schedule

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 [...]

Once in a while I get the urge to wear some insanely high heeled shoes.  After an evening of wobbling about on these treacherous stilts my feet feel like they’ve been tossed into a dryer with a couple of cement blocks.  Ouch!  Why do I do it?  This is just one of many examples of [...]

This week, in anticipation of Halloween, I asked several of my project management friends to give me their PM Horror Stories.  Of course the names and faces have been masked to protect the innocent.  But hold on to your Trick-or-Treat bags as there are some truly scary lessons to be learned as we move into: [...]

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 [...]

So you need to put together a schedule, but are having trouble getting estimates from your team?  Believe it or not, that’s good news! 
Well, not great news: great news would be quick, accurate estimates, honed by years of experience and factoring in a reasonable amount of risk. 
But it’s not bad news, either.  Bad news [...]

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 [...]

My ex-husband always made us late for appointments because he’d estimate time “as the crow flies” – not ever taking into consideration red lights, kids having to go to the bathroom, wrong turns or any of the other things that cut into time estimates.  Ray was an engineer – a damn good one at that!

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Recently I realized that I have become a little cynical about project management. Maybe I’m just negative, and most projects really are smoothly running systems, with disaster showing it’s ugly face only very ocassionally. Perhaps my attitude is a consequence of my consulting in the area of product development project management (my dad [...]