Project Management Maturity with Virtual and Non-PM Teams?

   Ahead of Friday’s Project Management Maturity Forum, guest speaker Brad Clark shares answers on a few advance questions from our participants.  Brad is the co-founder and Managing Partner of Advantinum Group, an Ohio-based management consulting firm, and is Maturity Measurement Team Lead for OPM3^® Second Edition.

Q:  “How do you achieve project management maturity when project teams are virtual, using many people who don’t have a project management background?” (more…)

To what extent will the understanding of Customer/User experience help improve the bottom line of businesses?

   Continuing on thoughts around maturity and the evolution of project management…the PMI-Silicon Valley Chapter is hosting their 10th Anniversary Dinner next month, and joining the festivities will be Stanford Advanced Project Management’s Dr Christopher Meyer to share his insight on how the future of project management will play a role in delivering a good customer experience.  Chapter President Harish Chinai and I recently had a conversation on this topic, and thought we’d see what others in the group have to say.  (more…)

Keynote on Creating Excellence

Creating Excellence in/through Project Management means optimizing and achieving greater results from project-based work…realizing a competitive advantage by executing strategy through projects…significant advancements in maturity of people, processes, and the environment of a project-based organization.  It involves forming a picture of an ideal environment for implementing projects…and requires an honest assessment of the current reality.  A Maturity Survey provides data about the environment, and gets management attention about strengths, development opportunities, benchmark comparisons, best practices, and action plans.

The multimedia experience in this keynote address (more…)

Project Management Evolution

  With two major milestones underway at the PMI-Silicon Valley Chapter, this week seemed like a good time to take stock and share thoughts along the theme of “Project Management Evolution.”  Joining me in blogging this week will be Harish Chinai, Chapter President, and Larry Bull, PMI’s Director of OPM3® product and services.

I left my Silicon Valley roots “decades” ago — before Apple’s Macintosh Plus, while the Valley still had orchards, and when project management methodology was hardly mentioned outside of Lockheed.

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We All Know Best−Books for Project People Part 6 of 6

If you ever watched Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, the one thing you learned for sure was to never, ever, vote against the audience when you used your “ask the audience” lifeline. Why, because 91% of the time, they were right! That blew away the accuracy record of “asking a friend”, (supposedly the smartest person you can come up with and someone who can find internet answers in under 15 seconds), where that singular expert was only right 67% of the time. So always go with the audience consensus. (more…)

Grow Up

 Brilliant adolescence is not a recipe for continued success in Silicon Valley, although it has been largely responsible for a great deal of momentum to date.

To address this concern in your organization, invite your sponsor to invigorate your organization at the Project Management Institute (PMI) Silicon Valley Maturity Forum 2007 Projects Programs and Portfolios in Organization on Friday, September 14th at the Decathlon Club in Santa Clara.  There is just a limited time left to register at www.pmisv.org.

I’m looking forward to opening this event by talking about “Creating Excellence in/through Project Management.”  Then learn about a strategic execution framework, assessment tools, benchmarking data, and the organizational project management maturity model (OPM3).  This is an important event not to be missed.

Randy Englund, www.englundpmc.com

When Gooey is Good−Books for Project People Part 5 of 6

For anyone who is might be in the habit of drinking soda near their computer, maybe the word “sticky” strikes terror into your heart, but if you are a project manager wanting to get buy-in for your project or product, Chip and Dan Heath provide you with some powerful tools in Made To Stick (more…)