Feed Your Head

Do you have the opportunity to learn while you work, to take a look at your project experiences for lessons learned?   Is the idea of learning from experience just another thing that’s fallen into the “knowing-doing gap”?  The mature organization encourages and capitalizes on learnings as the starting place for refinements and new initiatives.  How many of us work in mature organizations?  In my experience, adoption of a more Agile approach can help to enact and spread practices that support growth, even in a non-Agile environment (more…)

Project Communications - The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (Part 3 of 3)

We have all been on projects where an understanding different stakeholder groups becomes a ‘touchy-feely’ process.  You have a gut feel for their tolerance for change, commitment, ability to influence and what they view as important.  Most of the time we are wrong but if we had some real data for these areas, then we could establish effective communications and begin to understand what challenges faced us during our project time line. (more…)

Project Communications - The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (Part 2 of 3)

In part 1 of this blog, we talked about not all communication events were pushed out to the project stakeholders.  Let’s look at some different types of communications interventions that represent the information, ideas, topics and subject matter that flow to and from the stakeholders through formal communication channels. (more…)

Wrap-Up from Maturity Forum

The PMI Silicon Valley Maturity Forum 2007 is now history…at least for the event but not in the mindset of participants.  Here is my recap from this important event:

My keynote message covered WHAT, HOW, and WHO need to address project maturity in their organizations.  WHAT is the ten pieces of the puzzle to create an environment for successful projects.  HOW is the eleven step journey to create a project office and lead organizational change.  WHO are project sponsors who need to be fully on board to achieve management commitment for project success.  (more…)

Project Communications - The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (Part 1 of 3)

Many of you have heard the old adage of “Communicate… Communicate… Communicate” as a preamble by a Project Manager at a project kickoff meeting?  You sit there and try to see the significance of this statement and your role in the project.  But the project manager sounded so sincere and purposeful when he/she said it that everyone nodded their head up and down and with everyone having their own interpretation.  (more…)

How To Get our Process to the Next Level of Maturity?

  Brad Clark shares another Q&A session based on a Maturity Forum participant’s question:

Q:  “Our company is growing very fast and we need to get our process to the next level of maturity to support an enterprise company – can you provide some guidance to help us manage this?” (more…)

The Measure of a Successful Project — a Businessman’s View

  Continuing on this week’s theme of Project Management Maturity, here is a piece provided by Larry Bull, PMI Manager, OPM3® Products and Services:

What is the measure of a successful project?  In days of old, the standard answer to this question was usually “on scope, on time and on budget” or some derivation of the tried and true “triple constraints” of good project management.  However, such performance often was met with a response from stakeholders that pointed to a less than acceptable level of project performance; in some cases, even project failure. (more…)