Conflicting Value

By Raul Bernardino

Introduction:

The conflict may arise from two or more difference groups’ view-points. “Those view-points are coming from the way or environment that they live in or experience with before and believe in. This is might differ one another and it is creating potential of the conflicts”, Pearce, W.B. & Littlejohn, S.W. (1997, P.49).

In this situation and condition will be allowing us to judge the behaviors of the groups either “it is raising conflicts or supporting each other (themselves) to reach the organization vision”, Hall, P. A.V. & Fernandez-Ramil, J. (2007, p.77).

Base on the argument above, in my personal experiences with new born organization, it is difficult to adjust. Although in the first year, we did setup an organization strategic plan for period of three years with very clear vision which is “to be a leading petroleum regulatory authority in the region and a model for institutional development in Timor‐Leste”, Autoridate Nacional do Petroleo (2009). This vision becomes a core value to everyone in the organization. However, there are several departments still not started to execute their strategic plan. This may impacted to the core value above. In other end some departments or doing different things that is not in the strategic goals and objectives. It is happen because it is driven by new product sharing contracts that were not seeing in the planning. This reflection reported in the midterm evaluation of the strategic plan.

I do believe that, the organization evolution has to be in place in order to adjust, adapt and adopt as it moves on. However, it has to be consulted with the relevant entities before it moves or adopted the direction. Otherwise, it creates conflict among the entities. For instance staff capacity building, performance review and recognitions. This year, we had lack of the trainings to the staff; in the organization policy it is clear stated that staff is entitle to have at least two trainings a year and it bases on the needs of the staff to perform the job; now it adopts one training a year. Performance review and rewarding are not in line with internal policies. This has come to staff concerns. And it has become an implication to the organization as well. As a result, two staffs are leaving the organization. Staff sent a concern letter to the management. And staff motivation is decreasing.

In the general meeting earlier this year, I mentioned that we have done several activities that are not in line with the strategic plan goals, objective, and including to support the core value. I also did liaison with staff and management to address the internal issues or we called staff concern. In my view as aliased person, I do see the leadership is a determinant factor of mutual trust building in order to achieve organization vision or core value.

In my own department we believe each staff has value to contribute the program and project that we set as in line with IT strategy road map.

There are several features of moral conflicts to take consideration as follows:

a.     Misunderstandings:

b.     Mistrust

c.      Strained and hostile communication

d.     Negative stereotype

e.      Non negotiability

In conclusion:

The conflicts often end up with human right violation or even let to worse as genocide (to eliminate one of the conflict groups). Therefore, in today organization, institution, and company, the leadership is an important factor to reach the core values. He or she has to understand overall organization behavioral and its environment.

References:

Maiese, M. (July 2003), Moral or Value Conflict, [Online].  Available from: 

http://www.beyondintractability.org/essay/intolerable_moral_differences/  (Accessed: 21 October 2011).

Kates, S.L.  (n.d), Conflicting value-Orientation and Intra personality conflict

, [Online].  Available from: 

http://digital.library.okstate.edu/OAS/oas_pdf/v33/v282_285.pdf (Accessed: 21 October 201).

Autoridade Nacional do Petroleo, [Online].  Available from: 

http://www.anp-tl.org/ (Accessed: 21 October 201).

Hall, P. A.V. & Fernandez-Ramil, J. (2007) Managing the Software Enterprise:

Software Engineering and Information Systems in Context. London: Thomson Learning.

Pearce, W.B. and Littlejohn, S.W., Moral Conflict: When Social Worlds Collide.

(Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Inc., 1997), 49

                                                                                                                                      

Virtual Team Challenges

By Raul Bernardino

Introduction:

The globalization and ICT revolution brings a lot of benefit for world communities. We can easily find an expert, talent, and experience person for specific fields. Either brings them to be onsite or just works from remote location.  The technology enables the virtual team works are possible.

The benefits of having the virtual team as follows:

a.     The business will use right expertise for job

b.     Does not need a relocation and it saves cost for the business

c.      The person does not need to resign from current post and leaves family for certain period of time

d.     It creates a creativities

e.      It creates a loyally

f.       Does not need to invest in the human capacity

There are some differences on onsite team and virtual team on the issues of culture, social interaction, and the working environment. The onsite team may direct effect with country and organization cultures which is dynamical progressing as organization and country moves. It is because he or she is present in those cultures environment by person or face to face.  While the virtual team may not has chance to have cross culture effect directly from the country that he or she works for from remote location. However, the virtual team has to aware that they are interacting with different person, culture, and ethical virtually. The virtual team is very much focusing on the task accomplishment of the individuals or group within the time table or schedule as planned.

There are several challenges in the virtual team as follows:

a.     The trust: It is quite hard to build a trust over virtual interaction, while not have a physically meet with the person. The one of the important component to build the trust here is the communication.

b.     The synergy: It is difficult for people to have a synergy while not spend time together. It is also difficult to build a team relationship. However the virtual team lead or manager have to establish schedule for virtual team to meet virtual either with videoconferencing or audio conferencing in order to improve the communication among the team, also discuss the issue the team member faced, including sharing the information.

c.      The Isolation: The virtual team member is working from remote individually. This isolation makes team member feels work alone and some time out of the loop because loss some updates from the rest of the team. For instance team member is not able to participate the virtual team meeting.

d.     The collaboration: Here the virtual team members have to work and thinking independently while manager or virtual team lead has adjust and adapt their styles in managing the team. He or she has to encourage, motivate, and monitor the progress of each individual works.  

e.      The performance review: It is hard for team lead to assess each individual that works virtually. He or she has to establish the reliable quantitative and qualitative measurement for the accuracy of the performance review. For instance establish the result agreement upfront. In the result agreement has to state tasks to executed, indicator of the outcomes, and time line of the delivery.

In Conclusion: The communication is essential part in the virtual team success or failure during programs or projects execution.

 References:

Hall, P. A.V. & Fernandez-Ramil, J. (2007) Managing the Software Enterprise:

Software Engineering and Information Systems in Context. London: Thomson Learning.

Lecture note, MNGSWE_WK2_seminar

Managing Groups and Teams/How Do You Build High-performing Virtual Teams?, [online].

Available from: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Managing_Groups_and_Teams/How_Do_You_Build_High-performing_Virtual_Teams%3F   (Accessed: 14 October 2011)

Trautsch, B.R. (Dec.11, 2003) Managing Virtual Project Team, [Online]. Available

from: http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~ceb/b895/btrautsch895.pdf    (Accessed: 14 October 2011)

Kimball, L. (1997), Managing Virtual team, [Online]. Available from:

http://www.groupjazz.com/pdf/vteams-toronto.pdf (Accessed: 14 October 2011)

Virtual team benefits and challenges, [Online]. Available from:

http://www.time-management-guide.com/virtual-team.html  (Accessed: 14 October 2011)

Sasso, A. ( 2008), Overcoming Virtual team Challenges: After Action Review,

[Online]. Available from:  http://www.leadingvirtually.com/?p=25  (Accessed: 14 October 2011)

Scope Creep in the Project Management

By Raul Bernardino

Introduction: The importance part of project success and project deliverable are clear defining the project scope. In any project, the scope has to be defined in which to state what things that are include and exclude in the project. In the theory the scope should not be crept because it has to be defined in the very beginning of the project planning. However in the reality the scope is creeping according to the needs or change control in project life time. It also happen because not have a clear definition in the scope of the project.

The scope is also describing all parameters that are involving or not involving in the projects. Some requirements to produce project scope statements are: project charter, preliminary project assessment, company or organizational internal procedure and policies that are relevant to the project, including experiences from the similar project in the past.  

In the progress of the implementation of the project, there are some parameters that need a change because of the project environment itself, not well distributing the scope statements to the right person or involving persons, the requirements are not well define, and communication gaps. These are among the thing that makes scope is creeping.

How to avoid the scope creep in the project management? First of all is having a clear vision statement available to everyone as a project team member. In other word everyone is in the same page, how to deliver and achieve the project. This is helping to define the project scope as details as possible. The project manager has to communicate all information or scope statements to the project team members specially a person who is involving specific tasks that crucial to have in time.

When the creeping scope in the project can be a good thing? When there are a few adjustments in the scope but still relevant to the initial scope of the project and most important is to make sure there will be no additional cost. For instance new features in the application that is not well define in the beginning. Or there is an additional cost but not much as we are waiting for new version to be developed and the changes has been approved by change authorities.

Conclusion:  To avoid the creeping scope in the project management, the project manager has to identify and define project team task clearly including define scope statement for the project.

Project manager has to communicate all scope statements to the relevant project team members that, their works are crucial to be delivered in the timely manner. In the process of the changing of the requirements in the project life time has to be communicated to all relevant entities with the reasons why and how it is changed. However, those changes are happen because they have been approved by authority body and there are no cost impacts of the changes or they have minimum impacts to the project cost.

References list:

·        Schwalbe, K. Information Technology Project Management, Revised 6th edition, Ch. 5 P. 183-186 

·        Lecture note, PM_WK2_Lecture_notes

·         Veryard, Richard. “In Praise of Scope Creep.” May 2001, [online]. Available from: http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~rxv/projmgt/scopecreep.htm . (Accessed Date: May 14, 2011)

·        Helms, Hal. “In Defense of Scope Creep.” A List Apart. September 20, 2002: Issue 150, [online]. Available from:  http://www.alistapart.com/articles/scopecreep . (Accessed Date: May 14, 2011)

·        Gurle, S. “Scope Creep”, December 2, 2003, [online]. Available from:  http://www.umsl.edu/~sauterv/analysis/6840_f03_papers/gurlen/ . (Accessed Date: May 14, 2011)

Computing Capability and Connectivity’s

By Raul Bernardino

Introduction:

Nowadays computing technology perspectives are to help and fulfill human society needs. Either, they are from professional’s institution of the computing or from software developers industries, they should understand the grass root problems or issues that society that current faced, the society’s trends of using the technologies, the organizations business operations, and other entities needs. These all will enable industries to develop applications and design proper technologies as an interface for helping society.

The application system has to be effective, efficient, reliable, given the accuracy of the measurements, and easy to use or operate in the daily operation. It is also including the safety of the system configurations, friendly environment system, and in line with the norms, society cultures, and the ethicals.

Some of the computing capabilities are able to track down human movement by using data communication over mobile phones, and currency of uses, and it’s including an immigration data. The researchers are tracking at list hundred thousand of people over last six months, etc.

The storage data capability:

In the early computing technology, the capacities of the computing data storages are from 20 Mb to 40 Mb of the IBM personal computer (PC) hard disks and the floppy disks are from 512 Kb to 1.4 Mb. The evolution of the technology and the demands of have the big storages to archive data on disks become a priority to develop furthermore. Therefore, today storage capacity becomes Giga byte, Terra bytes, and Peta bytes.

The purpose of having storage data is to enable retrieving the data whenever it is needed, such to modify the current data, to print for hard copy signed, to manipulate the data, to have the data for decision making process, for the meeting purposes, for sharing data, and etc. Further development of the data storage in globalization era is a data center and the cloud computing. Another relevant question of the data storage as follows:

How much data to be archive? How much data are relevant to the inclusive decision making processes? What data is relevant for the meeting? And so on so for.

The Memory capability:

The term "memory" is often associated with addressable semiconductor memory, i.e. integrated circuits consisting of silicon-based transistors, used for example as primary memory but also other purposes in computers and other digital electronic devices. There are two main types of semiconductor memory: volatile and non-volatile. Examples of non-volatile memory are flash memory (sometimes used as secondary, sometimes primary computer memory) and ROM/PROM/EPROM/EEPROM memory (used for firmware such as boot programs). Examples of volatile memory are primary memory (typically dynamic RAM, DRAM), and fast CPU cache memory (typically static RAM, SRAM, which is fast but energy-consuming and offer lower memory capacity per area unit than DRAM).

The speed capability:

The speed in the computing technology is an essential part of the system configuration. The processors of the computing have to be fastest. For instance all Integrated Circuit(IC) of processors are on the nanosecond (10^-9). This will allow processing multiple applications over the computing system faster. For instance: to process the documents over Microsoft word, Excels and power points.  The Microsoft has template to speed up the power design, made auto calculation on excel sheet, modified existing documents, printing existing document for the meeting , and etc. Here the efficient and effective, including the reliable are the measurement for the speed. If we compare to the old function of type write, we will find difficult in preparing the document. It will be time consuming and not effective.     

The capability of connection:

Today globalization needs lot of communication infrastructures in order to make a link from very isolate societies or communities or remote area to communicate with the cities and metropolitans communities or urban areas. The internet network has made lot of contributions to the world society or communities. The connectivity’s has shared the valuable information and knowledge across the countries without a limitation. People can easily interact with the partners around the world. The digital enable people to learn faster than the day before. People have to go to the class, people have to travel far or across to the country to get the information, and etc. Nowadays, it is not an issue anymore. We can have virtual classes, as on-line study, deliver courses and meeting via videoconferencing and audio conferences and etc.    

The access capability:

The accessibility and reliability of the information or data over computing and networks are becoming one of the computing capability measurements. Today’s global computing access becomes a concern to everyone. Therefore computing access has to be managed in order to be able to monitor and manage the performance of the computer itself. The user has to have the accounts and give the privileges to each of them in order to minimized the risk of data confidentiality, protect privacy, allow public share knowledge, and etc.

The fast calculations result capability:

This computing capability makes human been easy to determining decision such as calculating large and complex of issue in Math in excel. For instance: calculating population growth prediction in the statistic models, weather-forecasting, navigating airplane, and etc.

Beside the capability of computing there is relationship with human being activities or issues such as:

The privacy issues:

Nowadays the global communication such internets and social networks communication are publically available even in very remote area that has mobile signal coverage. This is bringing an issue of the privacy.

“The right to privacy in Internet activity is a serious issue facing society.” Walton T.J. (2000)

“…yet on other occasions society questions the state of their privacy, becoming insecure and untrusting with respect to technology.” Robinson, P., Vogt, H., and Wagealla,W. (2005, p.2.)

The ownership:

It’s also very difficult today in determining the ownership of the information or data the internet or in the social networks. It is appear to be anonymous. However in the universities and academics are still looking for protecting the copy rights, such as intellectual copy rights. In other end people intend to have a PIN to secure their assets.

The control:

In order to have full control of things that we have, we have to start to control the connection from our own computer or electronic device; it is including controlling the accessibility of the information or data that we have stored into the technology media. Nowadays, the hacker and crackers are very active in looking for the possibilities such back doors, phishing, and etc., in order to control your machines that have attached wide area network.  Some e.g. is DNS poisoning.

The accuracy:

The global connectivity’s has allowed us to reach and gets right information that we needs in matter of the second. Lot of the internet information has not had preapproval examined from the institutions such university or from the producers. For instance:  We had several issues computer driver that we bought. First we have to consult with the support sited from the producer in order to get the right version of the drivers that we are looking for. We can also ‘Google’ it, in order to get the same information; however its most probably to direct us to other sites that may not solve the problems.

The security:

The security topics are hot issue in today business. The organizations that intend to protect their own information or data is busy investigating solutions for their security requirements. It is including the copyrights and privacies. One of the classic examples is your house. The stranger people can’t enter you house unless you are the one open the door for this stranger. Your door key is your “security key”. So don’t share it to the stranger people.

The global communication and connectivity’s has forced the organizations, companies, and other institutions, to have the information technology policies. This policy is to ensure the security, privacy, and operability of the computing technology in their daily business locations. It is also including establishing the IT standards for the organization and the most important is that the policy is in line with the business need.  It is also need to have IT Master Level Agreement and Server Level Agreement in the organization.

 References:

Adams, A.A. & McCrindle, R.J. (2008) Pandora’s box: Social and professional

issues of the information age. West Sussex, England: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Hall, P. A.V. & Fernandez-Ramil, J. (2007) Managing the Software Enterprise:

Software Engineering and Information Systems in Context. London: Thomson Learning.

Maths Fast Calculation Software Freeware, [Online]. Available from:

http://www.fileguru.com/apps/maths_fast_calculation_software/freeware (Accessed:  16 July 2014)

Robinson,P.  Vogt,H.  and Wagealla,W., (2005), Privacy, Security and

Trust within the Context of Pervasive Computing, Springer Science + Business Media, Inc. , [Online]. Available from: http://books.google.com.sg/books?id=ya6tY8Mz9OYC&pg=PA23&dq=privacy+in+the+computing&hl=en&ei=HlotTeyoKYaycMav4PAH&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CDQQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q&f=true (Accessed:  16 July 2014)

Stensland, D. and Humanitech(d:d): Merging Humanity with Technology,

[Online]. Available from: http://www.cc.gatech.edu/features/merging-humanity-with-technology (Accessed:  16 July 2016)

Technology On Way To Forecasting Humanity's Needs, [Online]. Available from:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090723142048.htm (Accessed:  16 July 2014)

Walton,T.J., (2000), Internet Privacy Law, [Online]. Available from:

http://www.netatty.com/privacy/privacy.html#invade  (Accessed:  16 July 2014)

Wikis (A.N.) Computer Memory, [Online]. Available from:

          http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_memory (Accessed:  16 July 2014)

IT Project Plan Outline

·      By Raul Bernardino

     

           Project Plan Outline

1.0 Goals and Objectives

This section presents a general description of the project along with any general or technical constraints and/or considerations. Please include the sub-sections below.

1.    Project name

2.    Business goals and project goals

3.    Scope

4.    Time and budget constraints

5.    General and technical requirements

6.    Training and documentation

7.    Installation

2.0 Project Estimates

This section presents a set of estimates for the completion of the project, including people, hardware and software. Please include the following sub-sections.

1. People costs

a. Historical or researched data used for estimates (Requires annotation listing where you got this information)

b. Salary requirements

2. Equipment costs (Requires costs for all hardware and software used. It is assumed that all hardware and software will be new).

a. Hardware

b. Software

3. Estimation techniques and results

a. Process-based (use the format shown in section 1.2.1 of the lecture)

b. Second method

c. Triangulation results

3.0 Project Schedule

This section presents an overview of project tasks and the output of a project scheduling tool. The following sub-sections should be included:

3.1 Project task list

The tasks that have been selected for the project are presented in this section.

3.2 Task network

Project tasks and their dependencies are noted in this diagrammatic form.

3.3 Timeline chart

A project timeline chart (Gantt chart) is presented. Please embed the Gantt chart in the document as this is the way end-users would see it.

4.0 Staff Organization

The manner in which staff are organized and the mechanisms for reporting are noted.

4.1 Team structure

The team structure for the project is identified. Roles are defined. Include an organization chart.

4.2 Management reporting and communication

Mechanisms for progress reporting and inter/intra team communication are identified

5.0 Risk Management

This section discusses project risks and the approach to managing them. Please include the following sub-sections.

5.1 Project Risks

Each project risk is described.

5.2 Risk Table

The complete risk table is presented. Name of risk, category, probability, and impact are provided.

5.3 Risk Mitigation, Monitoring, Management Strategy

Discuss a strategy to deal with each risk.

6.0 Tracking and Control Mechanisms

Techniques to be used for project tracking and control are identified. The following sub-sections should be included:

6.1 Quality assurance and control

An overview of SQA activities is provided. Note that an SQA Plan is developed for a moderate to large project and may be a separate document or included as an appendix. Use this section to list your business and technology metrics.

6.2 Change management and control

An overview of software configuration management (SCM) activities is provided. Note that an SCM Plan is developed for a moderate to large project and may be a separate document or included as an appendix. Use this section to describe your procedures for handling change to the specification while in development and the system after the system has been implemented.

Reference:

     Schwalbe, K. Information Technology Project Management, Revised 6th edition

Software Failure

By Raul Bernardino

Introduction:

Nowadays, we can easily find software applications in everywhere such as on the internet, market, from reseller agents, from developers, and etc. Those software applications are implementing in the various industries, in the companies, in the institutions, in the government, and in the organizations. The aim of the software is to automate manual functions such as increasing the reliabilities and accuracies, cost saving for the labor, paperless, and green environment, and etc. Although, these software applications are helping the human being in order to have a quick and efficient results and to have reliable and accuracy calculations or measurements. It is also including to store and to retrieve information for the decision making processes or for another purposes; this software has also had a limitation in which might caused the system failure or system halt during execution of the tasks or it services, for instance virgin blue system error. Even, it might cause the life of the human being such as therac-25. 

According to the Hall and Fernandez-Ramil, “the software applications have not returned the benefit to the economy, if anything to expend on larger software and hardware will lead to decreasing national productivities,” Hall, P. A.V. & Fernandez-Ramil, J. (2007, p.16).

Let’s start with two examples of the virgin blue airline that using the IT services. First, the virgin blue system was sending an error email of upgrading customer’s membership rewards from “velocity member to gold member” which was well known as “Friday the 13^th strikes”. The velocity customers were getting emails as it shows in below picture:

This caused the velocity website crashed, lot of customers tried to visit the site to ensure the truth. An hour later sent an apology email to the velocity customers as it shows in below picture:

Second, the virgin blue IT system failure caused around fifty thousand passengers can’t board including canceling hundreds of the virgin blue flights in Australia. The Navitaire was contracted with virgin blue to give IT service. In the service agreement that was established is very clear stated that in any critical mission, the remedies have to be in the period of the short time in the outages. The hardware faulty from ‘Navitaire’ had made an additional cost to the virgin blue. The virgin blue has to pay passengers accommodations that were not able to broad at that time.

With two examples above, the first IT system error whereas incidentally upgrade the not entitled velocity members to rewards the Gold member, was a confusing information. The second issue of hardware failure had cost extra to the virgin blue.

On the therac-25 issue was identified as bugs that upgraded from therac-20 as in the following text box:

Possible Thearac-25 Failures:

• There were no proper assessment and testing of the new created machine
• Error detection massage are not well design
• Not proper action after first error detected
• The safety glitch is not proper installed
• There were not have a proper communication among hospital who using the machine with government and manufactory 

 In conclusion: Any software development, has to be in-line with the business needs, designed in the scope of requirements, and tested the application for several time of period before going to be real in production, and including to establish the back system in which to anticipate the failures.

References:

Grubb, B. (13 November 2009), Virgin Blue "error" upgrades passengers to gold

status, [Online].  Available from:  http://www.itnews.com.au/News/160494,virgin-blue-error-upgrades-passengers-to-gold-status.aspx  (Accessed: 7 October 2011).

Australia Association Press, (27 September 2010), Australian airline grounded by

IT failure, [Online].  Available from: 

http://www.information-age.com/channels/it-services/news/1286558/australian-airline-grounded-by-it-failure.thtml

 (Accessed: 7 October 201).

An Investigation of the Therac-25 Incident, [Online]. Available from:

http://courses.cs.vt.edu/cs3604/lib/Therac_25/Therac_1.html (Accessed: 7 October  2011)

Case Analysis Module: Therac-25, [Online]. Available from:

          http://cnx.org/content/m13765/latest/ (Accessed: 7 October 2011)

Hall, P. A.V. & Fernandez-Ramil, J. (2007) Managing the Software Enterprise:

Software Engineering and Information Systems in Context. London: Thomson Learning.