What happens during a Map Day?

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 to get agreement on what the deliverable is. (more…)

How do we communicate “PM’s Intent”?

Yesterday I discussed the concept of “Commander’s Intent”, a commonly-used military concept whereby a commander shares his/her intention with respect to a mission so that the troops are able to adapt and respond to change without necessarily having to involve the commander. This concept can be extremely useful to provide flexibility to PMs and their teams. (more…)

Project Leadership or Project Management?

We, project managers, focus a lot on how to successfully define and complete projects. What’s the charter? The scope? The deliverables? What activities does the team need to engage in? Are we in control? On schedule? On budget? At times, the myriad details are overwhelming. Depending on the culture of the organization, the volume of details to be tracked can be so large that most of our time is spent in tracking the details. We may even need a project assistant/coordinator to be able to track the details. (more…)

Typical oversight areas in Project 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:

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Saving the day - solving a potential crisis

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.

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Don’t let the tools get in the way of managing your project

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 them working on finding the exact right tools - instead of typing up some grant requests.

When hiring Project Managers do you screen for their ability to manage people and juggle events, resources, problems -or do you worry about them knowing the project management software used by your firm? (more…)

Over-extending - over-commitment - over-time

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! (more…)