people

One of the reasons I got into Project Management in the first place is that I’ve always been interested in people – their personalities, where they are from, what makes them tick.
Growing up overseas in Japan, I attended an international school for foreigners, and there were kids from all over the world – kids whose [...]

It had all the earmarks of a disaster, a real career-sinker of a project. And here was my old friend and former colleague calling me up enthusiastically, on the phone: “Hey Lisa, we need a Technical Project Manager for this start-up I’m working for, in Redwood Shores… you’ll love the project and the team. It’s [...]

After years of managing online products and projects, you’d think it would become old hat… but never, not for this gal. There’s always something new to learn, and a different twist on old scenarios, if you’re open to them. People and team dynamics are endlessly fascinating, and you never know how it’s going to go [...]

As Project Managers, I’m sure we’ve all seen the kind of scenario where there is a project team member who is generally uncooperative or can’t seem to get the tasks done on time – and the different approaches you can take in order to solve this problem. You can take the dictatorial “Do as I [...]

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 [...]

Halloween Bonus:
What Do These 3 Tales Have in Common?

PM Horror Stories 5, 6, and 7

The Incompetent Estimator

The Messy Contributor

The “Gotcha!” Boss

Technorati Tags: case-studies, Difficult-people;-timelines, Dysfunctions, human-factors, Interpersonal, Managing-stakeholders, people, Project-Horror-Stories, Risk

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… 

Technorati Tags: Culture, people, [...]

Five Whys provides a structured yet simple approach to solving problems as they occur during a project and can provide a framework for a team to work through complex problems. It is a simple process at its core. 

Technorati Tags: best-practices, Career development, communication, human-factors, people, problem-solving

Much as he did earlier in his career, Proman was now at another crossroad. The large program had just concluded. What’s next? He noticed how engaged he’d felt during the process. Each day he threw himself into the proceedings with renewed vigor and seemed to know instinctively what to do. [...]

“To err is human, to forgive divine”, therefore is cursing and swearing considered an acceptable human err in a workplace? In my past 12 years as a program manager, cursing and swearing have never being absent in all my projects. But as a project manager, where do you stand on this?

Technorati Tags: communication, diversity, [...]

Thanksgiving at our house is a family affair.  Everyone from the youngsters to the elders all come together under a single roof to enjoy the holiday feast.
Now that’s not to say we all come to this occasion with the same perspective.  There are many differences in how we approach the event.
For the elders, it’s a [...]

One of the on-going risks for technical people these days is to be seen as a commodity-and treated as such. How many times have you heard the need for talented technical people reduced to a description of rather “vanilla” technical skills-like, “we need a great JAVA guy”? Now, granted, you cannot fill a [...]

I serve on the board of an organization seeking grant funds.  They formed a committee.  The committee meets weekly and weekly and weekly – and when I recently asked about hte progress of their grant requests I was told that they finally decided to work with a Yahoo group and some Google tool.  Meeting after meeting took place with [...]