Archive for October 2007

To recap, “Don” came in to talk to me about his project. But he walked in angry, saying he’s thinking of quitting, and I was caught off guard. I was dazed, but within a few minutes I regained my composure and was ready for the next stage of stepping into emotional pressure.
In any relationship there [...]

Emotional pressure often comes right out of the blue. And when it does, it can be very hard to deal with.       
On the day that I was meeting with “Don,” a new team member to talk about his initial project, I was blindsided by the pressure that he came at me with. And I’ve noticed that [...]

Some time ago I was managing a team at a small company, when I faced a challenge with a talented employee. “Don” had just been assigned to my team, and we were meeting to discuss next steps for his initial project. I wasn’t prepared for what came next.             
Within a couple of minutes, Don’s anger at [...]

Does your team seem to be allergic to process?  Have you been trying to implement project management best practices and meeting resistance? 
If so, have you addressed your team’s inherent questions, like “How will this make my life better?” and “Is that improvement enough to merit the hassle of changing?”  Have you explained how this will [...]

At an entrepreneurs’ forum I recently attended, I was heartened to hear that even startups recommended checkpoint reviews.  
The term “checkpoint review” can have different meanings in different contexts; in this article, it refers to a cross-functional executive review that the project team must pass to continue.  This happens at key milestones to make sure your product is on [...]

Quick: what’s the biggest challenge in cross-functional collaboration?  Bing!  Yes, “building trusting, open relationships” is correct!  Does that sound too Oprah-esque?  Let’s think about it for a minute.  How do you build trusting, open relationships in your cross-functional team, and why does it matter?
Let’s start with why it matters.  How successful will your collaboration be if each [...]

So you need to put together a schedule, but are having trouble getting estimates from your team?  Believe it or not, that’s good news! 
Well, not great news: great news would be quick, accurate estimates, honed by years of experience and factoring in a reasonable amount of risk. 
But it’s not bad news, either.  Bad news [...]

Does this sound familiar?
Project Manager:  I thought I knew where we stood, but turns out we’re further behind than I thought.  This latest slip is going to have a domino effect.  I wish I had known earlier, when we could’ve done something about it!
Task Owner: I don’t want to make a big deal out of [...]

Ugh, the communication pitfall.  We’ve all fallen into them.  The question is, can you get out?  Or better still, can you avoid them next time?  Here are a few common ones:
 

Our product spec change discussions happened over email, and now I can’t tell what we decided on, much less find the supporting material!
I seem to [...]

Project Sponsors, does this sound familiar?  You’ve got a great team, and you’ve pointed them in the right direction on a new project.  They work really hard, but what they come up with isn’t what you had in mind.
Project Managers, does this sound familiar?  Your project sponsor passes along some high level guidance to your [...]

On Oct. 9 we had the launch of my new book “Scrappy Project Management: The 12 Predictable and Avoidable Pitfalls Every Project Faces”
Well over 150 scrappy people joined us for the scrappiest book launch in the history of “Happy About” books, my publisher (www.happyabout.com). I was more than a little relieved, because [...]

 
If you read the business news you must be aware of the intense rivalry between the European Airbus Consortium and The Boeing Company dueling to capture the future commercial aircraft market. Both of these companies are in the final stages of major programs to deliver new generation airliners.
These are huge projects worth billions of dollars in both development costs [...]

I read sometime ago in some management publication (whose name I can’t recall) that project management will never be considered a profession, but rather, an inherent and necessary skill set. The premise is that most professional and non-professional people in any industry will require project management skills to do their jobs, be it CEO or pharmacist, but there will be no [...]

Most of us know that risk comes inherent with a project because projects involve unknowns. What I find in my project management travels is that many project managers don’t understand the difference between a risk and a problem. Why is this important?

Technorati Tags: Planning, project-management, Risk

We all know that project management is primarily a people business. As such, communicating with humans is the most important skill you possess to achieve success. How well do you communicate? I have been married for 40 + years and a project manager for over 25 years and I am still trying to improve my communication skills. Ask my [...]

One of our guest bloggers, Cinda Voegtli, is the CEO of ProjectConnections.com Cinda’s running a contest, and the prize is a copy of my new book “Scrappy Project Management.” We hope you will play along! Details below. – Kimberly Wiefling, Author, Scrappy Project Management.

Tell us your scariest project horror story and how [...]

Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal had an article on job stress that says that being expected to do more with less, a familiar mantra can cause serious heart disease.
I can actually name several very brilliant project managers who have left work in an ambulance, some never to return.   
 
Herman the PM is not surprised:  The message that [...]

One of my favorite activities as a Consultant/Coach is fostering the use of “questioning” to really liberate people from their “dreads” and worries about the projects they manage. Project managers need more training in this technique, as they often think they have to have a ready answer to the questions of others. The goal is [...]

Fact: Project schedules or budgets seldom include “meeting” time costs which often exceed 35% of time available to work on a project. Include them and be surprised!  
Yes, it  is getting more difficult to meet because everyone is doing other (ghost) jobs that management didn’t realize needed doing on the project..
 
Imagine this scenario (real):  After [...]

First Branding:
Herman: I am not in marketing or sales!  How can branding my Project save ME time with stakeholders?
 
Answer:  You have to Advertise what you are ACHIEVING and NOT Achieving even it is only mystery and frustration.  Most projects are NOT well understood, EVEN by the managers that conceive them. The art of “internal” branding   [...]

This weekend I was teaching Project Risk and Opportunity Management at Santa Clara University in the graduate engineering school.  As I was watching the students work on their group projects I pondered that this might be a good topic for a blog.  How should risks and opportunities be managed from a system perspective especially for [...]