Program-Management

I’m sure you have had a chance to write a vision or mission statement at one time or another in your career. In my 25 years in high-tech corporate life, I’ve seen hundreds. Unfortunately, most of them were poorly written because the authors failed to capture the true goal of a vision statement, and missed [...]

The global business landscape is littered with expensive, well-intended strategies that don’t deliver value, often because leaders failed to identify and invest in the full range of projects required to support those strategies.  Co-author of Executing Your Strategy, Mark Morgan demonstrates what organizational alignment for strategic execution really means and how to engage [...]

I have worked in a true Project Organization, a Strong Matrix and a Weak Matrix.  From a corporate perspective, there are pros and cons to each and the company must select the format that works best for them.  However, from a Program Management perspective, the role changes significantly and what makes you successful in one [...]

Ok, we have performed a number of interviews and town hall meetings at all levels of the company, evaluated the company culture, and elected to develop a PLC.   Now we need to define our implementation and get the job done.
Implementation:  Based on the feedback

Technorati Tags: Program-Management, project-management, Project-Portfolio-Management, project-sponsorship

I always wondered where you would find a PMO practitioner?  The width and breadth of a PMO covers many distinct and different components designed to meet the strategic needs of that enterprise.  The scope of each PMO may begin differently but with maturity and support over time, can be expected to evolve into a contributing [...]

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. 

Technorati Tags: [...]

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. [...]

The applause was thundering as the magician completed his performance. Proman A. Jecgert had hired the magician to help celebrate the completion of what would come to be called Phase One. The party included all participants across the organization. The grove in the trees was a perfect setting, and the sun shone [...]

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 [...]

Seated at the table across from him, Toni made a grimacing face. The news was not good. Proman had started the weekly meeting by reminding key engineers from each of the study groups that resolving these issues was the top priority for the group. The group general manager had come by his [...]

I’m old enough to remember life before “Smart” Phones, Cell Phones, PDAs, and Email.  Heck, I still remember the smell of the mimeograph machine when I was in elementary school.  Today I have a “Smart” phone; you know part mobile phone, part PDA, part computer, and it contains everything about your day-to-day life; including pictures [...]

Recently I looked at my calendar and caught myself saying “Sweeeet only 4 hours of meetings today”.  That’s when I realized “I’m in meeting hell”. I had always suspected this, so

Technorati Tags: meetings, Program-Management, project-management, Time management

A mentor of mine once attributed this quote to General George Patton. I don’t know for sure if Patton said this first, but I do know that these are words for every Program/Project Manager to live by. I’m not saying that running a program is equivalent to waging war, although it may seem that way [...]

Have you ever been the program manager on a job where you planned everything down to the smallest detail; you collected the requirements, got your experts together, reviewed what it would take to perform the development, and finally presented your plan to upper management.  They were so impressed with your presentation that

Technorati Tags: portfolio-management, [...]

A second complaint from my students (see yesterday’s post) is: “Management adds requirements to my project without asking me if I can still make the schedule and without taking anything away.  All the time.”
Of course, what’s “bad” about this behavior is not that requirements change: that’s expected: although there must be a limit.  What’s “bad” [...]

During an intermission of Andrea Bocelli’s concert tonight, I was comparing his concert tour project manager job to my own high tech project execution. How much difference, how big of a headache would it be and would I want to do it, I asked myself.

Technorati Tags: cross-functional-teams, customer-centric, Program-Management

After years and years of Project Management it finally became obvious to me there was someone or something I wasn’t addressing. No, I’m not talking about all the usual people project management challenges all those references mention, or even some they don’t mention.

Technorati Tags: Accountability, appreciation, best-practices, communication, Emotions, Environment, Leadership, [...]

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 read sometime ago in some management publication (whose name I can’t recall) that project management will never be considered a profession, but rather, an inherent and necessary skill set. The premise is that most professional and non-professional people in any industry will require project management skills to do their jobs, be it CEO or pharmacist, but there will be no [...]

PROJECT MANAGEMENT BEST PRACTICES
TO AVOID CAREER LIMITING MOVES – PART 3 of 3
Jeff Schlageter
President, Project Acceleration
Jeff@ProjectAcceleration.com
Wouldn’t it be great to have a list of project management “best practices” that would help you benefit from the experiences of hundreds of other program managers? In a way, these best practices would be like having your own project [...]