Project Toolkit Gone Awry

Horror Story No. 4
This collection of project horror stories would not be complete without a tale concerning… MICROSOFT PROJECT

Listen now to the saga of The Project Toolkit Gone Awry

We were expanding, and expanding FAST.  Not five, not ten, but 200 stores were to be built-out, and it was my job to create a project plan for each store, and then roll them all up together into an overall Master Project Plan. (more…)

False Confidence Killers

By Thomas Cutting, PMP

You leave for your flight well ahead of schedule.  Traffic is light and you arrive, unhurried, at the airport.  Strolling up to the counter you secretly laugh at the frantic people running toward the crowded ticket line or scanning the flickering departure screens in panic.  Being the saint that you are, you even let a mother with a screaming child ahead of you in line, silently praying they are not on your flight.

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Inspire…Challenge…Transform: some definitely do it all!

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. Speakers and registrants from Hawaii to Spain attended the event, with the bulk of participants coming from the greater Central California area.

Attendees, shuttled to the Faculty Club from an outlying Stanford campus parking lot, stoically braved room air conditioning problems, exacerbated by hotter-than-normal August temperatures, to experience what was promised by the Symposium’s theme: inspire…challenge…transform. And it was worth it!

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Culture of Attrition vs. Culture of Retention

I recently worked for two very different companies: Company A, a huge, global company with a heavy reliance on contractors; and Company B, a small, regional company with a core staff that had been there for quite some time.  I was struck by the difference in my first day at each company… 

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Crack Open the Safe

Lessons Learned are the nuggets of knowledge derived from past experience and outcomes to promote the reoccurence of desirable results or prevent the reoccurence of undesirable outcomes.  It’s about figuring out what went wrong and what was right.  So. why keep your lessons a secret?

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Disaster Planning

It’s a funny thing how life continues again and again to give us pause for thought.

In industry, we know that the unemployment rate is going up. The valley seems to be weathering the storm and the financial press is full of speculation that there will be more jobs created next year – me? – Personally after the last year of roller coaster rides in the housing and financial market – I do not believe that anyone can predict what will happen next month let alone next year on just about anything from the price of gas to the price of a pound of rice.

As an example I had a very interesting time a few weeks back. (more…)

Notes From A Stress Fest

Kimberly Wiefling had an article on Projects@Work (www.projectsatwork.com) giving us a taste of some hard-learned lessons when dealing with project sponsors.

I’ve always loved Kimberly’s sense of humor and highly recommend just about anything she’s written. This is a great example of education a la entertainment. Check out her book too, I own it and can highly recommend it.
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