managing-projects

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New Ideas or Repackaged Old Ones? (Only Old Guys Know!)

While reviewing “Unearthing Business Requirements: Elicitation Tools and Techniques”, Rosemary Hossenlopp and Kathleen B. Hass, ManagementConcepts 2008, I discovered the role of ‘Business Analyst’, as a real, important role on projects. Yeah, I know

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Self-Fulfilling Prophesy

Someone sent me an e-mail the other night reminding me and all his other readers of the benefits of optimism over pessimism.   He’s right.  You tend to get what you expect to get.
So, as a manager, if you expect the worst from your people, the odds are that’s what you’ll get.  They will sense your dislike [...]

The PM as saleperson?

The PM as saleperson?

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 [...]

talking about risks

talking about risks

One often-used lament I hear on projects and in project management classes is, “No one here wants to deal with realistic schedules and budgets.”   Interestingly, there seems to be two perspectives on this phenomenon…
First, from the “worker bee” perspective, there is a sense that “management” always “discounts” the estimates.
Second, from the “management” perspective, there is [...]

Are you spending too much time planning?

Are you spending too much time planning?

This may sound blasphemous to a professional project manager, but it is possible to over-plan. I have seen it happen countless times. It begins with a project manager with moderate analytical tendencies (e.g., an engineer) who has access to that ubiquitous project scheduling program, Microsoft Project. Actually, it does not have to be Microsoft Project–any [...]

Everything you know about project management is wrong

To someone else. Why?
Some project managers accidentally stumble into the profession. Others enter the field on purpose. Both groups tend to settle into a particular way of managing projects, and over time it seems most form specific ideas about what works and what doesn’t from their experience.
Projects in general have some similarities.

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