Plan a party

There are several similarities (if you look for them) in planning/having a party and running a project. So it could be fun using the different tools you use in work when preparing a private party.
- Planning phase
You will get a wider variety of what is needed if you kick off the project with a brainstorm/plan session and sort out what is needed. Probably more people will get commited to the task as well more people helping allowing you to keep an easier pace and not be run to the ground on the big gala-night.
- Execution
During the planning, it would be great if the actions needed could be handed out to the participants.
- Test
Follow up calls regulary will work as some kind of test-round. Here you will have instant feedback on what have been missed. If you just follow up the final days before the event, much as in real-life, to many not-solved issued may surface to late.
- Release
This would be the event itself. Good planning and preparations will result in success.
- After work
This is probably seldom done in these kind of projects, but there are always things that pop-up during the "release" that you could be improved. If you spend half an hour during your hangover and pin down some notes you should be able to redo it all with less effort next time.

What project method to use is up to you, agile processes most certainly will work as well. Prepare each sprint about what needs to prepared first etc and evaluate them when done.


My lessons learned from a party last weekend:
- Make a strong welcome drink and make sure everyone (not drivers...) obtains it. It should not be anything left. -> People should relax as fast as possible...
- Any activity before settling at the table wich force people to interact will also help getting into "party-mode"
- In the planning, do not forget the cosy-improvers in the purchase list (candles, decorations)

Moving around

Today I was in search of a usable notebook in order to try to get my head around keeping track of my thoughts thoughout the day and, more importantly, remember stuff at a later stage. After trying out OneNote from Microsoft (cool tool on their site enables you to try the tool online) I concluded that it was probably a bit overkill to start up with.
However, some more googling led me to googles tool, http://www.google.com/notebook/ and since I already use google docs (and am quite happy with it) I started with this as well. The benefit I see is that is available at all time when online. Have not tried it offline yet though...

To get back to the subject, when trying out the google notebook I noticed I have several accounts at google, so I am trying to align the account in order to finish up with one single account. The result of this is that my old blog was renamed (it was connected to the username that lost the battle), the posts is available at http://www.krisleswe.blogspot.com/ and will be moved to this URL when time allows it.

Total commander 7.02a

Total commander is one my favorite softwares, used daily. It contains the features you need in windows explorer and has several additional features. A new version was released this september which is strongly recomended, download available from webpage.

Planning poker

Estimation of task within a project is never easy and there are many methods. Best practices are usually involving all/most of the team members in this process in order to get the tasks discussed and spread the knowledge early.
One downside when planning/estimating in a larger group is that there is allways some in the team that are more efficient in selling their case which will affect others thoughts. I found this intressting (and simple) tool that will help get all first opinions on the table and with this sort out if the team agrees or the discrepancy is too large, probably to some missunderstanding which can be sorted out.
Check out the tool and more pros/cons at: Planning poker