AMBULANCE DRONE

More use than pizza delivery, to be fair:

The flying defibrillator drone created by Dutch TU Delft student Alec Moment flies at 100kph for a response time of just 1 minute. Theoretically increasing the chance of survival from 8 percent to 80 percent. The drone tracks emergency mobile calls and uses the GPS to navigate. Once at the scene, an operator, like a paramedic, can watch, talk and instruct those helping the victim by using an on-board camera connected to a control room via a live stream webcam.

Top 5 Employee Motivators

It seems like most important decisions always come down to the numbers. This is especially true for management. This month I am introducing a new blog entry called Fascinating Numbers. In these short blog entries, I will share fascinating numbers that provide important insights into the world of management and leadership. For the first entry, I will share the top 5 motivators at work. Although the rank order for the top 3 motivators may vary depending on who conducts the survey,results consistently show over time that the top 5 motivators for employees are the following:

Top 5 Motivators:

1. Challenging Work
2. Recognition
3. Employee Involvement
4. Job Security
5. Compensation

These fascinating numbers show that employee morale is more directly affected by the boss and his or her management and leadership styles than it is by job security and compensation. (This is true, of course, when employees’ compensation and job security are reasonable for their needs and are equitable.)

Numbers are fascinating!

Organizational Change: 8 Reasons Why People Resist Change :

With the rate of technological growth, our Information Age, and the global economy, change is now the normal state of business. Organizational change does not come easy, however. As many as two-thirds of organizational total quality management efforts fail.

Senior sponsors of the change often blame its failure on employee and middle manager resistance to change. At times, this is true. More often, however, senior leaders and managers over-estimate how much change they can force on the organization. Some also do not understand how difficult it is to lead and implement change effectively. Leading and implementing change requires people skills!

8 Reasons Why People Resist Change.

Challenges to define a Product Owner 

This research aims to support our Universidade Municipal de
São Caetano do Sul’s Information Systems Bachelor’s final paper.
The data will be treated in confidence and their results will be
only used for academic purposes. It will not take more than 10 minutes to answer the questions.We appreciate your participation.
Bruna Bravin
Dorivaldo Alves Júnior
Heitor Nascimento Cardoso de Lima
Marianne Guelbali Perton
William Roberto da Silva

* Required

1) What is your professional profile? *


•  Executive
•  Product Owner
•  Project Manager / Scrum Master / Team Leader
•  Analyst / Developer / Tester
•  Consultant
•  Other: 


2) How long have you already worked with agile methodology? *


•  Less than one year
•  From one to five years
•  More than five years
•  I have never used agile methodology


3) Which of the following segments of the market do you work? *


•  Telecommunications
•  Retail 
•  IT Consulting 
•  Industries 
•  Public Sector 
•  Finance / Banking / Insurance 
•  Other: 


4) What is the percentage of projects does your project team do using SCRUM?


•  71% to 100%
•  51% to 70%
•  26% to 50%
•  0% to 25%
•  Unknown / Do not know opine


5) When adopting agile methodologies, the organization needs to be structured and organized to formalize agreements and administrative controls, using requirement management and conducting operational control over the resources, contributing to the objective of achieving good results in the product delivery to the customer. *
Answer based on your experience with Scrum


•  Strongly agree
•  Partially agree
•  Strongly disagree
•  Do not know the answer



6) According to your working environment, classify organizational culture according to the criteria below and according to the vision that you have about these criterion. *




	Always happens	It occurs mostly in	Rarely occurs	Never occurs	Unknown / Do not know the answer
Supple and flexible, focused on innovation and change
Promotes a conservative environment
Promotes visibility of products, processes and organizational structure
Strait relationship through communication, through memos, newsletters, newspapers and even face to face communication
Free communication between different sectors and hierarchical levels
Provide clarity regarding objectives and expectations for performance linked to reward
Freedom for criticism and discussions, but with restricted communication between hierarchical channels
Use of rules and regulations supervising and support employees



7) In your opinion, what are the biggest mistakes that many organizations make when they try to implement Scrum or another agile methodology? *
Choose one to three options


•  Model everything from beginning, and more ahead changes will be more complex to do
•  Frozen the requirements or the project to make sure that each developer progresses with the project
•  They make sure that model is irrelevant
•  Imagine that it is all about data modeling
•  They adopt the opinion that everyone should know modeling
•  They use supporting tools
•  Try to finish the scope of the entire project before starting the sprints
•  Do not have a suitable Product Owner
•  Does not have full and frequent involvement of users / customers
•  I do not know opine 
•  Other: 


8) Among the difficulties to define a Product Owner, the organization culture is a crucial factor. *


•  Strongly agree
•  Partially agree
•  Strongly disagree
•  Do not know the answer


9) Among the determining factors by the success of a project in software development, we can consider that choosing the right project manager is the principal component. In this context, the Product Owner has to Scrum the same or higher relevance. *


•  Strongly agree
•  Partially agree
•  Strongly disagree
•  Do not know the answer


10) In your opinion, does the similarity between the Product Owner and Product Manager roles, disrupt his function on an agile project? *
Product Manager: responsible for planning and developing a project of a new product.


•  Strongly agree
•  Partially agree
•  Strongly disagree
•  Do not know the answer


11) Which of the following roles found on traditional methodologies, like PMBOK, do you think the Product Owner role is similar to? *


•  Project Manager
•  Business Analyst
•  Stakeholders
•  Product Manager
•  There is no similiar role
•  Do not know the answer
•  Other: 


12) In your opinion, which kind of Product Owner do you think that can have a better performance, internal or external? *


•  Internal, because already knows the company culture and the team project
•  External, because avoids personal conflicts and will work according to the needs
•  It does not matter, since it has the needed skills
•  Impossible to define, because depends on each project
•  Do not know the answer


13) Do you consider an improvement adding the human resources and communication management processes from the PMBOK guide to a SCRUM project, in order to support and complement the management? *


•  Do not consider it an improvement, because the methodologies are not compatible at all
•  Do not consider it an improvement, because it would change the agile methodology principle, objectivity
•  Completely consider it an improvement, because the PMBOK items can complement a SCRUM area which do not have deep knowledge
•  Partially agree
•  Do not know the answer


14) On a Scrum Project, the Product Owner is one of the most important role and, therefore, it assumes many responsibilities, for example taking decisions. In your opinion, can it make a Product Owner act like a manager? *


•  Strongly agree
•  Partially agree
•  Strongly disagree
•  Do not know the answer


15) Which of the following characteristics, do you consider essential for a person who is Product Owner? *
Choose up to 4 you really consider important.


•  Leader
•  Communicative
•  Experienced
•  Available
•  Creative e Innovative  
•  Adaptable 
•  Impartial
•  Authoritarian
•  Visionary
•  Do not know the answer


16) Which of the following negative characteristics can affect the performance of a Product Owner? *
Choose all you consider necessary.


•  Indecisive
•  Authoritarian
•  Desmotivating
•  Be partial in development team or stakeholders relation
•  Inexperienced
•  Do not know the answer


17) In your opinion, which of the following technical skills are needed to a complete Product Owner? *
Choose all you consider necessary.


•  a) Strong knowledge in the project business rules.
•  Negotiation techniques  
•  Communication techniques
•  Strategic vision
•  Know how to monitore the ROI (Return Of Investment)
•  Requirements evaluation techniques 
•  Strong knowledge in agiles environment
•  Strong knowledge in software development
•  Other: 


18) In your opinion, should Product Owner know IT frameworks, for example, ITIL, TOGAF and COBIT since they contribute with product value maximization? *


•  Strongly agree
•  Partially agree
•  Strongly disagree
•  Do not know the answer


Thank you very much for answering the questions. If you would like to obtain a copy of the results of this research, please, let your e-mail address below.