Archive for May 2007

So, what happens during map day? Yesterday I gave a quick overview of the process but now it is time to provide more details.
The objectives of a map day can vary depending on where a project is. At the beginning, it is a way for all team members to get to know each other and [...]

How do we communicate PM’s Intent? Here’s an idea.

Project leadership vs. project management: it’s time to apply more leadership and less management!

efficiency, stated Peter Drucker, is doing the thing right, but effectiveness is doing the right thing – through enabling others to reach their potential – both thire personal potential and their corporate or institutional potential.  (quoted in DePree, 1989, pp.19(2).
Here are some typical oversight areas:

Technorati Tags: community, focusing-plans, funding, goodwill, human-factors, organization, other-variables, political-issues, Priorities, [...]

Managing projects, as I keep repeating, is about managing people and problems.  I have a great example of a manager who handled a customer situation ideally.  I was the customer.

Technorati Tags: best-practices, crisis, customer-service, Execution, Leaderhip, real-world, treating-people-well

I serve on the board of an organization seeking grant funds.  They formed a committee.  The committee meets weekly and weekly and weekly – and when I recently asked about hte progress of their grant requests I was told that they finally decided to work with a Yahoo group and some Google tool.  Meeting after meeting took place with [...]

My ex-husband always made us late for appointments because he’d estimate time “as the crow flies” – not ever taking into consideration red lights, kids having to go to the bathroom, wrong turns or any of the other things that cut into time estimates.  Ray was an engineer – a damn good one at that!

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Tonight in a restaurant, we were charged an extra dollar for “blackening” the fish.  The waitress told us (oops, to be politically correct, I should have said “the server”) that it was a charge for the extra spices.  My companion and I commented to each other how cheap that felt – how “nickle and diming” [...]

It seems to me that too many High Tech companies have become so bureaucratic that the processes and meetings and inability to make decisions bog projects down unitl they die from boredom.
I see meeting after meeting after meeting of people afraid to take risks and actually make working decisions.  Instead, everything is discussed ad-nausium.  Is [...]

Do you recognize that your current project is late, but you haven’t taken steps necessary to rescue it, except for saying “we’ll work harder to bring it back on schedule?” If you admit that you should do more to handle your project lateness, then the next question is what steps you should take? Actually, the [...]

Does your organization only give lip service the product development life cycle and not adequately provide requirements before design and development begins?
The biggest, baddest and most ugliest pain point for project management professionals is missing, ambiguous, misunderstood or incorrect requirements. To increase project success, conduct verification and validation activities to find requirements defects early in [...]

Has requirements creep become a requirements stampede in your organization?
This is a major pain point for project management professionals; requirements creep after requirements are baselined. Increase requirements stability on your project by adopting a requirements sign-off process to increase stakeholder understanding of what they are committing too.

Technorati Tags: best-practices

Is your Vice President ambitious and overwhelming your department with new project work?
I understand the frustration of having an overflowing list of projects. It was a major headache after the .dot com crash when there were less of us to do the work. Now the valley is busy again and your project portfolio process is [...]

Is everything on your project is in flux; new users, new stakeholders, and they have new project priorities? Argghhhh.
Yesterday I shared that I recently surveyed project management professionals. The issue of churn of key stakeholders was a big pain point for the 30 project participants. When the new stakeholders change project priorities, you can easily [...]

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Does your director reward you for responding to urgent needs? ……And the problem is that all their needs are urgent. You have sympathy for your manager since you know how your company needs to keep up with the competition. But responding to constantly changing management needs causes your project plan to [...]

A while back, I watched the PBS production “A Class Divided”. If you haven’t seen it, I recommend it. It was especially interesting when applied within the context of project teams. The video hinted to some of the quality and productivity loss that can be associated with a segregated environment of any kind, which probably [...]

Smartly building trust is a key activity for successful collaboration. There is a lot of complexity involved in working successfully with others. And fortunately there are specific practices which can get you much better results. Here’s what works for me.
1. Build connection through a “hearing and being heard” process.
2. Commit to clarity, in yourself and [...]

In business school I took a class where we worked in a team of four to do a strategy project for a local company. I partnered with a friend and two other classmates who I knew less well.
We worked hard work and met frequently throughout the semester, resulting in a successful presentation for our client. [...]

One evening I was in Rochester, NY for business and I went looking for Indian food. I decided to check out a place that someone recommended as being “very authentic.” I went in and ordered, and the waitress asked me how spicy I wanted my meal. My generic answer is “mild” but she offered “medium, [...]

To me, a key ingredient for a productive meeting is connection. Otherwise, why meet at all? But how many meetings have you been with someone who was physically there, but mentally: elsewhere? Or perhaps you’ve been that person who isn’t really present?
Thus I wonder, “How can I establish connection upfront, to set the stage [...]

In January I did a series of blogs on “Getting Smart about Trust.”
Laying the Groundwork for Trust. I talked about the initial stages of exploring trust, and told a story of how doing so helped me through a tough situation.
The Critical Trust Question. I recounted one of my corporate adventures where I didn’t do enough [...]