If you aren't already familiar with Google Wave, check out some basic info, and a very in-depth video here. Wave is a new project from Google that reinvents email communication. Forget everything you know about email, it was invented back in the 70's, things have changed; technology is faster, we have cloud computing, web apps look fancier, and for a while, a large portion of email users are moving (back) to web based clients.

Email is the current method of communication and collaboration when working on a project. You usually have a folder for that project in Outlook, some rules to filter project related messages into that folder, and an email chain for each issue. People reply to messages inside that chain somewhere, the thread gets continued, people get added to the thread, people drop off. You don't know where you are in the chain when you check in a few hours later, and you get bombarded by... STOP!

Wave is very early in its adoption, it's invite only, but it has the strong potential to fix a lot of these problems. It can clean up a lot of the clutter of project communication and throw it on the cloud so you can get to it anywhere. Wave does need some more security built in for the corporate settings, but that is in the pipeline. Right now waves can only be private or public, but once inside a private wave, that user can invite anyone.

Some notes on how Wave can help a project:

• Each Project would get its own folder in wave


• Anyone working on the project would have access to this folder


• Every issue or conversation would get its own wave and everyone who needs to be involved in the issue is added to the wave.


• At this point every project related message is confined to the projects folder. No Outlook rules or message dragging will ever be needed. If a new person needs to be involved in the discussion, they are just added to the wave, no forwarding or reply-all.


• The conversation can continue similar to email, with individual replies, but it can be so much more. In line replies with related topics can appear right with the original topic, not hidden down 6 replies in an email chain


• You can show only new replies on the wave and get caught back up in the discussion quickly


• You can do a playback of all or part of the discussion and see who chimed in and when


• Need to share documents? You will eventually be able to drag them right out of your file system into the browser and into the wave. (This is currently only supported for pictures)

As I said, Wave is very early in its adoption, but after more people join, and more developer plugins come out, I think it will be a very valuable tool both in the workplace and at home.

Cheap. Fast. Good. Pick two. That's the classic project triangle. As best as I can tell its an immutable law of the universe. No matter how much you try, you can only control 2 points at any given time. At Ai (driven by Wertheimer) we incorporate these points into a statement of priority from the clients, called a Faceted Feature Analysis. (Link will take you to the full story). Different clients are sensitive to some points on the triangle more than others, so we move the project priorities around in order to accommodate them.

This triangle is a source of confusion, however. That's because there is (or at least seems to be) more than one triangle in play. In fact there are three, making a triangle of triangles.

The second triangle is the Faceted Feature Analysis (FFA) triangle.

The mapping between the first two triangles is mind-bending, but legit. What we're saying here is:

• If Cost is the most important factor to a client, then Business Value is paramount.
• If Time is the most important factor to a client, then Technical Ease (how easy it is to build) is paramount.
• If Quality is the most important factor, then User Value (or usability) is paramount.

The FFA triangle is about prioritization. It is implied by the classic project triangle, but it serves a somewhat different purpose. This is all about trying to figure out which features are the most (or least) important.

Which leads us to this triangle - the bad news triangle. This is the one that gets pulled out when hard decisions have to be made, the one that people most want to deny. (Deny it all you want - this is like the Law of Conservation of Energy at work here...). At a certain point, something has to give - it can be that the schedule might not happen exactly on the target date, or it might be that the budget might be a bit different than originally anticipated or that the features delivered might be a bit different than originally anticipated. Maybe this should be called the Honesty Triangle.

UPDATE: Some people (who didn't bother to leave a comment) feel that the last paragraph is too negative, that it implies that projects always ride off the rails, and that drastic scope needs to be cut, or drastic schedule slippage must occur or that massive budget adjustments must be made. Sorry if you got that impression - that's not what I'm trying to say.

The point is that there MUST be a flexible point on the triangle. The triangle is viewable through various perspectives, depending on the condition of the project, which can be influenced by many, many factors. No one wants to be in the Honesty Triangle, which is the point at which you must make hard decisions. And most of the time, you don't have to be there. But, should you, for whatever reason, find yourself with a project where the schedule is slipping, then its time to look at the honesty triangle. Honesty hurts, remember.

A while back I posted about how to survive crunch periods (How to Crunch). Tom Sullivan, a journalist writing for PM Network magazine (put out by the Project Management Institute) decided to interview me for an article he was writing on the same topic for this month's issue.

Unfortunately it looks like the crunch article isn't one of the ones that are offered as PDFs on the site, but if you or someone you know is a PMI member you should be able to grab it. If I find a way to access the article directly (or if someone wants to tell me how) I'll post a link here.

(Not sure if I love that photo....oh well)