project-manager-role

Oh yeah, more anecdotal data tells me silicon valley wants SO MUCH MORE for so much less!

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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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In my many years in the technology industry, I’ve spent thousands of hours in meetings, most of them as boring as all get-out. During this time I’ve seen many interesting changes. I’ve seen meeting presentation technology evolve from flip charts and story boards, to overheads, to video projectors, and most recently, to laptops in front [...]

“My psychiatrist told me I was crazy and I said I want a second opinion. He said okay, you’re ugly too.”
Rodney Dangerfield
Just like dear departed Rodney Dangerfield, project managers get no respect!
The Harvard Business Review has a website, where you can find decades of great business articles from the magazine. Subscribers can go to [...]

As the scope of your projects expands, you’ll need to engage teams, not just individuals, from around the world to accomplish your goals. Last weekend I was reminded about the challenging role that leaders who play an interface function between the global leadership team and their organizations. Two consultants from the Organization for Applied Research [...]

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 [...]

Proman A. Jecgert put the phone back in its cradle.  It was a distressing call.  The caller was very frustrated and negative about what was going on.  “The place is in a mess,” she said.  “People are doing their own thing, and managers aren’t stepping in to guide the development process or make crucial decisions.  [...]

I just loved the latest grievance from my students (see Monday/Tuesday/Thursday posts).  When being given more work than schedule to accomplish it, or additional tasks on top of their “primary” assignment, upon replying that they were going to have to slip something, that they couldn’t get it all done on schedule, they were told by [...]

I’ve been asked by many beginning project management students about the difference between general and project management. My simple answer has been that the things that make a good general manager (GM) help a project manager (PM), and that the PM does a few additional things specific to projects. That seems to satisfy [...]

What’s the most important thing you do that makes you a good project manager?  The only contest I ever won was answering that question. 

Technorati Tags: agile, agile-leadership, career, Leadership, management, project-manager-role

I have come to believe that leadership is really about what you do and influence others to do, rather than primarily about a particular outward charisma..   However, I do believe that how you come across to people CAN significantly add to or substract from your effectiveness.
We ask people to do hard things – work hard, meet tough deadlines, operate in the [...]

I wanted to do my last big post on bridging from these ideas of what constitutes a great PM to what it can mean for someone’s overall career.   Of course it seems obvious that if you’re a great PM, you’ll get more opportunities.  Certainly  you’d seem like the person to call for bigger and hairier and [...]

Today I want to tackle a couple of typical questions I hear about what a great PM needs to be (or not) and do.
1)  Does a PM in a technical environment need to be “technical” themselves?
2)  Does a PM need to be a charismatic leader?  (Or what DOES it mean for a PM to be [...]

Continuing my observations on what executives value – what THEY think makes a great PM.   First, by contrast, it’s interesting to note what the job ads for project managers say.  Here’s a sampling of line items I’ve seen in such ads, covering a mix of PM skills and ‘personality attributes’:

Proficient in project planning, organizing,  team [...]

So what DO executives think of us as project managers and what do they value?   I know from conferences and other interaction with project managers that being valued by their executives is something of a holy grail – and seemingly not nearly common enough.  Thinking back, I realize that I was about 7 years into my [...]

This week I’ll be writing about what it means to be a great project manager – from the perspective of my own career and interactions with other PMs; from what i’ve heard executives say about what they value; and from the unique, interesting and opportunity-filled career paths I’ve observed and heard about specific project managers pulling off!   As [...]

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 [...]

   Continuing on thoughts around maturity and the evolution of project management…the PMI-Silicon Valley Chapter is hosting their 10th Anniversary Dinner next month, and joining the festivities will be Stanford Advanced Project Management’s Dr Christopher Meyer to share his insight on how the future of project management will play a role in delivering a good customer experience.  Chapter President Harish Chinai and I recently had a conversation on [...]

Managing outsourced work: can that project be saved?
An experienced, well-trained project manager is not enough to guarantee an outsourced development success. It also takes a reliable, trustworthy, competent supplier. Even if the best project management techniques were used to choose a supplier, circumstances can change, turning a reliable supplier into an unreliable one. Some circumstances [...]

A few more things to do before making the outsourcing decision:
3. Create a Request for Proposal (RFP) that describes, in great detail, the software you want a supplier to create (the software requirements), anything else you want them to deliver (documentation, testing results), the testing they must do, the processes and tools you expect them [...]