Chapter 5&6 ideas

Chaper 5

Everything that has not been happened contains risk. How do we prevent the risk from happening?

First step is to identify the risks.
There are several ways to get information, ask stakeholders or learn from the past. It is true that the project may be varied by different stakeholders involved, however, the past project is certainly able to give some ideas for present not to repeat the same mistake.

Second step is to analyze and prioritize the risks.
Once the risk is defined, we need to figure out the consequence of the risks in terms of cost, schedule and possible damage to the project.
Ex. If the possibility of raining tomorrow is 50%, it might be traffic due to the rain, and I might be stuck on the traffic and might be late for work.

The third step is to develop response plans. If we know the risk might happen, and we know the consequence of the risk, we now have to do the response plan.
Ex. If it is raining tomorrow, it will be traffic. In order not to stuck in the traffic and late for work, I will leave from home earlier, or go another way that might be less traffic.

Chapter 6

Work breakdown structure. (WBS) It is a technique to break down a project into small pieces for better executing and managing. Before the WBS, we need to identify all the tasks in a project. Once the WBS made, every participants will know his or her role and focus on it. So, how to make a good WBS is really important.

Getting started on a work breakdown structure is always the hardest part. Sometimes the beginning doesn't plan well may effect the following steps.

There is a key concept I see it is really important: planning for quality.
A famous example that just happened lately is Toyota vehicle recall. Either short-term impact on stock prices or long term impact on fixing customer opinions and damage to brand equity, it is uncountable for the quality mistake.

Assignment 1b (week1-2)

Here are my learning outcomes:

1. Learn Adobe InDesign which is the professional design/layout program that has become the industry standard in print publishing. I will be able to use the program with no problem on making newspaper layout and design.

2. Other than doing art editing, I will also deal with printing matter. Get to know what the printing process is and how newspaper is distributed.

3. I will have to learn how to deal with customers. Familiar with our newspaper and able to present it to the customers. Whenever the customers have questions, I will be able to reply and give feedback.

4. Practice writing. It will be helpful if I can write, because a lot of time I need to fix text to match the layout.

5. Read magazine and other newspaper that will inspire me on design. As an art editor, being creative and with a highly developed visual sense is important.

6. Pay attention to the trend. I will learn website design since E-paper is getting popular. Flash and Dreamweaver are two programs I will be learning. Hopefully I will be able to make my personal website with flash on it.

Assignment 1a (week1-2)

Company's Goal and Vision

I am currently working for a local Chinese newspaper called News for Chinese. It is a start-up company with only a couple people working as full time and about five people working as part time. The office locates in Redwood City, and this is where our newspaper started to distribute-Peninsula. For long time in bay area, even though there are a few small printing media ups and downs, Sing Tao and World Journal newspaper have monopolized the Chinese market. In this circumstance, we come out to give both readers another choice of reading a newspaper and all kinds of business another place to advertise themselves. Our goal is to provide Chinese local-based news, information of life, technology, education, and politics. We try to give the local reader the closest living information, therefore, our vision is to become the most popular local Chinese newspaper in bay area.

SWOT

As I mentioned earlier, Sing Tao and World Journal newspaper are two biggest Chinese newspapers most Chinese read in the bay area. How our newspaper is different from them is that we focus on the local news other than news from Taiwan, Hong Kong or China. Moreover, we are the only free Chinese language community newspaper with separate edition for bay area Peninsula and South/East bay, which means everyone, is available to read our newspaper without paying a cent. We are also the only full color free publication that gives reader a better enjoyment on reading. We have great resources for local news, Chinese language education, personal health, personal life style, home improvement, neighborhood get-away, and much more.

However, we are bi-weekly newspaper; the news in our newspaper might not be as updated as other daily newspapers. Also, we are new to the community, we still need time to let people recognize us and become our royal reader.

Art editor

The primary difference from the traditional newspaper is that our newspaper applies full color and designed layout. We use many pictures and colors to give readers a completely refreshing feeling on a newspaper. As a result, art editor plays an important role in the organization.

As an editor, I am responsible for illustrations and layouts in printed matter. Other than that, the job may cover:

• Making sure the most suitable graphics and photographs are used
• Discussing design and layout ideas with the editor and other colleagues, including freelance writers and proofreaders
• Producing cover designs and inside pages.
• Anticipating trends and setting the newspaper's overall visual style, including design templates.

Specialised computer software is used to design newspaper such as Adobe Photoshop and Adobe InDesign. I will determine the final content of a text and I am also the one who send the final file to the printing and make sure there is no error before it comes out to the public.

Chapter 4 ideas

Before a project starts to run, there are several items need to be confirmed.
The first one is that all parties need to agree on the goals of the project. There is a guideline for participants to follow in order not to get the project out of control, and it has to be written down to prove that the project gets agreement. A success project means that it meets stakeholder expectations.

The second one is controlled scope. Before a project begins, we have no idea how much it will cost or how much ingredients will be needed. We can only predict and make an estimate quantity statement, but our prediction may go wrong sometimes. To avoid project overruns,the project rules should be made carefully.
I have a personal experience would like to share. There was one time I got a chance to design an identity system for the customer. I have no experience working as a freelancer at that time, so there was no contract signing idea in my mind. The project didn't go well because the customer keep asking for revising. I was really upset because I spent all my time just to change little of this and change little of that. It was like they can do whatever they want because there is no rule and no limit. From this bad experience I have learned that a project should make certain guidelines for stakeholders to follow and be written down. The project will turn out more productive.

The third one is management support. This is what I mentioned earlier about project rules being written. This is to make sure that every stakeholder understand the project and agree to the guideline.

Chapter 3 ideas

In chapter 3, the most important point is to identify who are our stakeholders. The reason is that stakeholders has direct or indirect stake in an organization, and they may significantly influence the success of an activity or a project. If a business organization want to success on a project, identifying stakeholders is a primary task.

So, the question is " Who are our stakeholders?"
The chapter listed out stakeholder roles by different perspectives. They can have positive or negative views regarding a given project. The point I have learned here is that the more disagreement those stakeholders have with one another, the more difficulty the project may be done with. Therefore, knowing the key stakeholders and also win their cooperation is the most challenge.

Each stakeholder is important to the project, and the customer is the most unpredictable and hard to deal with for me. In my job, I sometimes have to deal with customers when they are unsatisfied with my work. Maybe I am more professional than the customer in my field, but I am in no position to argue with them but follow their desires, because they are the one paying for it, and my salary is actually indirectly from them. If the customer doesn't satisfy with the project, then the project directly fails no matter how good the manager or project team think. The customer holds the final decision on if the project success or not.So, how to get an agreement between an organization and the customer is a skill we need to learn.

A leader who I admire

I admire Steve Jobs not only for his great achievement on today’s technology but also for his innovative and unique idea as a leader. Sure competent and determined play an important part forming a good leader. But a leader must be inspiring and imaginative as well. He/She must always pay attention to what is going on now, but also look to the future. Jobs is truly a innovator who always think out of the box.

Another key to make Job successful is that he loves what he is doing and believes in himself. “Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did.” (by Steve Jobs) Even when he hires somebody, his question to those people is “Are they going to fall in love with Apple? Because if they fall in love with Apple, everything else will take care of itself.” They’ll want to do what’s best for Apple, not what’s best for them, what’s best for Steve, or anybody else. In a team, it’s important that everyone unites in one mind. Being loyal is also a characteristic that a good leader should has.

Week 2: Chapter 1&2

I totally agree with the point of "Team members who understand project management make the entire project run smoother. They make the project manager more effective because they make better estimates, identify risks, and participate in planning and problem solving."
As I mentioned before, I am working at a start-up Chinese newspaper firm which is having no more than 10 employees. The team is small, even though we performs our duties differently, we are required to participate meetings and have a free say to the project. I think it's smart to have all us understand the project and involved in planning, because participation will make us more responsible to the project. Once we have sense of ownership, we are willing to pay extra effort to make the project achieve the goal. Let employee feel themselves important to the project is a key!!

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On the chapter 1, it mentions that every technique in the book is a communication technique, designed to improve the formal and informal ways we communicate critical project information.

We are individual person who grow in different environment, so even though we receive the same message, we might come out different thought. I was watching the movie "up in the air" the other day and totally saw that communication is important theory.
To lay off people is difficult, but to tell the person who gets laid off is even tougher. How to make the person feel not so bad truly needs some communication skill, and I think that skill applies to everything.