common-sense

That requirements will change is a given. How you plan for and manage that change is crucial. Think about what you want to accomplish with your change management, what you want to protect yourself from, what you want to avoid, and then put in place the practice that makes sense for you.
Having a [...]

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.

Think about Google and Net Apps.  Now think about the Ritz-Carlton Resort-Hotel Chain, Best Buy, Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods and Wynn Hotels.  What do they all have in common?
It’s how they treat their people.

Technorati Tags: building_relationships, common-sense, everyone-wins, Interpersonal, Leaderhip, management-theory, Professional-Development, soft-skills, What-really-works

In the past, both here and in my own newsletters (Diamonds to You) I’ve written about the fact that although there is no I in teams, there certainly is a ME.  I want to continue with that theme.  I am quoting myself from my November Newsletter.
Here in the United States, we have a long history [...]

Hmm… I remember the bad old days and maybe some of you are still living tlhem, getting up early or staying late to call some foreign country..

Technorati Tags: agile-leadership, best-practices, common-sense, Cross-cultural-teams, cross-functional-teams, distant-teams, Getting-Things-Done, global-readiness, offshoring, Program-Management, project-management-from-a-distance, Time management, traditional-project-managment

I thought it would be fun to list some impressions of favorite and least favorite Project management books and methodologies.  I wrote none of these.  You too, can feel free to refute my oppinions or add your own replies or spam us with the latest project managment religion.  Why not?  Everyone else does. 

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Having made a moniker name called theUnknownPM kinda makes it impossible for me to push my own products so instead let me do the next worst thing for a moment and engage in random philosphy.  How do you know if you are a success or a failure at what you are doing?  Are you a [...]

An increasing number of organizations are listing project management (PM) skills as a requirement for their managers. It’s no surprise that many people want to acquire/improve their PM skills. I’d like to start a discussion about the value of the various ways one learns.
First, a few disclosures: I consult on PM issues, [...]

Here’s one of those really good (and at the same time really irritating) questions to ask yourself – why is it that I know so much more than I actually do when I want to be successful at something?  This time of year always reminds me that even though I know the plan for just [...]

Even after the 5 stages of team formation, as project managers, we still find people not being able to work together well, ourselves included. We have to deal with sponsors, stakeholders, team members and C level management. There is no question that some people can get things accomplished, issues resolved much easier, more successful [...]

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 [...]

Ugh, the communication pitfall.  We’ve all fallen into them.  The question is, can you get out?  Or better still, can you avoid them next time?  Here are a few common ones:
 

Our product spec change discussions happened over email, and now I can’t tell what we decided on, much less find the supporting material!
I seem to [...]

I’m looking for some insight from all of you on a point that’s been bothering me lately. On many recent projects, “time to market” has been defined, and rightly so, as the top priority (I still use the triple constraints as a key organizing/prioritization guide). Given the competitive pressures and the related shortened [...]

Welcome back everyone to blog # 4: your opportunity to look in the mirror to see what you see about having you lead, or work on, any project: and you had better see a leader or else you are going to see a follower and if you are follower, then you may be the one [...]

Common sense says that when working on a project with results that really matter, one should agree on a plan of how to achieve the goals, consider what might go wrong, and make sure everyone who needs to deliver results is committed to doing what needs to be done to make it happen. However, here’s [...]

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 [...]

I believe we need to rethink our views about failure. Truly, the only failure is if we fail to learn from each and every project, regardless of the outcome.

Technorati Tags: best-practices, common-sense, communication, failure, project-management, teamwork

As organizational leaders, we are continuously bombarded with conflicting guidance on how to excel. A great example of this confusion is found in the April issue of the Harvard Business Review. In the cover story, we find that a leader can discover that the pathway to profitability and sustainable growth is to centralize operations, the [...]

In his 2004 book, eXtreme Project Management, Doug DeCarlo declares that “the world of project management has changed radically, totally and irreversibly”. DeCarlo contends that traditional project management as outlined by the Project Management Institute’s Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge belongs to the past and is not effective or appropriate for most of today’s highly chaotic and high speed projects.

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Would you do it again?  Is it time to stop?  For me I think the answer is I’d never have that kind of energy and chutzpah again, not for some random faceless corporate projects anyway, and yes, it’s time to stop.  So yeah, after hitting the glass ceiling both in terms of title and salary [...]

I am, at heart, an analyst. There is nothing that would please me more than being able to shut my door and do some thinking and come up with plans and processes — then wait for the good results to come in. Of course, there is a major flaw: people. No, the people aren’t flawed [...]