All About Project Management Project management is a carefully planned and organized effort to accomplish a successful project. A project is a one-time effort that produces a specific result, for example, a building or a major new computer system. This is in contrast to a program, which is 1) an ongoing process, such as a quality control program, or 2) an activity to manage a series of multiple projects together. In some countries, the term "program" refers to a software tool and the term "programme" can mean a TV or radio show. Project management includes developing a project plan, which includes defining and confirming the project goals and objectives, identifying tasks and how goals will be achieved, quantifying the resources needed, and determining budgets and timelines for completion. Projects usually follow major phases or stages (with various titles for these), including feasibility, definition, project planning, implementation, evaluation and support/maintenance. Sections of This Topic Include
The Elegant, Effective Election Data Visualization That Is Thankfully Not A Map : MapBrief™ We occasionally field the suggestion, nay, insinuation, that our posture here at Mapbrief is unduly critical. Whether it be pie charts, contiguous cartograms, or untucked shirts, our opinions are admittedly fixed. So much so that you might say “dogma”; we say “consistency”. But in the spirit of staying positive, let’s admire this recent graphic from the Washington Post detailing campaign contributions: Note the five dimensions of information: 1) donor name, 2) total donation, 3) state of Senate race, 4) receiving political party, and 5) relative size of state-level donation. What makes me especially happy is that I can so clearly picture what this graphic could have been: a map of the US with the 11 states having some choropleth ramp (39 states of “no data”!) The horror. Moral of the story: sometimes the best map is no map. Great job by the Post team. —Brian Timoney
Brain Pickings SKILLS & TOOLS — Quirky Blog Research. It’s the hero of any great Quirky submission. A thorough analysis of your invention’s competitive landscape has three key benefits: 1. 2. 3. Now that we understand why doing your research before submitting is a good thing, let’s get into some best practices. Google should be your first stop right after you’ve thought up an invention. - Use web friendly words. - Try synonyms. - Keep searches short and sweet. - Use quotes to lock a phrase. - Search within a site. - Don’t forget “images” and “shopping.” Find more Google search tips here. Couldn’t find your invention online? - Amazon - international eCommerce site; largest in the United States - Kickstarter - global crowdfunding platform - Indiegogo - another international crowdfunding site - ThinkGeek - online retailer catering to computer enthusiasts and “geek” culture - This is why I’m broke - online magazine - Skymall - shopping magazine - Your market competitor’s websites.
How To Go From Dreaming To Doing: 4 Steps To Motivation You have stuff you know you should be doing. But it doesn’t get done. You need to go from dreaming to doing — but it’s hard. You want to accomplish more at work, hit the gym, get a new job or study harder at school… but it’s not happening. I’ve talked about strategies to make challenges easier like the 20 second rule. What gets you going when you’re not motivated to reach those longer term goals? There’s a solution that can help you not only make change easier, but boost motivation. Yes, WOOP. WishOutcomeObstaclePlan Can a method with the silliest name in social science really work? People who say they want to exercise more and use the WOOP method do dramatically better: How does it work? The first step is wishing. Here’s how to do it right. 1) Wish (But Don’t Stop There) Everything starts with a wish. Having a positive attitude is pretty much essential because a negative attitude makes us more likely to quit — or to never start in the first place. Why? Want to lose weight? 4) Make A Plan Tags:
Decision Making: The #1 Secret Of Astronauts, Samurai, Navy SEALs, and Psychopaths We all make a lot of bad decisions. With careers: More than half of teachers quit their jobs within four years. In fact, one study in Philadelphia schools found that a teacher was almost two times more likely to drop out than a student. In our jobs: A study showed that when doctors reckoned themselves “completely certain” about a diagnosis, they were wrong 40% of the time. And in our personal lives: …an estimated 61,535 tattoos were reversed in the United States in 2009. So how can we all make better decisions? It’s “arousal control.” That’s a fancy word for keeping a cool head. In their book, Decisive, Chip and Dan Heath identify short term emotion as one of the primary causes of bad decisions. Astronauts, samurai, Navy SEALs, and psychopaths. 150 Miles Above The Earth Is No Place For Panic It’s the 1960’s and NASA is going to send people to the moon for the first time. How do you make sure astronauts don’t freak out in the cold darkness of space where there’s no help? You’re NASA. No. Nope.
47 Ways to Build a WordPress Business People Love We publish articles on our blog every day of the year so it’s easy to lose track of the breadth of topics we cover from week to week. Our post archive alone contains more than 4,500 articles going back to 2008. That’s a lot of writing to discover! Over the past 12 months we’ve assembled a strong team of talented writers who come at WordPress from different perspective, each with their own niche and range of skills, from development and Multisite to theme customization, plugins and marketing. With that in mind, we’ve hand-picked a collection of our greatest hits this year. Have a browse, revisit or even discover any posts you may have missed. Starting a Business After 10 years as a WordPress entrepreneur, our CEO James Farmer shared his experiences in this five-part series exploring everything from finding the right business idea, to marketing, getting by with no web development skills, remote team management, and failure. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. How do you deal with failure? Finding the Right Theme
Natural Leadership: Embracing the Logic of Life | The Nature of Business Leadership is central to this reshaping of our organizations. It is leadership that enables us to traverse our own thresholds while helping others traverse theirs. The origin of the word ‘leadership’ is the old European word leith which means ‘to go forth and cross the threshold’, ‘to let go of old ways and embrace the new’. In other words, leadership is about shaping our future while letting go of yesterday’s logic. The logic of yesterday haunts many of today’s organizations. This logic projects a worldview now ingrained in our educational systems, managerial mind-sets and methods of leading, so much so that many of us believe it to be ‘just the way life is’. Yet, this logic is, at best, jaundice; de-emphasizing some of life’s richest qualities (collaboration, networking, reciprocity, empathy, community) while over-emphasizing others (competition, control, domination, selfishness, egotism). So what to do? There is good news. ‘Essential and timely’ Dr. Like this: Like Loading...
Csikszentmihalyi and Happiness "The best moments in our lives are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times… The best moments usually occur if a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile." ~ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1990, p. 3) Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi discovered that people find genuine satisfaction during a state of consciousness called Flow. In this state they are completely absorbed in an activity, especially an activity which involves their creative abilities. The experience of "flow" is strikingly reminiscent of Zhuangzi’s description of "great skill" achieved by Daoist sages such as carpenter P’ien and butcher Ting, the latter finding bliss in the art of chopping up ox carcasses by "going along with the Dao" of the ox. You are skiing down a mountain trail at Aspen Colorado — one of the expert diamond slopes, with the awe-inspiring, snow-capped Rockies in your view. Some Background: Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Spreadsheet Thinking vs. Database Thinking – eagereyes The shape of a dataset is hugely important to how well it can be handled by different software. The shape defines how it is laid out: wide as in a spreadsheet, or long as in a database table. Each has its use, but it’s important to understand their differences and when each is the right choice. Wide and Two-Dimensional: The Spreadsheet Spreadsheets are laid out in two dimensions. The grid layout is efficient because it means you don’t have to repeat what is being shown. Calculations also present themselves: sum the rows across (not in this particular example), sum the columns down, get the average, create a new column with the difference of each row from the overall mean, etc. There are limitations, of course. For data analysis tools, spreadsheets also pose the challenge that their formats can vary widely and are often inconsistent in subtle but problematic ways. Another problem is that column headings don’t tell you what they mean. Long and Skinny: The Database No Right Shape
Is Anything Worth Maximizing? Is Anything Worth Maximizing? Let’s start with a very small example of how metrics can go wrong. It’s about YouTube. And about the videos it recommends. So, if you look here, at the videos that youtube recommends to me, they are all funny videos. That’s weird, because I use youtube a lot, and I come to YouTube for all sorts of reasons: to learn to play the ukulele,to learn to breakdance,to give me courage (by watching someone do something I’m scared of), And of course, when my friends are over, we come to watch funny videos and laugh. But looking here at my recommended videos, there’s nothing here about learning music, being creative, or facing my fears. And while you might think that funny videos would help me with laughing with friends, I don’t think they do. So why is YouTube encouraging me to laugh alone? Why We Have Metrics I think the way to understand this is to look at the metrics. Metrics are how an algorithm or an organization listens to you. And YouTube is just like other startups: