department 9? Few of us could make that call with a graphic such as this.

Here though, it is much easier to make a judgement and there is yet another way to make it clearer still.

Now I can immediately compare departments at a glance.

Dashboard may be an unfortunate term. Dials take up lots of space and a speedometer usually gives only one figure.

Stephen Few at Perceptual Edge makes the point very eloquently in this article with some brilliantly mystifying examples from commercially available dashboards!

A Change Timeline

2010-05-17T11:08:00.000+01:00

Last Wednesday I spent 13 hours putting an audio commentary together and producing a short video to cover the fact I'd double-booked myself on Thursday. It took a long time but was actually really good fun to do and I'm told that the video in particularly went down really well!

The two clashing events were last Thursday, the longer standing one a session on managing Change brought about by introducing IT into Libraries. It was for this event I did the video, which is along the lines of a short activity I did at a similar event in the South West some time ago and I mentioned the topic in an entry here in December 2009.

The other event took me to London to speak to the Employer Engagement Exchange Group, headed by the Higher Education Academy. From there I headed up to Glasgow, on the way speaking to the co-ordinator of the other event who told me the audio and particularly the video had gone down "a storm" and that people were wanting to be able to download it... Must have been better than me being in person by the sounds of it...!

On Friday I ran a Project Management workshop in Glasgow and worked the video into it to see what would happen. People laughed in all the right places and there was a round of applause at the end that was very gratifying!

It's hand-held and horribly wobbly and the title reflects more the original conference subject than the video content. So for Change Management read Benefits Management.

So of course, it's been uploading whilst I wrote this, so have a look...

Project Highlight Report

2010-04-07T07:47:00.000+01:00

The other week we had an email at JISC infoNet asking about our Project Highlight template. It was one of those documents that we included in the Project Management infoKit back in 2003 and it was now timely to go back and review whether or not it filled the needs of a project.

As it happened, I agreed with the person who had emailed us. It didn't. So I set about redesigning the form so that a Project Manager could either use it to report up to a project steering board, or send it out for completion by one of the project team who were managing a large work package as a sub-set of the project activity.

I didn't want a huge thing that would be onerous to fill out, but neither did I want to replicate the old template that didn't include enough information about the activities and associated budgets and timescale.

I ended up with a 2-page MS Word document that you can download from the infoKit page on Reporting and Meetings.

The template requires an assessment of the status of:-

the schedule - whether or not we have taken more or less time than was planned

the budget - whether the project has cost more or less than we thought it would to date

work completed - have we done more or less than we thought we would to date

work to be completed during the next period

Issues that have arisen during this period, cross referenced if they had been previously identified as risks

Any new risks or changes to existing risks in terms of probability/impact

Project change - any requested change to scope and its status (agreed/refused/pending decision/deferred)

Project Team - any changes to team, roles or responsibilities

Any lessons learned - would you have done anything differently, given what you learned during this period?

You can click the graphic for a larger view and, as always, comments are welcome.

Rolling Wave Planning or the Sliding Planning Window

2010-01-07T09:55:00.000Z

One of the techniques advocated by JISC infoNet is the Sliding Planning Window, often called Rolling or Moving Wave Planning.

This involves planning in detail only so far ahead as you can be reasonably certain how things will unfold. The horizon depends very much on your own circumstances – in some cases measured in months, in others weeks, in others perhaps even less. The approach is designed to save you wasting time doing things like planning a site visit on day 427 of the project before the project has even started. You cannot possibly know at that stage that day 427 would be appropriate or feasible.

However the technique is not an excuse not to plan. Some of the activities involved in the project will have fixed deadlines, so it is important to set out the project plan in terms of deadlines, milestones and a breakdown of tasks and their dependencies on each other. It’s necessary to know the extent of the resource and effort needed. The scheduling can wait until you can be certain that things have a chance of happening how you plan them.

As the name Sliding Planning Window suggests, as time moves onwards, so your horizon moves and things become clearer – each day, each week, each month, as appropriate you can schedule the next period and plan in detail.

You need to ensure that stakeholders, team members and contractors know when they are likely to be needed well in advance. How freely available the time of workers is will give you an indication as to how you need to deal with the activities leading up to their involvement. Some activities that the next activity depends on will require a firm fixed deadline. Some workers will be able to mobilise with more flexibility. Where dependencies or areas of risk come together you need to keep a tighter grip on the plan, seeking progress reports in greater detail or at shorter intervals. These reports can be as formal or informal as circumstances dictate.

Some managers can be challenged by such an approach, wanting to see a fully detailed and scheduled plan up front. This may be because they think you should be able to eliminate risk - an impossibility. It can lead to wasted resource spent planning, only for subsequent events to throw up the need to replan the small detail. In such cases it might help to think of this approach in terms of time-related tolerance.

The JISC infoNet Project Management infoKit was written for the UK Higher and Further Education sectors, but is generic in much of its nature and is available free of charge or site registration.

A Change Implementation Timeline

2009-12-04T15:27:00.000Z

Sadly, this is all too often what happens...

The project gets going to deliver a new system.

In month 6 after a procurement/development phase, users start to use the new system.

By month 14, users have gotten used to the system, some amendments have been made in line with user comments and use of the system now becomes effective to full potential.

At some point probably after several months' or years' use of the system at full potential, the benefits - which were the reason for the project in the first place - become measurable.

However no one does this, as the project closed down in month 8 as it was deemed to have successfully delivered a new system. The company can't understand why they are never sure whether benefits have been delivered or not...

Oops...

Social Networking Sites Evaluation

2009-09-30T08:57:00.000+01:00

I've had my attention drawn to an evaluation of social networking sites for online students on the blog of Online School, an American site devoted to students studying online as distance learners.

Regardless of whether you're a distance learner, there's a good list of social networking sites with a quick two-line evaluation of the sort of site and what you can use it for.

Biassed by Risk and Ignoring Opportunities

2009-08-03T11:24:00.001+01:00

The other week I was at an event where an IT Manager from an educational institution announced he wanted to find 'better ways of saying "No"'... As the room was full of IT Managers, I was a little saddened to hear a murmer of agreement.

I used to be an IT Manager myself and I know something of the pressures they face. There's an explosion of both new technology and student expectation that hardly looks likely to disappear. Some of the new technology carries with it some risk to the organisation.

However I suspect that the risk to the organisation is not always fully or realistically assessed and sometimes the risk to the IT Department takes precedence - or even is the only risk assessment before the use of a technology is denied or blocked.

Worse, I have heard too many examples of institutions blocking access to social networking sites such as Facebook and Bebo because students have been criticising lecturing staff or facilities. The response doesn't stop students from making those criticisms - because they will do it from their homes or laptops when they get a chance. All the blocking of such sites achieves is to fuel the reasons for criticism and takes away the organisation's ability to monitor and police it.

Would you confiscate the pen of a student who wrote a critical letter to the local paper? Would it not be better to search out comments and investigate them? The onus would then, of course, be on teaching staff and senior management to act... because the real issue here is one of quality assurance more so than abuse of college IT facilities, but where there is abuse it should be the responsibility of teaching staff and senior management to invoke disciplinary procedings. The IT Team are not there to be used as either a police force nor a sentencing judge and most certainly not to appoint themselves to such roles.

What gets lost in this one-sided use of Risk Management techniques, is any assessment of opportunity and benefits to be gained from institutional use of Web2 sites. What mechanisms exist for the enthusiasts amongst the teaching staff to try out, experiment and then disseminate good practice? What lines of communication exist between teaching staff and IT, so that Web2 use is not just something asked for by a (string of) lone lecturer(s) that get(s) an automatic 'no' - regardless of how well the refusal is given?

One university recently told me they had considered whether to have a formal presence on Facebook at institution level and decided against it, fearing that such a presence might be looked at by students in the same light as 'a dancing dad'... However they went on to say that where students were looking to use such facilities to set up course or lesson-related resources and wanted staff involved in those, then that involvement was encouraged.

The fact that they had had those discussions at a high level helped to promote such use and gave a steer to the IT Department.

Has your university or college had the conversation; made any decisions, identified both risks and opportunities and consequently given any steer to the IT Department?

To Prince2 or Not To Prince2?

2009-06-04T10:47:00.000+01:00

Interesting debate with the above title at Aston University's Centre for Project Management Practice in Birmingham yesterday.

Speaking in favour of Prince2 was the lead author for the 2009 revision, Andy Murray, who pointed to the widespread acceptance of Prince2 by not only public sector organisations but private sector organisations also.

He argued that Prince2 was not overly bureacratic but designed to cope with the most complex situations whilst allowing for flexibility where smaller projects did not require the full-on approach.

Speaking against Prince2, Harvey Maylor, Director of the International Centre for Programme Management at Cranfield School University gave four key issues:

The prime reason for Prince2 is more to do with the needs of training companies

Where is the evidence for its efficacy?

Prince2 does not address the reasons for the widespread failure of projects

Prince2 does not give any competitive advantage

"If 300,000+ people have been trained in it at an average cost of £2k per course, then has the use of Prince2 led to £6M worth of increased efficiency or achievement?" he asked. "Whether it has or not is not backed by evidence.

"Prince2 today is like ISO9000 fifteen years ago. It was possible, as long as the paperwork was right, to get a kitemark for a perfectly designed and manufactured concrete lifejacket!"

Ha! Good comment! But where do I stand on this? Well let's try to be dispassionate about it. Most people learn about projects through experience. That can be good or bad because, as with driving, you pick up bad habits. So having a methodology to follow - whether that was Prince2 or some other methodology, such as the Project Management methodology promoted by my organsation, JISC infoNet can only be useful, as methodologies provide a framework for best practice.

However they do not guarantee best practice. They can provide prompts to think about things, templates to help, a step by step approach. They don't provide skills or competence or attitude or commitment. You have to provide those. And it's not just the skills, attitude and competence of the project manager that's needed either.

Far more projects fail because of lack of interest or support or involvement of senior managers than do because of a crap project manager.

And the danger is these days that HR people are forever on the lookout for "evidence" that someone can meet their criteria without them having to make a subjective decision which might mean they are blamed if they take on someone whose performance fails to meet requirements. So they look for and place a totally ridiculous importance on a qualification gained after a 3-day course. And worse - think that the lack of it is justifiable evidence for putting all other applications on the "rejected" list without further consideration.

I think personally that Prince2 ignores lots of things that make projects go wrong, particularly in the sector I work within. It ignores people. It says (in section 2.2 of the 2007 manual) that it excludes "People management techniques such as motivation, delegation and team leadership".

Let's be blunt though - it's people that cock things up...!

Prince2 is undoubtedly a useful methodology. But any decent methodology needs tailoring towards your own circumstances and it needs supplementing with other processes, particularly Change Management to ensure that the people aspects don't cause problems. It also needs following. You can't just ignore some of the bits because someone doesn't want to do them. Ignore them because the complexity of your project is such that they are unneccesary. Don't make the decision yourself.

Which brings me to the absolute nub of the matter. A methodology alone will not help you run a successful project. It's having a shared agreement and commitment that the organisation and any external partners will follow the methodology that will have the greatest beneficial effect. And some way of censuring any non-compliance. If someone comes to a meeting thinking it's ok to say "I haven't had time" then your culture needs a shake up.

Before I get loads of comment about that, let me clarify what I've just said. If you know you are not going to have time to do something that you had previously agreed to, first of all flag up the possibility straight away and then try to think of ways to make sure it gets done, by working harder, more hours, using more people, asking for help. Don't leave it until the meeting to just say "I haven't had time" and let it come as a surprise to others who may have been relying on your bit being completed before they can start their already planned and scheduled part.

Project Managers: Who Needs 'Em?

2009-05-26T11:56:00.000+01:00

Interesting article with the above title written by Rebecca Waters and published at Exec Digital.

Rebecca gives a short history of project management and discusses what it is that a project manager can bring to a project in terms of skills and a dedicated approach - by which she means that they don't have to dedicate any time to 'the day job'.

Lots of people managing projects in colleges and universities are not so lucky as to be dedicated to just the project. If you are in that situation, then having a structured methodology can help you in terms of giving you a framework to remind you to consider various aspects that can be missed.

A framework prods you to think about 'x' or to consider 'y'. It doesn't demand that you laboriously write down in triplicate, or fill out template documents for every little thing. What it does do is ask you to consider whether you need to write something down, depending on whether you are likely to forget because the project is a long one (over ten minutes means I should write stuff down!); whether anyone else will need to know it, given the likelihood of you not being there, or whether they will need the information more quickly than finding you and asking you would take.

If such a framework would benefit you, JISC infoNet have one available for free within their P3M infoKit.

What Is The Real Risk?

2009-05-20T15:05:00.000+01:00

I've had a new experience today - using Dimdim to deliver a presentation to an online web conference. The session I was delivering was a one-hour session on Risk Management for JISC Regional Support Centre (RSC) in the West Midlands.

And whilst the delegates were dispersed all over the West Midlands, I could see a list of who was logged in at any point and we could communicate via a chat window, so I could pose simple questions and I had an audio link so delegates could hear me speaking to the PowerPoint slides.

A quick look at the chat window shows that there was a mix of comments and questions, some of which I answered verbally and some examples of delegates giving examples for points I had made. Anne D's "Like snow in May in the UK" was in response to me saying, "no matter how small the probability, a risk might still happen." I wonder what the risk of Anne D having an interesting weather day was this morning...!

The RSC backed up the session in their Moodle Virtual Learning Environment and I stayed online for an hour afterwards to pick up questions and answer them, or pose further questions and counter viewpoints.

There were even a few tweets on Twitter (You can find me there as JohnBurke1).

Alison from the RSC posed an interesting question after the session in the Moodle discussion: "I have encountered a problem with Learning Providers who are slow to respond to the Disability Equality Duty. This is now more about making the Learning Provider Proactive and reducing the risk to them and producing a more resilient environment. However it's getting over the importance of this as AI issues isn’t at the top of everyone’s agenda. Any ideas?"

My answer was, "This is I suspect, a case of organisations only looking at the obvious risks and not all of them. The obvious risk is that of being sued against the Act if they don't comply and someone takes issue. Probability very small indeed and impact is an easily affordable fine.

However, you may need to help them identify other associated risks - loss to reputation from someone who has enrolled but had continued problems who might go to the press, affecting reputation, people with disabilities becoming aware of the approach and avoiding the organisation en masse.

Either of these are affected by other external factors. For instance if your local MP had fiddled his expenses to the tune of £100 would you have cared ordinarily? But at the moment, given all the national publicity...

Also if they didn't sue under the act but claimed compensation for having failed their course due to lack of accessibility - could be a huge case!

So if disability was to become topical then news of this type of shortcoming would suddenly be much more in the Public Interest and likely to do more damage to reputation."

So the day has provided me with a good experience of delivering a session using e-Learning and from the comments I received has stimulated a bit of interest fr a full one-day session on Risk Management in the West Midlands region, but most importantly of all, it has made the delegates think about risks and Risk Management in a way that may not have occurred to them before!

Thanks go to Jason Curtis and colleagues at the RSC West Midlands for the invite to speak, to Chrissie Turkington of RSC Northwest for technical support during the session and to the delegates for interacting with me over the Internet!

Public Sector Project Management 2009

2009-05-13T17:15:00.000+01:00

Yesterday I attended the Public Sector Project Management 2009 conference at the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester. Chaired by Tom Taylor, Vice President of the Association for Project Management (APM), the conference gave delegates a chance to hear the latest thinking in Portfolio, Programme and Project Management thinking and a chance to network and swap experiences and concerns with their peers and vendors of solutions and training.

Networking was a topic brought up by Eddie Borup, Director of the Best Practice User Group (BPUG). The BPUG holds three large events a year aimed at Project Managers which include plenty of time for face-to-face netowrking.
"I want to hear what experts have to say," he said, "but I want the opportunity to talk to them and ask them questions too."

Much of the conference focussed on new products from the Office of Government Commerce (OGC), in particular the resources on:

Portfolio Management (PfM).
"We will hear a lot about portfolios," said Tom Taylor, commenting on the current economic climate. "You won't be seeing the huge projects we've been used to; there will be lots of small projects run as a portfolio."
Portfolio, Programme and Project Offices (P3O).
"It is the last piece in the jigsaw," Lead Author of the OGC materials, Sue Vowler told delegates. The manual has been released and a Foundation qualification has been written. The Practitioner level qualification is in development with a likely curriculum release in the Summer.
The new revision of Prince2 is a refinement rather than a re-write.
"Project Management has grown so quickly over the last 20-30 years that we no longer need to add to our knowledge, we need only to apply it and refine it," Tom Taylor noted.

The conference was sponsored by BPM and staged by Ten Alps Events.

Trialling of Collaborative Online Tools for BCE

2009-03-19T10:20:00.000Z

I'm on the second day of a 2-day meeting in Birmingham, being a start-up meeting for JISC's Trialling of Collaborative Online Tools for BCE - 'BCE' being Business & Community Engagement. The project partners are from the Further Education Colleges and University sectors and there have been some excellent sessions introducing the partners to each other, from JISC Advisory Services introducing the partners to the types of support they can call upon or access online and some great hints and tips on a host of topics, from Project Management (myself and colleague, Clive Alderson) to a couple of top tips on the use of video cameras from Steve Hunt of JISC Digital Media.

The project is being led by another of my colleagues from JISC infoNet, Jacquie Kelly and other Advisory Services present have been JISC Legal, JISC Netskills and JISC TechDis.

The idea of the start-up meetings for JISC projects is to give project partners an opportunity to network with each other, to share ideas, make contacts and collectively solve gerneric problems.

As I write, delegates are involved in an exercise to identify both individual stakeholders and stakeholder groups, to then consider how best to engage with and communicate with them. This exercise is based on materials from JISC infoNet's Project Management and Change Management infoKits.

Records Management Building Bridges Conference

2009-03-05T08:15:00.000Z

I've spent the first three days of this week in Newcastle and Gateshead.

Tuesday and Wednesday have been the Building Bridges conference for Records Managers held at the new conference centre at Gateshead College, from whose windows this view of the Millenium Bridge over the Tyne was taken.

The conference was organised by JISC infoNet and was the brainchild of my colleague Steve Bailey. Records Managers from universities, colleges, local authorities and elsewhere gathered to discuss the future direction of records management and the impact that the growing use of social networking sites such as blogs, wikis and networks such as Facebook have on an organisation's ability to control its data and information.

I gave a session on communications during the implementation of change and facilitated a group discussion session as well as running round with the roving microphone for question and feedback sessions.

It has been a most interesting two days with the benefits of a records management approach pushed to the fore over compliance issues. There was some discussion as to where, in an organisation, does the Records Management function logically sit and there was some disagreement amongst the delegates when HR was suggested (because of the staff development role they usually have) or in Finance (because of the strict controlled way that accountants like to work).

What did come out strongly was that wherever they sit, the Records Manager needs the support of a senior manager committed to driving the records management agenda forward across the organisation. Someone at middle manager level sitting within one team or area does not have the necessary influence over the other functions and structural areas that exist in large organisations such as universities and colleges.

A Plethora of Blogs?

2009-01-27T09:19:00.000Z

It may be a while since I posted here but during the interval I've created another couple of blogs.

Based on a few conversations with people who were quite happy to admit they were less than confident with working with computers, spreadsheets and Word documents I've created a blog called Computer Basics for Free which is intended to do pretty much what it says on the tin.

It covers the basics of computing and gives some shortcuts and explains tools for formatting Word and Excel with a sprinkling of other bits and pieces like Internet and blogging etc. Content is a little limited at the moment but will grow - slowly...!

The other new blog is a project blog for the Embedding BCE through Business Process Improvement and Internal Engagement project that I mentioned in the last entry.

The blog is linked above and is hosted on the JISC Involve site which is openly available but where blogs are limited to those with an email in the .ac.uk academic community.

Blog Roll

Computer Basics for Free

Embedding BCE through Business Process Improvement and Internal Engagement

Embedding BCE Project

2008-11-19T18:48:00.001Z

I'm currently down in Birmingham at the 3-day Association of Colleges Conference.

Having sat through a number of ministerial sessions (stood through for one of them...) you could be forgiven for thinking that the conference theme was all about colleges engaging with business. It's an obvious priority at the moment and this is a good thing for me, because I'm currently project managing a JISC-funded project "Embedding BCE (Business & Community Engagement) through Business Process Improvement and Internal Engagement". A bit of a mouthful - so I'm calling it simply "Embedding BCE".

We're working with 5 institutional partners (UK colleges and universities) to find and highlight areas and examples of good practice and identify barriers and issues surrounding such work. It aims to help the 5 partners to identify ways improve their current business processes. It will give a picture of how well embedded BCE work is currently and produce online resources to help other institutions do the same for themselves.

Going Green, Gaining Benefits

2008-10-31T11:26:00.000Z

Back in the days when I was Head of IT in a College of Further Education (all of 6 years ago) if you wanted to buy a new server it took forever. Well... a period measured probably in months anyway.

It was a major item of expense, you had to get Finance approval, you had to go through a selection process, place an order, wait for delivery which usually meant waiting for it to be built and then you had to find a place in the racking, purchase an uninterruptable power supply (UPS), get the thing up and running with all the software you wanted it to run and finally introduce it to the world of unsure users by way of connecting it to the corporate network.

We went from the days of each application having its own server, because that was all the server could cope with, to running multiple applications on servers because they became more robust and capable.

In these days of advanced technology (how I'm going to laugh at that in 5 years time...) the buzzword is virtualisation.

The trend is now reversed with servers being dedicated to a single application once more, meaning if there is a need to take the server down then only one function is affected. Even this is becoming rare. What is different now though, is that the multiples of servers required by this approach can now be running on a single machine.

Huh? Yes it sounds a bit weird if, like me, you went through your spotty phase in the 1960s, but virtualisation is about a single hefty server running multiple instances of operating systems and driving either dedicated disk drives or shared drives. To all extents and purposes what the end user, perhaps in HR, sees is their own Windows server with their HR systems and nothing else on it. They may be unaware that the same box is driving an Oracle database for Finance, a SQL Server database for someone else and that someone different again is using the same box but with a Linux operating system...

Risky? Not really, the number of swap-out components these days means if one of the resident virtual servers goes down the others should be unaffected.

But why is this any greener? Well because whilst you may well have twin power packs and UPS protection that's still a lot less than the dozen or so servers that you may have had in the past, each drawing power and requiring UPS protection. So we're cutting down considerably on our use of electricity from the National Grid.

Plus, the reduction in the number of power supplies and UPSs (don't you hate plurals like that?) means that considerably less heat is being generated, manifesting itself as a reduced requirement for air conditioning, leading to yet less requirement for electricity to drive the air conditioners.

Ok so it's green. Does it have any other benefits? Well yes it does. Remember the list of things I had to do in the past to get a new server? Trying to get approval to buy a new server merely to test something out would have been unthinkable then.

But to quote Network Manager Neil Hunt at Myerscough College in Lancashire: "I've set up three new servers this week just to try things out and then torn them down when I'd finished."

What? So how long does it take to set up a brand new (virtual) server on an existing box? "I can have a Windows server up and running from scratch in about three minutes, using a template such as Win2008 Service Pack 2".

The cost of a box big enough to host 11-16 virtual servers (depending on what you want each to do!) is somewhere in the region of 5-6 thousand pounds. Which means that once you have 2-3 virtual servers running on it, you have reached or surpassed the break-even point in terms of costs of individual servers.

Helping the environment? I'm all for it...!

Keith Duckitt

2008-10-16T09:20:00.000+01:00

Keith Duckitt of the Further Education Funding Council (FEFC) looks on as the Chairman of the National College Management Information Services Board (National CMIS Board), John Rockett, shakes hands with the Chairman of the National Association for Information Technology in Further Education (NAITFE), Malcolm Himsworth, to merge the two organisations and form the National Information and Learning Technology Association (NILTA) in July 1995.

I attended Keith's funeral on Tuesday, a sad occasion as all funerals are, but a celebration of a man who was much loved by those of us in the Further Education Sector of those days and a veritable mover and shaker in the implementation of new technology in learning.

He is pictured doing what he did best - bringing people together to get things done. One of the tributes given yesterday mentioned that many people have said of Keith; "If it hadn't been for Keith, I wouldn't have been where I am now." I am one of those.

Keith Duckitt 1940-2008 RIP

Large Version of the Photo: Keith

Know Your Strategic Objectives

2008-04-14T13:54:00.000+01:00

As part of an activity on one of our workshops at JISC infoNet I ask delegates to list their organisation's strategic objectives. For some of them this is an impossible task as they just don't know them.

This isn't because of any lack of attention or poor memory - in one conversation I had recently a college manager said "We don't tell staff below Senior Management Team level what our strategic objectives are because they don't need to know."

Now I have to agree that for a data entry clerk in an office, feeding student data into a database, that may be true in as far as their day-to-day work is concerned, although even there it may explain why some of that data is important to the organisation.

However when we look at the sort of work carried out by many staff which is outside the normal day-to-day routine - i.e. project work - then it would surely be of some help in identifying projects that contribute to strategic objectives and allow some prioritisation or even a basis for saying "no" to running a proposed project.

Projects are funny things in many organisations and they are run along the lines of Mastermind - they've started so they'll finish. By which I mean that, despite it becoming obvious sometimes that a project has no hope of achieving the goals and outputs it was created to achieve, no one will actually take the responsibility of pulling the plug and saving the money allocated but as yet unspent.

Where strategic objectives are disseminated throughout an organisation it can give a sense of purpose to the work of staff who are able to to make the links between what they do and the strategic objectives of the organisation. It helps to engender a corporate culture - rather than what is all too often the case, where lots of clashing sub-cultures exist and staff are happy to form their own game plans without any thought or check to see whether there is goal conflict with another team elsewhere in the organisation.

I'm minded of the time when a colleague was at a senior management away-day. At the end of the day when everyone was happily getting sloshed in the bar, one of the managers had withdrawn to a corner with some papers. One of the other managers felt this unacceptable and went over to enquire what she was doing.

"I'm working on my Departmental Plan" came the answer and in evidence the documents were thrust under the second manager's nose. About to dismiss this as a poor excuse for sobriety, the second manager noticed one section of wording on the plan.

"Hang on," he said, "if you do that you'll be using resources that I need and I won't be able to achieve my goals..."

Identify the Critical Pressure Points

2008-03-26T08:47:00.000Z

Every business has its critical pressure points. Those parts of the business process that, should they go wrong, will have a knock-on effect to the rest of the business like a snowball effect.

The other night I went with some friends to a busy restaurant and the person on the door gave some wildly optimistic waiting times. People kept coming in and accepting the short waiting times he gave, had a drink at the bar and then started to complain.

By the time they were seated (around 3x the waiting period suggested) they had been in the bar long enough to be confident to complain even more. This of course slowed down the waiting staff even more and gave them a thoroughly stressful evening.

The restaurant was consequently so full that the kitchen couldn't cope either and food was coming out showing signs of a chef and his team struggling to cook so much food at once. Things were getting burned and being served blackened around the edges. More complaints.

The point is that the whole situatuion could have been alleviated by the doorman giving more realistic waiting times. They would have lost some customers, but the ones who stayed would have had a good night out instead of a bad one.

Having more business than you can satisfy should be on everyone's risk register. How would you turn business away, or delay it, without causing offence? Would you recognise when the situation was becoming out of hand and how would you step in to manage it?

Have you identified the critical pressure points that could be the cause of a build up of pressure on the other processes of the organisation? It's sometimes easier to solve symptoms than causes. But it's better to deal with the cause.

Social Software Use in Projects

2007-12-12T14:42:00.000Z

I'm looking for examples of projects that have made good use of social software such as wikis, blogs, photo/video sharing, social networking.

Projects should be work-related rather than personal and public sector rather than private, particularly the education sector. But good practice is good practice so if you have examples from other work sectors then please get in touch either through the comments here or to j.burke[at]northumbria.ac.uk

Anything I use will be credited.

I'm particularly interested in examples of collaborative planning and/or problem solving using wikis/networks or engagement activity.

Over to you...

Innovative College Library

2007-11-09T13:41:00.001Z

Yesterday I had the pleasure of looking around the recently refurbished library and learning resources centre at Blackpool & The Fylde College.

I visited shortly before work began 14 months ago and the library now is almost unrecogniseable as the same place.

Perhaps I shouldn't say the library anymore because Blackpool asked students to come up with a name for the new combined library and learning resources centre from a list of alternatives. The new resource is now named The Loop which allows the college to display signs such as 'Get in the Loop' and the term library is almost forgotten now even though The Loop has only recently opened for business in its new guise.

'I overheard two students talking', my guide and project manager for the refurbishment, Christine McAllister said, 'and one said "I'll meet you later in the Library."
"Where?" said the other, "Oh - do you mean The Loop?"'

Some of the refurbishment caught my eye - bookshelves with inbuilt concealed lighting has been used which certainly makes the books stand out and looks attractive and draws you towards them.

Blackpool could be the first Further Education college to install and use these self-service machines which allow students to book out or return books using their student card.

Any outstanding fines can be paid into the machine which issues a receipt for any payments.

The touch screen interface looked easy to use and students can also use the machines for reserving library books that are currently unavailable through being out on loan.

Social areas for networking or single study in more comfortable surroundings has been included with use of swivel panels to reveal power outlets for laptops.

As I was being shown around, students were using the facilities both for informal social meetings whilst on the next block of seating a student was sitting with her laptop, surrounded by a collection of open notebooks and text books.

Even before all of the graphics had been delivered and installed, the place had a buzz about it that was both friendly, vibrant and yet conducive to study.

For students without their own IT equipment there was a mixture of both sit-down bookable PCs and stand-up short-term machines where students could quickly download and send emails, check out blogs and network on sites such as Facebook and MySpace.

Blackpool believe in encouraging use of Web2.0 facilities, which is a refreshing change to them being seen as a threat because students might 'diss the teachers' as one IT manager explained the 'risks' to me. He wasn't from Blackpool. I suspect Blackpool & The Fylde may have the right approach!

Acceptance Criteria

2007-10-04T12:25:00.000+01:00

I've been writing some materials updating JISC infoNet's Project Management infoKit and had given some examples of user or customer acceptance criteria:

● target date
● functions required
● performance levels
● capacity
● downtime / availability
● running cost
● security levels
● level of skill required to operate

The above may, at first glance, appear very IT systems based. But consider the installation of a lift in a new build project. The lift needs to be installed by a certain date, a specific function may be that it should only go down to the basement if a key is used to turn a lock to a certain position. It has performance levels - eg speed, it has a capacity in weight and number of people carried safely, it will require servicing at times, it will use electricity, and whilst it may not require any security levels for normal use (though we have mentioned one possible level already), there will need to be security of access to the operating machinery and a level of skill required for servicing personnel.

Then I applied them to producing a new range of paint. Target date becomes shipping date, functions required seems fairly simple, but capable of being thinned and by what or whether undercoat is required, performance levels as in opacity, how many coats required, can it be washed down without coming off a wall, capacity as in what area will one litre of paint cover, let's forget "downtime"(!) but availability is certainly an issue, how much can be produced, how many retail outlets are we aiming for to stock it, how much will it cost, will we need notices about storing out of children's reach, is it suitable for brushing, spraying, rolling, sponging...

For some projects your users or potential customers will be able to specify some, perhaps the majority of the acceptance criteria, but quite often they need some assistance with this.

Many users have an idea of what it is they want from a project but can totally lack the ability to put it into words or at least into enough detail so that you have a clear view of what is required. Specifying the acceptance criteria may need to be an iterative process, but one which needs to be finalised as early as possible.

Making changes before you start is cheaper than making changes once you've finished...

Workshop Writing

2007-10-01T13:02:00.001+01:00

I'm about to start writing JISC infoNet's new workshop - Project Management Masterclass.

This takes the Project Management techniques delivered in our original Project Management Workshop into senior management territory and explores in depth, things like turning strategy into projects, portfolio management, management by exception etc.

We have always used the same tool for putting workshops together and it's a very simple one. We take a flip chart (or a wall) and cover it in post-it notes.

The different colours represent different delivery tools or activities during the workshop.

The blue notes are for "TALK" (not "TRUC", yes I know it looks a bit like that at the bottom...)

The yellow notes represent a shout-out session, where delegates are asked to give answers to a question, opinions on a point, or feedback.

The pink notes represent an activity that the delegates will undertake either singly or in groups.

Ensuring that there is not a whole bunch blue notes together can help your lesson or workshop motor along without risking delegates or students getting bored.

Quite often during the shout-out sessions I will write down any delegate points on-screen using Word. This can be minimised afterwards but then contains a record if I want to come back to a point someone made during the workshop or we can put the delegates' feedback online afterwards where they can compare it with previous groups' feedback.

Writing the Manual

2007-09-27T12:07:00.000+01:00

I suppose this entry takes the thought processes from my earlier entry Black & White Computing a little further, but forgive me if I repeat myself slightly.

I've had the pleasure of a new PC on my desk and have spent much of the morning installing a well known security product. Let's call it "Not-On"...

Not-On comes with a huge box, a normal-sized CD and an A5 sized 48 page User Guide, 1 page of which is the title, 1 page the copyright notice, 1 page the contents, 1 page blank, 9 pages of guidance (2 of which help you to find help elsewhere), 12 pages about the support you can get from Not-On and their associates, 2/3 page about upgrades and subscriptions, 1 1/3 pages about worldwide support, 2 pages of index and 14 blank pages for you to make your own notes.

Nowhere in the 2 pages of the guidance that are devoted to installation is there a diagram of a screen shot. Nowhere does it say:

"The Not-On program will open and start to work before it has finished installing. It will recognise there are bits missing and initial tasks undone and therefore will open a warning page giving dire messages about the state of your machine's security"

I mean, come on! It's not hard is it? If this happens every time and I assume it must, then might it not be an idea for the installation manual to at least mention it?

Nick Langley, writing in Computer Weekly this week has an article headed "Technical writing provides career path with creativity" in which he says "Technical writers take complicated technical information and present it in a way that is understandable to users..."

Not at Not-On...

Change Control - Quick Tip

2007-09-25T09:42:00.000+01:00

If you have workmen on site, ensure that they (and your staff!) know who is allowed to request changes to specification.

Otherwise someone on your staff will say something like 'That trunking should be thicker - we might want to add video cable at some point...'

Whether or not you intend to add cable, the change will be made, the additional time and materials will be added to your bill and your project may also slip in time whilst the larger trunking is sourced and delivered.

Black & White Computing

2007-09-21T11:27:00.001+01:00

I've always thought computers were black and white. No shades of grey at all.

I don't really mean colours; I mean in how easy they are to use. You either know how to do something - in which case it's easy... or you don't - in which case it's almost always impossible. To use the Help facility of most software packages, you have to know the correct keywords to search for. Very few software packages allow you to ask "How do I...?"

The problem with asking for help from a co-worker is that even if they know, they are more likely to take over your mouse and keyboard, undertaking a series of actions in zero seconds flat whilst saying impatiently "You just do this...".

Even those people designated as "computer angels" or "IT Friends" or "Helpdesk" have an annoying tendency to say in response to a question "Oh, it's easy that..." Yes it is. To them...

So if anyone asks you to show them how to do something, please bear in mind they are already frustrated. You don't need to do that for them!

Take your time, one keyboard or mouse action at a time, preferably explaining what each does and giving enough time for them to write it down, so they will be able to do it again next time without having to ask someone else. (Because they won't ask you again will they - waste of time...!)

Project Management Workshop

2007-09-21T10:49:00.000+01:00

Clive and I ran a JISC infoNet Project Management Workshop in Glasgow yesterday. The delegates were mostly from libraries and I'd amended our usual scenario that activities for the day are based on to one concerning a library moving premises.

We had some interesting moments with the venue's ceiling mounted data projector overheating and turning itself off every half hour, but we tried to time it so that we could start an activity when it was due to go off and there was only one awkward moment.

The delegates seemed to appreciate the day - lots of comments on the feedback forms of which these are a representative sample:

Future projects will undoubtedly be governed by today's presentation. Invaluable.

One of the most worthwhile courses I've ever been to.

The delegate pack of materials was excellent, one of the best I've seen.

Very useful and informative. Made projects and their organisation much less frightening.

JISC infoNet offers a range of one-day workshops to the Further and Higher Education sectors in the UK.

Check our web pages via the above links for more details or email jiscinfonet@northumbria.ac.uk

Construction Projects Tip

2007-09-18T11:44:00.001+01:00

I was talking to a colleague, Benita Wiseman, who works for the JISC Regional Support Centre Northwest.

She said, "It would be good to have just short simple tips perhaps on your blog for people involved in projects." We had been talking about new-build and refurbishment projects for learning spaces and she added, "Like, if you're having building work done, keep your own log of the weather so that you can check it if the builders say delays were caused by bad weather."

Tip number one!

Annual Leave Spreadsheet

2007-08-09T10:50:00.000+01:00

This is something I did years ago and the other day someone asked if I still had a copy I could let them have.

I think it's fun sometimes to understand how something works (I draw the line at cars - I just drive them!) and therefore...

Click the images for a larger view.

This is the spreadsheet as seen for a single user. The blue squares representing a day's leave have a value of 1, but you could make the text colour the same as the background so all you see is a square. Equations in the columns to the right add up the number of coloured squares for the month and then deduct it from your allocation.

For a manager to keep track of a team's annual leave it's a case of adding more rows for each month (a different colour for each team member can be good) and ensuring the equations match the relevant line as leave is taken month by month.

Equations

B16: =B5
Then copy that down to B17:B25, B27:B36 etc. You will only have to enter staff names once now as it will automatically copy down from the first month into all other months.

AI5: =SUM(C5:AG5)
Then copy that down to AI6:AI14, AI16:AI25 etc. It adds all the taken leave for the row.

AJ5: =AK5+AL5-AI5
Then copy down to AJ6:AJ14 only. It adds the initial leave allocation (AK5) plus any leave brought forward from the previous year (AL5) and then takes off any leave taken during the current month (AI5)

AJ16: =AJ5-AI16
Then copy down to AJ17:AJ25, AJ27:AJ36 etc. It ensures that each month's remaining leave is based on the remaining allocation from the end of the preceding month.

Using the Spreadsheet

That's it! Fairly simple. Note that the coloured square in C1 has a value of 1 and the coloured and patterned square in C2 has a value of 0.5 to enable half day leave to be calculated.

When you add leave for anyone, copy and paste from either C1 or C2, rather than change the colour of cells to match - as that would not give them a value to be included in the calculations.

The coloured boxes for Sick Leave and Allowed Leave of Absence do not have a value as they would not be counted against annual leave allocations.

Every year you have to create a new blank and move the weekends (grey boxes) to match the dates of the new year.

Have a go! If you're desperate or have trouble getting it right, email me - j.burke[at]northumbria.ac.uk and I'll send it as an attachment.

JISC Inquiry into Learner Experiences

2007-08-02T16:08:00.000+01:00

JISC have announced a Committee of Inquiry into the changing experiences and expectations of learners coming up to the age where they may enter Higher Education.

Young people's perceptions and expectectations of what HE might be like can sometimes be at odds with what they experience once they walk through the door.

Today's 17-year-olds have never known a world without the Internet. They were born in 1990, so their perception even of the Millenium is "something that happened when I was a kid"... "Star Wars" means Ewan McGregor, not Alec Guinness; for many of them TV will have always meant dozens of channels, vinyl records are antiques, even CDs are in danger of becoming quaint. They may have never had to take a film in to be processed.

Their experience of Information Technology, encompasses a far wider remit than just computers. Digital TV, digital cameras, mobile phones that take photographs, video, record audio and playback music in high quality. Internet use that includes new Social Software like MySpace and Facebook allowing groups of friends to share ideas and create networks globally, other web 2.0 sites such as Flickr and YouTube where photographs and videos can be stored, shared and accessed, blogging sites that allow anyone to be an author, a diarist, a philsopher, a critic.

The natural tendency is for youngsters to use these sites for friendship and other informal uses. It is important to understand the uses made of them in the more formal settings of schools and sixth forms.

The potential is huge for craft workers, or tradesmen such as carpenters to use a blog and perhaps Flickr to showcase work, to hold references from satisfied customers.

Do youngsters recognise this type of use for social software sites? Do schools make use of such technological advances? Is the demand for use so strong that the networks and connection capacity of schools and colleges become swamped and unable to cope with demand? Do institutions see only the negative aspects to such sites and ban their use?

Do youngsters see access to IT as a right? Will they want to bring and use their own laptops on the university network, disdaining the institution's own computers? Will they want to store their work and have it assessed on the university Virtual Learning Environment, or on an Internet-based wiki? Where will they want to store things like e-Portfolios, so that they can access them during work interviews from employers' premises and showcase both university achievements and other non-university achievements?

The Committee of Inquiry will be asking these and many more questions I am sure. They are currently seeking members from the Education Sector and Employers. The JISC announcement, by Dr Malcolm Read, JISC's Executive Secretary, is given below.

JISC will be running a Committee of Inquiry into the changing learner experience. The Inquiry is to address the implications for Higher Education Institutions of the experience and expectations of learners approaching full-time higher education both in the light of their increasing use of Web 2.0 technologies and other factors affecting the student experience. The focus is to be on young learners since their experience and expectation is immediate and also indicative of that of future entry cohorts. The consequences for other learners who may not be as familiar with new technologies will also be considered. The Inquiry is to extend over a period of approximately 9 months from autumn 2007, and its findings are intended to inform senior management discussions at the strategic level will and provide advise to universities and colleges about how they might wish to respond to the issues raised.

The committee is likely to comprise a group of perhaps 12 members in order to accommodate a spread of perspectives - senior management in HEIs and FECs, institutional technical services staff, schools, student as well as the research community and employers. The Inquiry and its committee will be supported and facilitated by a small secretariat

The Inquiry and committee will be headed by a Chair. The Chair will need to be credible in context, effective in that capacity and, ideally, prepared to be involved in the work and process of the Inquiry. Rather than being, for instance, an e-learning expert the chair should ideally be interested in the widest possible issues relating to the student experience and able to direct the Inquiry on this basis

Suggestions of potential candidates for the role of Chair are invited, as are suggestions of possible members for the committee itself. Suggestions should be emailed to Robert Haymon-Collins, JISC Director of Communications and Marketing, r.haymon-collins@jisc.ac.uk, and copied to Emma Charlick, e.charlick@jisc.ac.uk as soon as possible and in any case by 24 August 2007.

Untangling Two Different Copies of the Same Excel Spreadsheet

2007-07-17T15:55:00.001+01:00

The other week I was on the JISC infoNet stand at a regional conference and one of the delegates who came over to see what was new, said, “What happened to all those technical articles you used to write for NILTA News? Ages since we had one of them!”

Well, yes, I have to admit that I haven’t done an awful lot of programming over the last few years and any knowledge of database language that I have is probably a little outdated now. Database products seem to be updated regularly! However, not long after that conversation, I had a phone call from an ex-colleague who was now working for a local government organisation. She had been put in charge of some records that were stored on an Excel spreadsheet.

The problem was that two clerks had copies of this spreadsheet, held separately on their PC hard drives and at some point both of them had made update amendments to the data and she wanted some way of comparing the two files and sorting out the most up-to-date information.

I was able to help by suggesting a way forward, but unfortunately in a case like this there is no way of automatically determining which of two different records within a larger file holds the correct information. The solution I suggested would eliminate all those records that were the same in both files and allow her to concentrate a manual checking of the data on those that didn’t match.

By far the easiest way of matching records is to have both sets within the same spreadsheet, but I wanted to ensure that neither of the two copies were compromised. Therefore step one was to make a copy of spreadsheet “A”, leave a blank column to the right of all the data, then paste in all the data from spreadsheet “B”.

We now had two sets of data side by side – but of course not necessarily with data records in the same order as perhaps some rows had been deleted, some had been added, maybe in both but probably only in one of the sheets.

So we couldn’t be certain that any record in sheet “A” would be on the same row as a corresponding record in sheet “B”. We needed a way of highlighting which records existed in both sheets with all the same data in each of the fields. They were the only records that she could trust and she would then have to take the rest and make enquiries to ascertain which record was current.

To make things easier we created a new field for both sheet “A” records and sheet “B” records that held all the data from every field. This was fairly easy using the “&” sign to concatenate one field with another.

Using &" "& allows us to include a text space character between the two – not necessary for our purposes but it looks better! The formula =A4&B4&C4 would have produced the result “FredBloggs52 Sonder Avenue”.

The next step is to insert another field into sheet “A” and use that to compare each row to any row from sheet “B”. Remember that the corresponding record to row 4 in sheet “A” could be absolutely anywhere in sheet “B” so comparing row 4 in sheet "A" only to row 4 in the sheet "B" would likely cause disaster!

What we did was to compare the new field that held every bit of data in sheet “A” to the corresponding new field in sheet “B” but checking the entire column in sheet “B” by using a range. J4:J1025 would check each row from 4 to 1025 for a match. The syntax for the check is – persons of a nervous disposition look away now…

=ISNA(MATCH(D4,$J$4:$J$1025,FALSE))

This is the formula as given (if you are able to find it!) using Excel’s Help facility. It’s not the best solution for reasons I’ll explain later, but before I add to this already complicated formula, let's break it down step by step to see what it is doing.

To understand any formula, start within the brackets and work outwards. So, bit by bit…

“MATCH” is the innermost command and means what it says. In the inner brackets are the bits that tell it what to match.

“D4” means compare or match the contents of cell D4

“$J$4:$J$1025” means compare against the range J4 to J1025. The $ signs are there so that as we copy the formula down, although D4 will change to D5, D6 and so on, the range will stay constant. We don’t want to compare D1025 to a range of J1025:J2042, we want the range to stay constant.

“FALSE” …I’m not really sure what this does at this point! By default if the formula finds a match it will show the row number from the range in which it found the match. From the RANGE – not the spreadsheet! In our example with the range starting in row 4, if it returned 26 we would find the matching record on row 29 of the spreadsheet! If it doesn’t find a match it displays a “Value Not Found” error.

That’s fine but it’s not elegant. Far better to display the word “TRUE” if it finds a match and “FALSE” if it doesn’t. So that is what the ISNA(…) bit does. Except that it does it in reverse – it displays “TRUE” if a match is NOT found and “FALSE” if it does find a match. That is the Microsoft solution. You could head your column “Missing from sheet B” and there’s a job done. You need now to compare sheet B to sheet A of course, because new rows may have been added so now we add a new field to the far right and enter the formula:

=ISNA(MATCH(J4,$D$4:$D$1025,FALSE))

which does the same thing only the other way around! It matches row by row sheet “B” to a range in sheet “A”.

I said the solution wasn’t elegant. It’s still not. That’s simply because we have that double negative. We are looking for matching fields but the results of the formula shows “FALSE” if we find one!

So let’s add a simple command and another set of brackets to turn it round.

=NOT(ISNA(MATCH(D4,$J$4:$J$1025,FALSE)))

Now the “TRUE” and “FALSE” are the more logical way round and we can head the column “Match Found”.

There’s still a lot to do here because the results only tell us whether the whole data was found or not. The matching record could exist but may have some amended data – a different address field for instance. It is obvious to a human that Fred Bloggs living at the same address as Frederick Bloggs in the other sheet should be a match. It will not be a match to a computer!

We have an entry for Marie Stokes in each sheet. They may or may not be the same person as the entries have different addresses. Even if it is the same person there is no way of telling which address is correct! So from each side we know that all the records that show “TRUE” are common to both spreadsheets but now need to manually examine all other rows to see if the same name exists with a different address or whether the name appears only in one sheet or the other.

So now we can sort the records based on column D and then copy all the records labelled "True", from Spreadsheet "A" only, into a new worksheet. We can then delete those records from Spreadsheet "A" leaving only those records which are unique to Spreadsheet "A".

Next we can sort records based on column J and delete all the records labelled "True" from Spreadsheet "B" as, being previously matched in Spreadsheet "A", they have already been copied to the new worksheet.

This leaves only those records in either sheet that need to be manually examined for any similarities such as the Fred/Frederick Bloggs. Where there are two different addresses for what seems to be the same person, you will have to do some research as it is impossible to say which is the most up-to-date address, or even whether it is the same person.

These records can be added to the new worksheet as and when they are verified. The new worksheet now becomes the master copy and should be labelled and treated as such. Spreadsheets "A" and "B" should now be made read-only and archived or destroyed in accordance with your Records Retention Policy. You do have one...don't you?

Moral of the tale - don't ever have more than one updateable copy of anything, whether it is a database, spreadsheet or even a set of minutes. Use Records Management techniques to version control documents and if multiple copies are needed in electronic format designate a master copy and make all others read-only.

JISC infoNet has a number of online resources available on the subject of Records Management at http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/records-management

The Three Project Variables

2007-07-10T09:42:00.000+01:00

I see from this article on the BBC News web site that MPs are worried about the London Olympics Project.

It has a fixed deadline of course that cannot be moved so there are only two of the three project variables left to play with.

Ah - but wait! They are also worried because the budget has soared; "the Games' cost had at first been underestimated and private sector funding 'seriously overestimated'." Olympics Minister (It has a Minister!!!) Tessa Jowell has pledged to keep an "iron grip" on the budget.

So that's two out of the only three project variables either fixed or compromised. That leaves just one to play with, Tessa...

Oh no...! The Public Accounts Committee have voiced concerns that the organisers may forced to "accepting lower standards, to get the job finished."

Well that is the only variable left...

Adjusting any one of the variables affects the other two. If any variable is fixed then adjusting one of the others affects the remaining third variable dramatically. If your original costings or estimates or perception of what is achievable has not been realistic in the first place, then you are left with a nightmare.

In this case, it appears there was a rather optimistic view of how much contribution would come from the Business Sector. Also the Public Accounts Committee has warned that Risk Control is not being applied all that well. Risks need to be managed with an "iron hand" they say.

Managing Risk well does not come at zero cost, as you have to spend money on mitigating some risks, on insuring against others, on work to identify and monitor them. It does, or should, however, cost less than if no risks are identified at all.

Ignoring risks does not make them go away. So when they do turn into issues and there have been no mitigating activities to reduce their impact and no "Plan B" to swing into action, project managers are forced to manage them in crisis mode. The same managers who accused you of "worrying about things that haven't happened yet" are now the same ones saying angrily "why didn't you think of that???"

JISC infoNet has a number of free resources aimed at the Higher and Further Education sectors mainly, but equally applicable to most others. The resources include Project Management and Risk Management

How to Avoid Death by PowerPoint

2007-07-04T11:50:00.000+01:00

I keep saying - there's no such thing. There are either good or bad presentations but Microsoft are not to blame!

So how can you prepare and present the killer presentation? What should you do and what should you not do?

I've written about this before in the days of overhead projectors (OHPs) in the pages of the National CMIS Board's newsletter but there is obviously still such a need. Someone prompted me to update the article in an attempt to save conference audiences everywhere from depression and intense boredom.

So let's cover everything - the presentation itself - what should it look like, how fast should it move, should it have sound, video, special effects? Speaking - what should you say, how should you say it, using microphones without fear. The way you act - where should you stand, where should you look, can you read a script, should you stay still or move about?

Oh... that's the first lesson - tell them what you are going to tell them first... then tell them!

The PowerPoint Presentation

This should be simple and not fussy. Don't try to put too much text on screen. A presentation is not an essay.

Use a simple easy-to-read font such as Arial or Verdana. Not a font that tries to look clever but can't be read easily. Not a script (joined-up-writing) or anything with flambouyant curls or even stuff that looks informal like Comic Sans. Arial is wonderful.

Keep jargon to an absolute minimum!

Use a large font. 28 is good, 24 should be a minimum. The acid test is this. Put the presentation on your desktop screen. Now hold your hand up in front of you at arm's length as though you were signalling someone to stop. Then move away from the screen until the width of your hand just covers the width of the screen.

That's how big the presentation will look to people at the back. Some of them will have worse eyesight than you have. You should be able to read the screen easily and look away, then easily find the line you were reading when you look back.

This means that you should have no more than ten lines of writing at the very most. Aim for no more than eight. Space is good!

Yooz a spel chekker!!! Nothing looks worse than someone, who the audience thinks should know better, having spelling mistakes littered all over their presentation. If you are not sure, paste it into Word and spell check it.

It's a Rainbow!

Pick two simple colours that contrast sharply with each other and that won't cause anyone with colour blindness a problem. One for the background and one for the text. Now stick with them. Use a third colour for headings or emphasis if you must but don't have so many colours that the audience is tempted to psychoanalyse you to see if they can understand why...

Having a pastel shade as a background can be good, as it will reduce any glare that you can sometimes get from a totally white background. If you are going to have a shaded background don't have it from very light to very dark as the text will disappear at some point on the screen. Have it from very light to light, or from dark to very dark if you have white or very light text.

It helps if all slides have the same colour combinations. It is tiring to the eyes if your presentation looks like a 1970s Top of the Pops programme.

You'll Believe a Word can Fly

Keep special effects to a minimum if you use them at all. If you really must, then use them for lines of text not individual words or (worst case scenario) each letter! I once sat through a presentation where each letter appeared seperately to the sound of an old typewriter. It was funny for the first word but after ten slides of tightly packed writing, half the audience were discussing methods of suicide...

The safest is to have lines of text fly on from right to left. That way they appear in the direction you would read them. Having text fly from the left jars at the audience. The words come on screen in the wrong order and they cannot read it until the effect has stopped.

Use of special effects makes the size of your presentation file grow enormously. Limit your use of them to images and even then use the same one rather than have lots of different effects.

Sound Effects

Are naff. Don't. Not even for... Not ever.

Use sound only if you have a sound file that adds to the presentation. An interview; the sound recorded at the spot where you took the photo that is on screen, eg, to illustrate how noisy a factory is; to let the audience hear a birdsong or a piece of music being discussed or something like that. No whooshing noises. No typewriter sounds (unless a picture of a typewriter is on screen because you are teaching journalists). No ray guns or aircraft etc.

Video

Can be very good as long as it is relevant. Video can make jaded audiences sit up and take notice. They don't have to be part of the PowerPoint file. You can switch to them by having them open behind the PowerPoint window and then use the Alt-Tab key combination (hold down Alt like you would the Shift key whilst tapping Tab) to bring the video to the front. If you are using Windows Media Player, once you have started the video running use the Alt-Enter key combination to maximise the video. The video will be shown full screen without any controls being visible. Use Alt-Enter again after it ends to close the window. Then Alt-Tab back to the presentation.

Speaking

Give yourself something to say. It should not all be written on screen. Reading aloud what people can read for themselves is annoying for an audience, especially if the speaker does not add anything other than the words off the screen. If needs be, write up your presentation and then cut out two screens from every three. The two that have gone become the things you say whilst the other one is on screen!

Use diagrams on screen and talk over them. Use bullet points so that you can expand on them. Use images to illustrate what you are saying. If you can't think of any image then whilst PowerPoint is running you can press the [B] key to just blank the screen. It will go black. You can even use it as a joke and say "Whoops - well never mind I'll just talk for a bit..."

An audience will find that impressive that you are not phased by an apparent equipment malfunction. When you are ready to resume the slide show just press [B] again. Spooky! But it gives you the appearance that you know what you are talking about and are confident enough not to let a mishap bother you.

Use a script if needs be. But keep looking up - don't stay head down, ignoring the audience. And read your script aloud beforehand to "test" it. We use slightly different language and syntax for writing that can sometimes sound strange when spoken aloud.

Remember to speak clearly and (worst "crime" of all presenters) do not mumble or talk in a monotone. Your voice should go up and down, you should practice this if you talk normally in a bit of a monotone. More of this under "How do I Act" later.

If it is a large room you may need to project your voice. There's nothing worse than a presenter you cannot hear properly. If you have a quiet voice or a large room, make sure you have a microphone. It doesn't need to be an expensive bit of kit - plug a cheap one into your PC and turn up the speakers!

To do this you need to make sure the mute is not on. Go through the menus - Start > All Programs > Accessories > Entertainment and open the Volume Control. Then make sure to uncheck the box for mute in the microphone column.

Microphone Techniques

Amazingly, a microphone can turn the most fearless person into a nervous wreck. Why, I have never been able to fathom out.

So here is the John Burke easy guide to showing off with a microphone. This does not entail striking any "Elvis" poses...

Ok, now breathe... No honestly... the mic will not pick up your breathing, making it sound like an old-fashioned steam engine roaring out of a tunnel. Breath normally.

In fact do everything normally! You don't have to talk in any special way, put on a "posh" voice or feel the need to point the microphone at the audience yelling "Lemme hear ya!". Just...act...normally.

Microphones do just one thing. They make any noise coming from directly in front of them come from speakers. That's all. But that is what most presenters forget. So I'll repeat it. ...any noise coming from directly in front of them...

Microphones in conference rooms whether hand-held or fixed are directional. Stand to one side and it won't pick you up. If you have a fixed mic, on a lectern for instance, then stand still behind it. Still - not rigid. You don't have to look like a corpse that's been propped up.

If you have a hand-held mic then don't act as though it's going to explode at any moment. It won't. Neither will it give you an electric shock, turn into a death ray or anything like that. It needs to point at your mouth, not at the sky or the audience. It needs to be fairly close to your mouth too - not held down at waist height. The normal recommendation is to rest the head of the mic on the front of your chin. Then it will always remain at the same distance away so you don't sound like a fly zooming past your ear - quiet, loud, quiet - and it will be pointing more or less the right way no matter what you do. The advantage to a hand-held mic is that you can turn your head to look at the screen from a lectern, to look at the audience, to look at your notes and it still works.

With a fixed mic, if you turn your head to the side your voice is no longer heading for the mic, it is heading across the screen and you will go a lot quieter. Avoid.

How do I Act?

There are not a lot of points to make here - you can act however you want, depending on how extrovert you are, but there are some basics so let's mention those.

It's amazing how many people act as if they are giving the presentation for themselves instead of the audience. Turning your back on an audience to read from the screen is - despite all the people who do it - not a good thing. If you need to refresh your memory of what's on the screen and don't have a monitor in front of you then step to the side and turn your head whilst leaving your body pointing at no less than half the audience.

Try not to stand where you would block anyone's view of the screen. People craning their necks sideways is a clue. If you cannot avoid blocking someone's view then move about a bit. Block everyone's view but not for long. Make sure that everyone gets time to read the screen.

Here's a basic that only about half of presenters seem to get right. Enjoy yourself! Be happy. Smile. That's not a joke it's a tip. Smiling makes your voice sound far more interesting and alive. I'm not saying grin at your audience like an idiot in search of a village, just try to relax and sound interested yourself in what you are saying. If something excites you, allow yourself to sound excited. You'll start to get feedback that mentions your "enthusiasm". There's no better compliment! If you as a presenter are obviously bored by your subject, how do you think the audience will react?

Obviously you will need to choose the right moment to get excited. If teaching health and safety and about to show a video of a car accident, it's not the time to say "Watch this - this is great...!"

Relax

I can't say that enough. It is the absolute key. Giving presentations is a skill that you get better at the more you do them.

A lot of people worry that their audience might know more than they do. So here are a few tips.

The audience understand that you are speaking. Therefore they assume you have knowledge. If you say just one thing that they didn't know you have proved it. If they already knew most of what you said then their reaction will be to feel good about themselves. Not too disappointed in you. If someone asks a question that you cannot answer then be upfront and say so. Tell them you'll find out and come back to them. Make sure you get contact details if it's a conference rather than a class.

Another ploy is to ask them right back - "What do you think it means?" Involve others in the discussion. The answer may well come out. Otherwise you can again say, "well I think we've covered a lot of ground there but I'll check my own understanding tonight and we'll come back to it at the next class."

Use the same ploy, by the way, to the person who asks you the meaning to something totally obvious just to make themselves look big in front of their mates. It will soon deflate them and as long as you remain innocent, asking the rest of the class if anyone else has a problem or can explain the answer, it won't come off as being a deliberate put-down.

Discussion is now open! Leave comments here or get in touch with me directly. How did you learn to love presenting?

RSC NW Annual Conference 2007

2007-06-29T17:55:00.000+01:00

I've been on the JISC infoNet conference stand today at the RSC NW Annual Conference in Blackpool - a rare chance for me to attend an event in my home town! The theme was Personalised Learning.

There were two keynote speakers and a number of breakout sessions, although I was busy on the exhibition stand whilst the latter sessions took place. The wireless network enabled me to allow delegates to drill down into some of the online resources at JISC infoNet.

A lot of interest in our resources for Planning & Designing Technology-Rich Learning Spaces, our Social Software and e-Portfolio resources, and our more traditional core infoKits such as Project Management and Change Management.

First keynote was by Dr Cheryl A. Jones, an HMI, whose session I think a few of the audience were itching to grade... I'm not a fan of lots of "what" without "how" which is how this presentation came over to me.

"We need to get students to recognise the skills they have," she said, quoting a Jamie Oliver programme where student chefs thought they had no skills at the start of the programme, but who were taught to bake a loaf of bread and went home proud of the achievement.

All very good, but it didn't bring out the skills they had - it described a skill they were taught on the day. I remember a similar conversation I had with Carolynne Cotton, a lecturer now at Blackpool & The Fylde College, but then at Preston who had once had a waiter tell her that he had no skills.

"Do you take orders from diners?" she asked.
"Yes," he replied.
"So you have some skills in answering questions about the menu, listening skills in taking the orders, the skill to note orders down and relate them to the kitchen," she said. "Do you serve the meals?" Again the answer was yes. "So you have organisational skills in remembering who ordered what and in carrying meals in a way that allows you to serve without walking to and fro around the table. Do suggest options for sweets or ask if they want wine?"
"Yes," came the reply, now in a slightly wondering tone.
"Then you have some experience of sales and knowledge of what to suggest..."

I'm sure Carolynne could remember (or recreate) that conversation from several years ago in much more detail. I was spellbound at just how many skills she drew out of that waiter who thought he had none.

There was a nugget from Dr Jones' talk that I heartily agreed with. "The notion of contribution should be introduced to learners at the earliest opportunity with a view to developing individuals who are 'givers' as well as 'takers'," she said.

The second keynote at the end of the day was from Bill Pollard of Cheadle & Marple Sixth Form College. Bill gave an excellent talk, with video of learners relating their experiences of how personalised learning and placing learners in charge of how they learned had made a great impact on those who had been disaffected at school.

"We have operated on a 60/40 basis, where learners have control over 60% of what they will do and how they will do it in a lesson," he said. "This approach is not however popular with Ofsted, who want to see a lesson plan and can't cope with the fact that the learners will write it at the start of a lesson! It can also be rather scary for the lecturer!"

AoC NILTA CIS Conference 2007

2007-06-27T10:26:00.000+01:00

Monday was probably not the best day to be in Sheffield, but as the rain fell incessantly and floodwaters rose in the city's northern areas, at the Sheffield Park Hotel, we settled in for NILTA's annual CIS Conference.

John Bolt and Pete Ashton from the LSC are always on hand to give the latest news from the funding body and John announced his imminant retirement (at the end of the week). The photograph shows John in 1994, on a stand at the forerunner to the NILTA CIS Conferences - a conference run by the National CMIS Board. At the time he was author of the CovTech System, which was later taken over, eventually becoming part of the Dolphin and Capita empires. His approach and rock steady common sense will be missed I am sure.

Jean McAllister, the Principal of Shipley College and AoC NILTA Vice Chair gave the Principal's view of what was needed from a college information service. "We are building a cosmopolitan UK", she said. "At its best an MIS deepens our understanding of our college. Its essential function is to make sure the organisation is coached to aim for World Class.

"FE (Further Education) at its best promotes diversity. We enable people to perform at their best and therefore enable national goals to be achieved."

Colleges' use of their MIS have come a long way since the early days of the late 1980s. "We need to ensure the final 'S' stands for 'Service' and not for 'System'," Jean continued. "It has to work for the Learner. Learners must know what they have achieved and what is still to be achieved."

Ray Dowd, an ex-Principal of Hopwood Hall College in Rochdale, now acting as an Adviser to the FE Sector, spoke about the MIAP (Managing Information Across Partners) Project.

"We need to make sure we identify who and what information is for," he said, adding that there is a triangle of stakeholders requiring information from colleges; national government, employers and learners themselves. "Between each of the three main stakeholders there are tensions and there is still too much focus of our data on national needs - measuring and monitoring what we are doing, leaving too little time for fulfilling the information needs of employers and learners."

It was time, Ray said, "...to stop tuning the car and think instead about the passengers. What does data look like from a learner's or an employer's point of view? Data is at the heart of effective leadership."

The FE Sector has to be seen as:

strategically responsive

high-performing

relevant - ie customer-focussed

financially viable and

effective

"Data is crucial", Ray concluded, "but not just for the plethora of bodies around FE."

Helen Ashton, a Policy Adviser for FE with Becta, gave a talk on Getting the Most from your MIS. She had surveyed a number of colleges looking at MIS and VLEs (Virtual Learning Environments or Learning Platforms) and said she had "...found little money allocated internally by colleges to these functions, but where it had been there were obvious benefits."

The research was carried out as part of the ICT Test Bed Evaluation and results can be seen in full at the ICT Test Bed web site.

As always, the CIS Conference had a choice of small workshops for delegates to choose from. I was involved in running three of them, two on Risk Management and one, with my colleague from JISC infoNet, Andrew Stewart, on the use of Social Software in colleges where we asked delegates to think of the possible uses for collaborative Wikis both internally within their college and externally with partners.

They came up with the following, to which I have added any of our own suggestions that did not come up in the discussions.

Internal Use for Wikis:

Team discussions

Curriculum planning

Training – inc. feedback

Links to other resources

Cross team projects

Cross site projects

Technical forum

Data Entry Staff forum

Admin/Support forum

Academic Staff forum

As a platform for student work and collaboration

External Use for Wikis

Other college partners

Consortium projects

Surveys

Employer/employee

Software Suppliers

AoC NILTA

JISC Services

Regional User Groups

The weather situation cut the conference short a little as people were understandably anxious to get away early due to the weather, although at that time we had no idea just how bad it was getting in other parts of Sheffield.

Graham Mort, Chair for the conference, announced that the conference would return in June 2008 and that AoC NILTA main annual conference would take place in March 2008, venue to be announced in both cases.

EEP Discussion Conference on Interoperability

2007-06-14T14:59:00.000+01:00

Yesterday I was in London at the Royal Geographical Society for an E.E.P. Discussion Conference: Interoperability of ICT in Education - Will it serve the needs of National Initiatives?

I found it an excellent day, although with a very ambitious scope and the discussion sometimes wandered a little bit off the interoperability topic onto topics that interoperability could help facilitate, but it made for a varied and interesting day.

Inevitably the subject of the proposed Unique Learner Number came up. An identifier to be given to pupils still at school which will follow them through their learning career would be essential if students, colleges, universities etc. were to be able to access their educational records for purposes of verifying qualifications and easing transition between institutions. It would facilitate the enrolment of students, their ability to access college/university IT networks, online learning materials and library systems.

A proof of concept pilot has already been undertaken in Birmingham with data being passed both horizontally, between student record systems and online or virtual learning environments and vertically between institutions and Local Education Authorities and DfES.

The ability to pass data between organisations becomes of great importance when you consider the fact that a student aged 15 may spend two days a week in a school, two days a week in a college and the other day in a working environment at a local firm. Wherever they are they will need access to technology and the learning materials hosted either by the school, the college and maybe elsewhere.

Other topics covered included identity management - it sounds, but isn't quite the same thing. What we are talking about here is the ability of students to use a single user name and password to themselves access many systems, materials or data sets.

The safety of students and pupils online was discussed. The findings of research seem to point towards the fact that the children likely to be most vulnerable through technology are those who are likely to be most vulnerable through personal (non-technological) interaction with others.

The risk averse approaches to new technology were discussed. In France "Happy Slapping" has been criminalised. Assault has always been a criminal act anyway... In Italy the use of mobile phones has been banned in schools. It was argued that such actions fail to recognise social and economic change, the pace of change and the "enormous educational potential of technologies".

I, myself, have been perturbed to see colleges and others using the withdrawal of access to IT technology as a preferred punitive approach to either misbehaviour or to address quality issues. A few examples that have crossed my desk in the past few months:

A college has banned access to blogging sites because students were publishing anonymous articles criticising lecturers.
A college banned all access to video site YouTube because a student was filmed in an identifiable part of the college, baring his bottom for others to throw darts at...
A college banned the use of Microsoft PowerPoint by staff because of the poor quality of some presentations.
A college bans students from the IT network for periods of a fortnight for trying to access prohibited types of materials.

Now to my mind all of these smack of either ignoring the real problem or taking the easiest option or both. Let's take them in order:

Blogging is now accepted in many institutions as an excellent way of students being able to set down thoughts and opinions, open to peer review, open to their lecturer's review and with the facility for comments to be made against original articles. The anonymous slagging off of lecturers, peers or anyone is a cowardly or malicious act and the college should probably use the opportunity to highlight this. The college should also be questioning whether their lecturers are falling short and why students feel unable to raise this through normal channels.

Lots of educational content is now appearing on YouTube and the case given above cries out for disciplinary action against individuals and/or closer policing by staff of the social area (a bar staffed by college employees) in which the incident took place, rather than a blanket ban of a potentially useful (though bandwidth-challenging!) web site.

The banning of PowerPoint is almost unbelievable. I wonder if the same college banned use of Overhead Transparencies in the days before computers took over, because a lot of the use of OHPs in those days was abysmal. One of my bug-bears is the phrase "Death by PowerPoint". There's no such thing. We take the easy route of ignoring bad presentation skills, blaming it on the software because that way we don't "upset anyone". This example cries out for staff development on presentation skills and there isn't an educational organisation (or any other organisation for that matter) that couldn't benefit from some of that. I was at a conference in Wales the other week when a presenter turned his back on the audience to read from the screen... That is not the fault of Microsoft's software.

And lastly - a real life conversation between a student and myself...
"Sir, Sir - I've been banned from the Network, Sir!" (this with a huge grin)
"Really? Why is that?"
"I was looking at porn Sir!"
"Well you shouldn't be doing that on college computers should you?"
"No Sir."
"So how are you going to do your work now? Do you have to work on the network with a member of staff with you?"
"No, I've been using my mate's password..."

Moral of the stories - IT staff are not there to carry out discipline of students or staff.

The best reason for allowing and encouraging students to use blogs that I have ever heard came from speaker Josie Fraser of Childnet. I know we were encouraged at the start of the conference to report without attributing but this deserves the credit. She said, "I would much rather employ a plumber whose blog is full of comments from satisfied customers than I would a complete unknown from Yellow Pages."

The EEP is the European Education Partnership.

Project Management Workshop

2007-06-11T12:59:00.000+01:00

I was at the University of Hertfordshire one day last week, delivering a Project Management workshop for some of the university's administrative staff. A familiar face walked in the room and was a touch surprised to hear me recount meeting him 20 years ago on a BTEC Higher in Public Administration at what was then Preston Polytechnic! Obviously he must have made a bigger impression on me than I did on him! :-)

Feedback was good - we have a 3-point scoring system so it's either "poor", "satisfactory", or "excellent" and of 90 possible marks I got 74 "excellent" plus 16 "satisfactory".

Some individual comments under the headings on our feedback form:

Organisation of workshop - order, pace, time spent on each topic
"Felt a bit rushed - a lot to take in"

Appropriateness of content - tailoring of session to audience
"Very good fit to our requirements"

Presentation - style, use of visual aids
"Excellent presentation, made the subject very interesting"
"Lively, funny, and very useful"
"Excellent presentation"
"Very good"

Activities - interactive elements of the workshop
"Liked the small group work"

Additional comments
"Lively, great examples and illustrations. Many thanks"
"Very useful as had an HE (Higher Education) flavour"
"At times felt like a hard sell of infoKits" (our free online resources)
"Good overview of Project Management, good to point to the website for more in-depth stuff"
"John's style, subject knowledge and delivery was excellent"

Many thanks to the delegates for so many comments - one of my colleagues from another organisation was talking to me about feedback sheets the other day and said "Isn't it strange how you can knock yourself out putting on a good workshop and all the comments are about the food or how hot or cold it was...!" I think the University of Hertfordshire staff gave the lie to that one then!

Welcome

2007-06-11T12:41:00.000+01:00

Welcome to John Burke's Education Project. So called because it's a project that will never end, there's always something to learn and increasingly in new ways.

I've worked in Post-16 Education since 1985, in both Further Education and Higher Education. I currently work as a Senior Adviser with JISC infoNet, one of JISC's Advisory Services.

My background is in Information Systems, mainly Student Records systems, and I am currently involved in writing materials and running workshops for JISC infoNet in Project Management, Risk Management, Change Management, Process Review and other related topics.

I have an interest in all things e-Learning related and in the use of technology in education and learning.

That's me - the door is open to dialogue!