Turning Around a Dysfunctional Project Team

Many teams have some personality conflicts among team members. However, on some teams the personal animosity is so great that the team has a hard time functioning together. Let's assume that these people problems result in the project manager being replace and you are the one taking over. If you are a project manager that takes over a dysfunctional project team, there are a number of areas that require your attention.

The first thing you want to do is assess the current state of the project. Your response to the project team problems will depend on where you are at with the schedule. For instance, if you have 30 days of work remaining, you will have less ability to make an impact on the team dynamics. In this case, the best course of action may be to try to motivate the team for the final push and watch the schedule closely. On the other hand, if your project has many months to go, then you need to see what can be done to repair the damage on the team as well as replan the schedule to deliver on a new realistic timeframe. Any plan is going to include the following items.
Communicate well. If the project manager is a poor communicator, it can result in a miserable project experience for everyone. Teams with poor morale tend to have poor communication channels. Don’t let rumors and uncertainty fester. Make sure you share as much information as you can about the project status and anything else that may impact the project team.
Praise and compliment. When people on your team do a good job, make sure they know it. People don’t expect money or gifts when they do a good job – just a pat on the back and a ‘well done’ by their manager. Give it to them – both informally and formally.
Set clear expectations. People need to understand what is expected of them so that they know the challenges they need to meet. Make sure you give clear instructions when you hand out work so that people understand what they are expected to do..
Dont over commit your team. As you try to improve morale, you also need to be careful not to over commit the team. Determine the work remaining to finish the project and remove anything that is extraneous or can be done after implementation.
Manage scope. Make sure you manage scope tightly and try to defer all changes until after the original project is completed. This is not an arbitrary scope freeze. The project manager should communicate the perception that the tram needs to complete the original work as soon as possible. If possible, scope changes should be deferred until after initial implementation.
Win some small battles. Poor morale can cause your team to miss deadlines, which causes more pressure and degrades morale even further. The opposite is true as well. If the team can start hitting some interim deadlines (and you communicate this fact and praise them), the team morale should improve, which may make it easier to hit your next deadline.
These are some ideas for turning the project around. First, make sure you understand where you are in the schedule so you know how much time you have to make significant changes. Also, make sure you try to identify as many team problems as you can, as well as the root causes, if possible. Then, put together an action plan based on how much work and time is remaining on the project. If there is not a lot of time remaining, focus on the schedule. If a lot of time is remaining, focus on repairing the project team, as well as completing the schedule.

PMP - Scope Management

An Overview of Scope

Definition: Scope is the way that we describe the boundaries of the project. It defines what the project will deliver and what it will not deliver. For larger projects, it can include the organizations affected, the transactions affected, the data types included, etc.

If you look at the reasons that projects fail, it is usually the result of two problems. Either the team did not spend enough time defining the project and/or there was a lack of scope management. Even if the project manager did a good job of defining scope, the hard part comes in having to manage the project to that agreed-upon scope.

First things first - without proper scope definition in the Define Work step, you have no chance to manage scope effectively. Evoking the scope change process implies that a change is outside the scope agreed to in the Project Definition. If that scope is fuzzy, or leaves room for interpretation, then the client may say that the change is within scope, and the project manager will find it difficult to make scope management stick.

The purpose of scope change management is to protect the viability of the current approved Project Definition. When the project was defined, certain assumptions were made as to what the project was going to produce. These were identified and agreed to in the scope section of the Project Definition. If the deliverables change during the project (and usually this means that the client wants additional items), the estimates for cost, effort and duration may no longer be valid. However, if the sponsor agrees to include the new work into the project scope, the project manager has the right to expect that the cost, effort hours and /or duration will be modified (usually increased) to reflect this additional work. This new cost / effort / duration now become the approved target.

Sometimes the project manager thinks that scope management means having to tell the client 'no'. That makes the project manager nervous and uncomfortable. However, the good news is that effective scope management is the art of getting the Sponsor to say 'no'. This is very important. Few clients can see and express every requirement up-front. Therefore, there are usually changes that need to be introduced during the life cycle. These changes may be very necessary for the solution and there may be valid business reasons why they should be included. The project manager and project team must recognize when these changes are requested. Then they must follow a predefined scope change process. This process ultimately brings the appropriate information to the Project Sponsor for resolution.

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Collation in sql server

The term, collation, refers to a set of rules that determine how
data is sorted and compared. In Microsoft® SQL Server 2000, it
is not required to separately specify code page and sort order for
character data, and the collation used for Unicode data. Instead,
specify the collation name and sorting rules to use. Character data is
sorted using rules that define the correct character sequence, with
options for specifying case-sensitivity, accent marks, kana character
types, and character width. Microsoft SQL Server 2000 collations
include these groupings:

• 
  Windows collations - Windows collations define rules for storing
  character data based on the rules defined for an associated
  Windows locale. The base Windows collation rules specify which
  alphabet or language is used when dictionary sorting is applied,
  as well as the code page used to store non-Unicode character
  data. For Windows collations, the nchar, nvarchar,
  and ntext data types have the same sorting behavior as
  char, varchar, and text data types
  


• 
  SQL collations - SQL collations are provided for
  compatibility with sort orders in earlier versions of
  Microsoft SQL Server.
  

Sort Order

Binary is the fastest sorting order, and is case-sensitive. If
Binary is selected, the Case-sensitive,
Accent-sensitive, Kana-sensitive, and
Width-sensitive options are not available.



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Sort order	Description
Binary	Sorts and compares data in Microsoft® SQL Server™ tables based on the bit patterns defined for each character. Binary sort order is case-sensitive, that is lowercase precedes uppercase, and accent-sensitive. This is the fastest sorting order. If this option is not selected, SQL Server follows sorting and comparison rules as defined in dictionaries for the associated language or alphabet.
Case-sensitive	Specifies that SQL Server distinguish between uppercase and lowercase letters. If not selected, SQL Server considers the uppercase and lowercase versions of letters to be equal. SQL Server does not define whether lowercase letters sort lower or higher in relation to uppercase letters when Case-sensitive is not selected.
Accent-sensitive	Specifies that SQL Server distinguish between accented and unaccented characters. For example, 'a' is not equal to 'á'. If not selected, SQL Server considers the accented and unaccented versions of letters to be equal.
Kana-sensitive	Specifies that SQL Server distinguish between the two types of Japanese kana characters: Hiragana and Katakana. If not selected, SQL Server considers Hiragana and Katakana characters to be equal.
Width-sensitive	Specifies that SQL Server distinguish between a single-byte character (half-width) and the same character when represented as a double-byte character (full-width). If not selected, SQL Server considers the single-b

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