action

The “secret” code to success and advancement in any organization is to make yourself more valuable, align with organizational goals, attract like minded individuals who want to make a difference, and take the initiative.
Several recent indicators support this path.

Technorati Tags: action, Priorities, project-office-of-one

The escalation process worked! As work on the program drifted past the scheduled completion date, Proman sensed the pressure coming from across the organization. Managers wanted their engineers back to work on product development, not on solving broad reaching technical issues. But the impasse was real. Development could not continue (or [...]

And who says Project Managers do not know fashion couture? How does this tie to what we do daily you ask? PRADA is actually an acronym for a set of characteristics or values that I believe should be inherent in any successful project managers and I have encouraged my project managers to think [...]

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 [...]

My ex-husband always made us late for appointments because he’d estimate time “as the crow flies” – not ever taking into consideration red lights, kids having to go to the bathroom, wrong turns or any of the other things that cut into time estimates.  Ray was an engineer – a damn good one at that!

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It seems to me that too many High Tech companies have become so bureaucratic that the processes and meetings and inability to make decisions bog projects down unitl they die from boredom.
I see meeting after meeting after meeting of people afraid to take risks and actually make working decisions.  Instead, everything is discussed ad-nausium.  Is [...]

Do you recognize that your current project is late, but you haven’t taken steps necessary to rescue it, except for saying “we’ll work harder to bring it back on schedule?” If you admit that you should do more to handle your project lateness, then the next question is what steps you should take? Actually, the [...]

A short while ago, our fearless leader, Kimberly, wrote about the six hats.  I thought I’d add a little to her suggestions.  The technique, called “Six Thinking Hats”  comes from a book by the same name written by E. deBono. (Boston, Little, Brown & Company, 1985)
The beauty of the technique is that it helps participatns [...]

I had dinner tonight at the Cheesecake Factory.  I sat at the bar ’cause it was so crowded and next to me sat a very lovely lady who was obviously in distress.  We chatted.  Her Project Manager had yelled at her so rudely (in her opinion) that she was seriously considering quitting a job she [...]

The payment is project failure.  The investment is effective project sponsorship.  Successful project managers invest in managing their sponsors: they avoid becoming victim to bad situations by proactively eliciting the support they need.
Examples abound about how project managers manage upwards. 

Technorati Tags: action, building-executive-support, communication, Leadership, project-management, project-sponsorship, sponsor

Part One of Creating the Project Office is creating the conditions for change; Part Two is making the change; Part Three is making change stick.  Our greatest challenge in putting the concepts into action is to rewrite the myth of Sisyphus.  Greek gods condemned Sisyphus to keep rolling a rock to the top of a [...]