Andrew Meyer

Many people have heard about the fate of Sisyphus, but not as many people know why.  That is what we care about for it relates to a lot as project managers.  
Sisyphus was the cleverest of men.  He was forever getting people to do things.  Sometimes by asking, other times by cajoling and yet other [...]

I grew up in a rural area.  Rural enough that dogs chased cars.  Extraordinarily enough, the dogs never caught the cars.  In fact, they never got close.  It was good sport.  The dog felt very fulfilled, barked aggressively and made sure to never come close to catching the car.  As best as I can recall, [...]

Have you ever been on a project or program where all the PMs knew that their project was in trouble, but they were waiting for someone else to admit their problems first?  It happens often enough, as soon as one PM admits that they have a problem, everyone else discovers problems too.
 
The Prisoner’s Dilemma
From the [...]

Have you ever asked yourself this question?  I have.  There were times I thought I was sure I knew what our team had to do and how to get there.  Then there were other times when we were making progress against our plan, but the project wasn’t progressing.   I’ve most often encountered this when [...]

When Project Managers and others work on projects, they often consider themselves enlightened seekers.  People seeking new and better ways to do things.  They are often frustrated by those not eagerly embracing the changes.  Let’s call them dwarfs; people who are not on a journey, but who have the knowledge and almost magical power to [...]

The results have come back and people like the title Project Manager.  The options and breakdown where:
Project Journalist 14%
Project Scapegoat 7%
Project Enzyme 7%
Project Manager 21%
Other 21%
Project Martyr 7%
Project Leader 14%
Project Evangelist 7%
Reasons given include:
Project Martyr – Only gets recognition and notariety upon falling on the sword of a failed project.
Project Leader – As a military [...]

The greeks measured time in two ways.  Chronos, the quantitative measure of seconds, minutes, hours and days and Kairos, the separation between two moments of important opportunity or discovery.
It’s easy to measure chronos, every project schedule does that with the help of every clock.  How many hours, days, weeks months will that task take?

Technorati Tags: [...]

First an update on voting.  Quite a few people really liked Project Manager, which isn’t surprising.  There are also some other additions.  Check it out and feel free to vote again. VOTE HERE
A Little bit about Day Traders

In the world of financial services, day traders have existed since the first days of formalized markets.  What [...]

Dr. Martin Luther King used to end speechs by quoting a prayer from an old slave preacher.  It’s an apt description of approaches to projects today: “Lord, we ain’t what we want to be; we ain’t what we ought to be; we ain’t what we gonna be, but, thank God, we ain’t what we was.”
On [...]

Words ought to be a little wild, for they are the assaults of thoughts on the unthinking.        – John Maynard Keynes
We are living in times of great change.  In two years, few of us will be where we are now.  This week I will publish five posts that attempt to live up to Keynes’ advice.  [...]

By Andrew Meyer
People are inherently self organizing. Who did you make friends with when you were a kid on the block? When you went to school, there were many kids in school, but there were a couple who became your friends. Why?
Are you organizing your teams so the become more efficient and effective, like the [...]

Should you find yourself in a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is likely to be more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks. – Warren Buffett
There is no point in denying that change is in the air.  You can prepare yourself so that you’re in the best position where you are, but [...]

By Andrew Meyer
“Times change, we change with them.” – Latin Proverb
In 1983, US companies spent $32 billion on IT, which accounted for 9.8% of their total investment in fixed assets that year.  By 2006, spending had risen almost tenfold, to $294 billion, and IT accounted for 21.1% of new fixed assets purchased that year in [...]

By Andrew Meyer
History is a guide to navigation in perilous times. History is who we are and why we are the way we are. – David C. McCullough
This is the part 2 of 4 looking at the credit crisis:

One of the biggest problems we face today is the egregious mismanagement and reckless incompetence of many American corporate boards which utterly fail to do their primary job of holding managements accountable.
- Carl Icahn, Oct 7, 2008
Don’t Be an Ostrich
Many people watch what is happening on Wall St hoping they will not be affected. Sooner [...]