This week I run a short series on the behavior of individuals in general.

From a very high level perspective the behavior of a person is determined by

• who he is;
• how he is at the moment;
• what he wants, and
• what he thinks will happen.

What he wants

This is actually the 64 million dollar question: what do people want? Generally spoken, people will try to reach their goals, their desires, or try to avoid their fears come true. However, this can be so generic, to I will go one step back; peoples needs. The needs of humans is their ultimate goal that drives their actions.

People have physical or material needs, think about food, a roof above their heads, or may be some kind of transportation. Although once in a while I will come back to this needs, they will not be my main focus. I assume that in the context of software projects, people are not dying of hunger or are homeless.
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This week I run a short series on the behavior of individuals in general.

From a very high level perspective the behavior of a person is determined by

• who he is;
• how he is at the moment;
• what he wants, and
• what he thinks will happen.

How he is at the moment

If you ask someone the question "How are you doing?" you are inquiring about their current state, how they are feeling at this moment. How you are feeling has a big impact on the behavior you express. If you are feeling mellow, you will probably easy-going, where as you are stressed you probably react more intense then you normally would.

In Syed-Abdullah et al (2006) the researchers use a list of emotions and feelings to assess the current well-being of developers. By assigning a value to each of every entry in this list (e.g. 0=nothing, 10=maximal) we are able to describe the current state of well-being of a person.

The list they use is:

• Tense
• Miserable
• Depressed
• Optimistic
• Calm
• Relaxed
• Worried
• Enthusiastic
• Anxious
• Comfortable
• Gloomy
• Motivated

My column at TechTarget this month should have been called "Project Management From The Medina"….

So, women are going to take the lead within project management? You bet! Multi-tasking, social and communication skills are natural properties for the ladies; no trick, no profession, just natural.
….
Mark my words: projects in the near future are going to be lead from Arabic and Asian countries, heck maybe even from Latin America. And by women. Project management directly from the medina.

Read the entire column (you might have to register, but its free, and you have access to a lot of other interesting stuff).

This week I will run a short series on the behavior of individuals in general.

From a very high level perspective the behavior of a person is determined by

• who he is;
• how he is at the moment;
• what he wants, and
• what he thinks will happen.

Who he is

I am not going to debate the existential question "who am I?". I am talking more about the matter-affect properties as "I am a 36 year old male living in The Netherlands." Your gender, your age and if you have kids or not have a great impact on how you do the things you do. Although these properties of an individual can be expressed in exact values (number, yes/no, male/female) there is also the more vague concept of personality. Most people would agree in this respect, and would even be able to express some characteristics like outgoing, closed and kind. But if you are trying to get some objectivity in this matter, you quickly get stranded.

Luckily for us, a lot of psychologists have dedicated their lives to this question, and provided us with some ideas. By creating categories of personality everyone can be assigned to a certain personality "value". This is not perfect, but it is sufficient for our discussion. I will use the most famous one, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. By answering some question a person can be assigned a certain Meyers-Briggs type, which gives a basic outline about your personality. People are scored against four dimensions (called "dichotomies"), and in every dimension you can only have one value.

The dimensions are (based upon Wikipedia):

• Introvert and Extravert; are you focused inward or outward.
• Sensing and Intuition; this dimension discusses the way you perceive information; a stronger tendency towards the present and using stuff you see (sensing), or more focuses on the future and let your gut guide you (intuition).
• Thinking and Feeling; discusses your tendency towards how you make decisions, more rational and calculated (thinking) or more emotional and subjective (feeling).
• Judging and Perceiving; when given a situation, do you approach this more with a predefine judgment, or is you approach more open minded, and are you just "consuming" the situation?

By assigning every score on a dimension a letter (indicated with bold), the indicator can be expressed by a 4-letter combination, having 16 possible combinations in total. Like I said, this approach has drawbacks, but at least it allows is to assign a value to the term "personality".

Today I got an email from Ken Thompson about his SwarmTeam project. I have talked to the guy earlier this year, and his story is amazing.

You really have to check it out… and imagine your project swarm team

One of the biggest challenges facing those who promote media, brands, communities or causes is how to meaningfully engage with mobile online groups in a way which, instead of turning them off, turns them into ambassadors and champions. Thats where Swarmteams comes in - the Community Engagement Tool inspired by nature.

Check out the 4-minute video which outlines the 7 simple steps for engagement marketing using Swarmteams.