Archive for November 2006

I haven’t quite put my finger on it, but something I’ve noticed about the human condition that retards our ability to be successful project managers. When we see someone else fail we can easily assume that it’s because they’re stupid, but when we ourselves fail it’s an honest mistake or just bad luck. “They” [...]

I just learned of Keith Raffel’s novel, Dot Dead: A Silicon Valley Mystery. From what I understand Dot Dead was published last summer.
You can find out more information on Keith’s Dot Dead Library (http://keithraffel.typepad.com/dot_dead_diary/)

Has working on a project ever made you so mad that you wanted to commit murder? Has one demagogue in a power position seemed bent on sabotaging your project? Have you been forced to lead a project that you knew was destined to crash and burn? If so, you can relate to the protagonist in [...]

Recently I attended a Commonwealth Club lecture on Women in Business. Ilene Lang, President of Catalyst, was there and brought forth some sobering statistics about women in leadership positions.
I must admit, I tend to be very cautious when statistics are tossed out without adequate context, but looking around the web I was unable to [...]

As organizational leaders, we are continuously bombarded with conflicting guidance on how to excel. A great example of this confusion is found in the April issue of the Harvard Business Review. In the cover story, we find that a leader can discover that the pathway to profitability and sustainable growth is to centralize operations, the [...]

In his 2004 book, eXtreme Project Management, Doug DeCarlo declares that “the world of project management has changed radically, totally and irreversibly”. DeCarlo contends that traditional project management as outlined by the Project Management Institute’s Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge belongs to the past and is not effective or appropriate for most of today’s highly chaotic and high speed projects.

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In my many years of running projects I have often looked back and asked why it was always so difficult to get things done. Every time the answer came back, “It’s the stupid people from the top to the bottom.” Of course, I also made mistakes, but it was mostly their fault”. This reminds me [...]

This past summer I went to a baseball game. It wasn’t completely without benefit. I enjoyed indulging in the traditional stadium food and libations, the $1 hot dogs formed from some unrecognizable substance and the “it shall offend no one” stadium beer (nor shall it please anyone, but let’s not be sticklers). [...]

We have been exposed in recent years to many project management and product development methodology terms with often subtle differences in meaning. The latest version of the PMBOK, for example uses the term “progressive elaboration” to describe the eventual realization of project scope after multiple iterations of planning. The project scope becomes more explicit and [...]

In Flocks and Swarms – The End of Control As We Know It

(blogs.cio.com, Tuesday, October 24, 2006), Michael Hugos asks, “What makes a flock of birds or a school of fish move as if they are a single entity? What makes them all suddenly rise, turn and accelerate at the same time? There is something [...]