Career development

By Rich Maltzman • June 3rd, 2009

Taking advantage of the social networks that we PMs have started to form on LinkedIn, I did some polling in early 2009 to gauge the interest level (see post below) in the brand-spanking-new PMBOK(R) Guide.
Using a completely non-scientific scale that I made up in 17.4 seconds, and asking the question on the larger LinkedIn Groups [...]

Courage is positioned as a pivotal issue for project management panache by Mike Levy. Courage is facing difficulties without fear. So what’s to fear in project-land? Plenty!
Let’s name a few fear factors:
•    Potential loss of job
•    Actual loss of team members
•    Churn in project portfolio’s
•    Confusion in corporate goals
•    Lack of time for skill development
•    [...]

Craig Brown in his Monday comment professes that project management panache requires presenting information with no fear. When the news is bad; it takes pluck and power and prowess.
What is pluck? It is passion, grits and guts for a subject. For me; project performance improvement is my passion. I, like Craig, talked about the Chaos [...]

Project management panache packs a punch when project managers are perceived as “having expertise in a critical area.” Andrew Meyer pressed this powerful point in response to the first blog on panache.
Expertise is defined as providing unique interpretations and insight (readmore). Andrew also posited that this is the may be the only protection against project [...]

My prodigiously prolific project management peers have several deliciously witty answers to the question; “what provides a project manager with the panache needed to stand strong in tough situations?” yet, none walked away with the text book answer. A textbook answer is. . . . (can you hear the drum roll crescendo?)
•    Context in which [...]

What’s panache? Its your distinction style. You know project managers who have a special sense of dash, verve, or flair? They seem to consistently pull off tough conversations with apparent ease and confidence. And they get noticed and get recognition and respect.

As can be expected, much of the feedback pointed towards a cutback in new investment and thus projects.  Another significant portion of the comments discussed another inevitable trend in hard times…increased scrutiny of current projects and focus on the dollars.
Cutbacks

North America – Although layoffs have occurred in the Canadian oil patch in recent weeks, the [...]

Today I would like to cover two categories in the survey that are nearly opposite.  The first is Reduced Quality. The second is what I classified as an Increased Demand for Good Project Management.
Fire
Most of these actions appear to me to be short-sighted ones that solve a current financial problem at the expense of long-term [...]

Moving up through the categories, I’ll discuss three now:

Project Manager Layoffs
Project Staff Reductions
Reduced PM rates.

Reading through the responses, may of them were not surprising. One thing I noted in a few posts was that some companies are shedding senior PMs and opting for less experienced ones. Of course I have no idea about [...]

Status Quo
Ah, it is nice to hear that some people are not feeling any impacts due to economic recession. 8% of the respondents noted that they have not seen any impacts. Half of those were from the North America, other responses came from Australia, India, and Africa.
I noticed 2 similarities from what I [...]

I recently conducted a survey on pmStudent.com asking for anecdotal stories about how the economy is currently impacting project management. This week I would like to share the results with you.
The survey was 100% anonymous, and I even removed any identifying information that a few responders put into the answer. Note that this survey [...]

Accidental Project Manager Series
Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4 / Part 5 / Part 6
Part 5 of the Accidental Project Manger series talked about communication success by identifying what is important to your stakeholders. Knowing what is important to all types of stakeholders improves your ability to uniquely craft your [...]

Accidental Project Manager Series
Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4 / Part 5 / Part 6
Part 4 of the Accidental Project Manger series talked about accelerating project success by managing all the global stakeholders.
Another issue you need to manage is project communication. You now have the business case in hand (from [...]

Accidental Project Manager Series
Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4 / Part 5 / Part 6
Part 3 of the Accidental Project Manger series talked about making sure you are working on a project that is important to your organization (and to your next promotion) by documenting benefits in a business case.
Another [...]

Accidental Project Manager Series
Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4 / Part 5 / Part 6
Part 2 of the Accidental Project Manger series talked about key reasons that you are attracted to project management. So now that you are a project manager, what lessons can you learn from other project managers? [...]

In classrooms all over the world little children are taught the importance of coloring within the lines.  Indeed, they are often called names like “sloppy” or “careless” if they don’t conform.
In some cultures conformity to the norm (tradition) is everything.  Everyone must toe the line and behave appropriately.  Those that deviate from the norm are [...]

I was recently working with some relatively young (well, pretty much everyone seems to be younger these days) software developers beginning to make a transition into project management.  As we were going over some of the PM responsibilities and tools, one of them asked, “A lot of this sounds like selling.  Don’t we want to [...]

I get many questions from people who want to enter into project management as a profession. After all, my blog is pmStudent. One of the most common questions is “how do I get started”? I received an email from a reader recently with this question, and so I would like to share [...]

What comes to your mind if you hear the word “leadership”? When talking about leadership, people think of Jack Welch, Martin Luther King, or Nelson Mandela, individuals who have led large corporations, movements or countries. Individual leadership, however, starts with the person. Who would want to follow you, if you would not [...]

The Bay Area Agile Project Leadership Network (BayAPLN) is a nonprofit that was created in 2006 to develop, promote and sustain a learning community of Agile Project Leaders. One of the ways they currently do that is by organizing a free event after work every month that allows its members to come together to share [...]

Phil Messina, a project manager at HP, volunteered to document the PMI Norcal Symposium 2008. Here is his report.
Randy Englund, Content and Program Director, www.englundpmc.com

On September 3rd and 4th, nearly 300 project management professionals settled into the Stanford University Faculty Club meeting room in Palo Alto, California, for the NorCal 2008 PMI Symposium. [...]