Archive for November 2007

After years and years of Project Management it finally became obvious to me there was someone or something I wasn’t addressing. No, I’m not talking about all the usual people project management challenges all those references mention, or even some they don’t mention.

Technorati Tags: Accountability, appreciation, best-practices, communication, Emotions, Environment, Leadership, [...]

. . . well, kind of . . .
Holy guacamole! Two weeks ago I had a ridiculous notion creep stealthily into my noggin’ . . . and, as is my habit, I set yet another seemingly impossible goal (one of my bad habits!) . . . to have my book be MORE popular than [...]

Posted on behalf of Neil Sherman, Founder and Chief Bitnologist of Advanced Bitnology (a software and electronics design house) and one-time undervalued employee of Druck upon his reading the chapter on rewards, recognition and appreciation in my “Scrappy Project Management” book. Catch the Attitude of Gratitude! Kimberly
Reading “Scrappy Project Management: The 12 [...]

A friend of mine once told me about a technique for keeping track of lessons learned.  She keeps a file labeled “DNDTA.”  That stands for “Do Not Do This Again.” 
The idea is to write a note to yourself describing something you did that would not be such a good idea to do ever again, then [...]

Just as there are many ways to manage a project, there are many ways to cook a turkey.
We all have our favorite way to do it:  Oven-baked, Bar-B-Cued, Deep fried, or even Outsourced.  And we choose the best technique using various success criteria:
-          Results
-          Taste
-          Moisture content
-          Effort
-          Expense
-          Convenience
-          Novelty
-          Familiarity
All these factors impact what [...]

Thanksgiving at our house is a family affair.  Everyone from the youngsters to the elders all come together under a single roof to enjoy the holiday feast.
Now that’s not to say we all come to this occasion with the same perspective.  There are many differences in how we approach the event.
For the elders, it’s a [...]

Why is it that we need a special day on the calendar to remind us to say thank you?
I guess it’s because we get so tied up with our day to day tasks that we forget to appreciate and acknowledge what others do for us.
Fortunately there are exceptions to this rule.
For example, I received a [...]

Clear roles, clear goals and the best laid plans are no guarantee of success. This entertaining piece is posted on behalf of Laura Mappin, Founder of MetARTmorphosis. (Picture is from her web site www.bauboroars.com) Enjoy! – Kimberly

I have lots of experience in hi-tech. I parlayed that into a crochet business. [...]

Unusual title I know – Saturday at last (and my last blog here)
I just spent the day shooting clays – my score is getting better every time I get out on the range and practice. One day I may actually be able to hit all of them – who knows.
The reason for the comparison is [...]

A fast overview of the things you need to check from a project management perspective.
(Friday …… at last…………..)
This week we have looked at a number of areas.
The first is that of the environmental compliance actions arising out of the MRD (Marketing Requirements Doc).
Everything related to environmental compliance hinges on this document and the geographic areas into [...]

A project manager’s guide to reliability aspects of lead free electronics implementation.
I trust that you are not part of a team that expected to just change the solder from leaded to unleaded and call it good.
If you are part of that team I suggest you start getting the resume up to speed and start browsing [...]

How the EU RoHS legislation turned engineers into lawyers: :
From a Project Management perspective it can sometimes be a little frustrating when there are delays due to the BOM verification on an electronics project: particularly when the environmental compliance aspect did not used to be a check list item: …
Just a few years [...]

In any project plan, there is generally an awareness of the phases of the project life cycle (PLC) which is mapped out from product concept through to product end of life (EOL).
The program management of these phases is critical to the successful on time delivery of an electronics “widget” into today’s environmentally aware (and legislated!) [...]

Hi – My name is John Burke, and for the last 9 years I have been involved in the process of environmental awareness and change in the electronics industry to more friendly materials that enable recycling, re-use of materials, and more environmentally and human friendly materials and processes. 
For those of you who have been through [...]

(Posted anonymously on behalf of a program engineering manager at a fine, upstanding organization where it would be best if his name was not used.)
Things are going well on the home front. I am beginning to draw a lot of correlations between parenting a newborn and succeeding at work. A few examples:
1) [...]

I have come to believe that leadership is really about what you do and influence others to do, rather than primarily about a particular outward charisma..   However, I do believe that how you come across to people CAN significantly add to or substract from your effectiveness.
We ask people to do hard things – work hard, meet tough deadlines, operate in the [...]

I wanted to do my last big post on bridging from these ideas of what constitutes a great PM to what it can mean for someone’s overall career.   Of course it seems obvious that if you’re a great PM, you’ll get more opportunities.  Certainly  you’d seem like the person to call for bigger and hairier and [...]

Today I want to tackle a couple of typical questions I hear about what a great PM needs to be (or not) and do.
1)  Does a PM in a technical environment need to be “technical” themselves?
2)  Does a PM need to be a charismatic leader?  (Or what DOES it mean for a PM to be [...]

Continuing my observations on what executives value – what THEY think makes a great PM.   First, by contrast, it’s interesting to note what the job ads for project managers say.  Here’s a sampling of line items I’ve seen in such ads, covering a mix of PM skills and ‘personality attributes’:

Proficient in project planning, organizing,  team [...]

So what DO executives think of us as project managers and what do they value?   I know from conferences and other interaction with project managers that being valued by their executives is something of a holy grail – and seemingly not nearly common enough.  Thinking back, I realize that I was about 7 years into my [...]

This week I’ll be writing about what it means to be a great project manager – from the perspective of my own career and interactions with other PMs; from what i’ve heard executives say about what they value; and from the unique, interesting and opportunity-filled career paths I’ve observed and heard about specific project managers pulling off!   As [...]