To blog or not to blog, that is the question. I have been thinking about why do I blog lately. Newspaper, magazine have been talking about the blogsphere for quite some time. Some people think blog is just an open dairy, some other blog is the new media that can revolutionize the traditional mass media. Technically speaking, blog is just an online content managment system. There is no limitation on what content can show up in a the blog, that all depends on the blogger’s personal perference. Writing blog is just like writing a notebook, if you write dairy then your blog is a dairy; if you report news then your blog is a journal; if you write stories then your blog is a novel. People write blog for different reasons, some want to share his thoughts with friends, some write for popularity, some want to change the world, some simply want a place to keep track of his own writing.

I start writing blog two years ago. At first I just want to write something everyday to practice my writing skill. Later, I want to capture my thoughts before they are lost forever. Then writing blog become the mean to force myself to think, trying hard to squeeze out the last ounce of creativity. For a while, I saw some bloggers rank high in the blogsphere and wanted to chase after popularity. Although not many people reads it but I still want to do a better job and I gave myself unnecessary pressure. I stopped for a moment and think it over. I should just return to the root of writing blog, just write for fun and express myself. My blog is a projection of my mind. If my writing is kinda messy, so be it, because my mind is also a mess.

If I have learned a single key concept from the project management training that is project management is all about ownership and accountability. You are accountable to make some deliveries in the project, and that may depends on the deliveries that is out side of your control. You have to communicate with all your stakeholders who is accountable for what and hold them accountable for what they promise to delivery. If something is changed, there is always a ripple effect that affect everyone down the line. That is where the dependency chart comes in place and have to communicate well ahead of time to all stakeholders the line of responsibility. The other concept I learned is contingency plan. Contingency is different from padding. Padding is hidden in the schedule or resource allocation but contingency is shown as a separate item in the project plan, it is not meant to be use but allow flexibility to handle risk that may arise in the project. Stating the obvious assumption and constraint in the project plan is also very important, since many obvious thing are not that obvious. Unless you write it down explicitly, people tends to ignore them. Fundamentally, effective communication underwrite all the project planning practice. The instructor told us eventually what determine whether the project will success is not how well is plan, but how good the relationship the people involve in the project. The soft skill is more valuable than the hard skill in project management. Everyone in class agree we need to improve in our communication, we are all engineers who talk to computer more than people after all. In short session about communication, the instructor reinforce the concept I have learned Archibald Putt and Dale Carnegie. The end of communication to archive what you want, but the mean is to talk about what other people want. Effective communication is that your proposition can be summarized in less than 25 words. When making a presentation, left out the details or you asking for unwelcome questions distract the audience from your goal. All idea has fit well in a 15 minutes presentation, which is the amount of time people willing to hear form you before they lost their interest. I think I have learned a lot in this 2 days training, not any new knowledge in particular, but some high level concept that is universally useful.

I attended an offsite training today at Vancouver Golf Club on project managment.  The course itself is more or less the same old stuff I read from the book “Rapid Development”.  However, the environment is really nice and a tasty lunch is included.  That place is classy golf club that require dress code, no jeans are allowed.  Since we are all engineers who love to jeans, we got kicked out from the place by 4:30p.m, so we won’t disturb the dinner customers.  The material in the course is useful, having an instructor giving presentation is better than reading on your own, and I could always use the review.  This course has lots of workshop sessions with group discussion on work place sceniro.  It turns out everyone complains alot the malfunction in managmennt practice in PMC during the workshop session.  We all understand the value of the project managment principle taught in the class, the problem is that our bosses don’t get the same idea.  Sadly, the instructor agree with us that something is really wrong with the management work flow in PMC.  She told us to follow the project management best practice, but it won’t solve our problem.  In the ideal management world, once you have done your part raising the issues to your manager, you should not be accountable to the project failure.  Here in PMC, the management only look at and reward the result, regardless who suppose to be accountable.  The instructor tried to comfort us saying that PMC has improved quite a bit since she teach this class a few years ago.  If the high up doesn’t see the problem and inititate the change, it is useless to give this kind of project managment course to the people down below.  I wonder is this project managment training really try to teach you something useful or just part of the corporate brain washing scam making the workers more obedience.

When you dine out in a restaurant, usually you have to pay tips on top of the amount on the bill. The original intention of paying tips is to reward good service. However, tipping slowly deviated from its original intention and no longer correlate to the service level. Most people just pay the same amount of tips regardless of the service they receive. Tipping becomes a hidden cost not shown on the menu, so the food appears cheaper to the customers. The restaurant owners can pay less to the waiters and the wage is made up by the tips from the customers. The waiters forgot the meaning of tips are really gratitudes, now they take it for granted they will receive tips from customers. Some places even listed the required amount of tips on the menu as service charge and printed it on the bill. The effectiveness of Tips has changed from positive reinforcement to negative reinforce. You no longer get better service for paying tips, instead you will guarantee a bad service next time if you didn’t pay enough tips. In another word, as long as you won’t visit that restaurant again, you don’t have to pay the tips. There are other subjective factors that make people pay tips, such as saving face, politeness or simply don’t want to deal with troublesome waiter in case he ask for tips. There is no objective benefits paying tips to restaurant you never go again. In game theory, this is the difference between one-time games and repeat games.

There is objection to my argument for not paying tips by making an analogy of tips to bonus. Actually, game theory can apply to paying out bonus. Most people think companies pay bonus to its employees to reward good works, but never ask the question why they have to reward good works. The company reward good works because it give incentive for more good works. No company will ever pay bonus to the employees if they are going to be laid off, it is just a waste of money. Although the amount of the bonus each receives is judged by work in the past, but it is really as investment in human capital for the future. In term of bonus, rewarding good work is just a mean, stimulating more good work is the end. When tipping fail to stimulate good service, then there is no need to paying tips.