Contingency Plan – Focusing on Business Value
Last time, I talked about status reporting, which is commonly required but whose power as a multitool is often overlooked. […]
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Process
The Project Manager’s Multitool: The Status Report
Status reports (or whatever your particular methodological school calls them) are frequently maligned – c.f. “TPS Reports” in the movie
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Simple Tools, Advanced Users
When you first start out as a professional project manager, you typically have had some informal project management experience as
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Learn a foreign language in between projects and on the go
Project managers work on various projects, sometimes traveling to various clients’ sites. You juggle many emails, calls, faxes and meetings
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Done or Done Done?
A common culprit behind schedule slips is adding up estimates for building subunits and not accounting for verification and integration.
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Non-technical?!? Who are you calling non-technical?
I tried not to sputter as the young, no-grey haired, highly-respected PhD sporting engineering manager told me my suggestion did
Non-technical?!? Who are you calling non-technical? Read More »
Effective risk management starts with experience.
We can study about risk management. We can take classes on steps for risk assessments. We can learn about using probability and impact to prioritize our hazard lists. But it’s experience that streamlines our risk assessment process. With experience we can quickly list only the relevant risks. Its experience that automatically eliminates the low probability and low impact items. The unnecessary items become invisible and therefore free time to focus on the more important items.
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Some sage advise for your first day at a new job.
On our first day, we typically want to “prove ourselves”. We want to show that they made a great decision in hiring us. We feel the need to jump in and be productive right away. Although our intentions are very good, in our zeal to impress, we can even go a little overboard.
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Perfecting versus perfection.
We’ve all heard the groan: “We have an aggressive schedule to meet.” The fact is, it’s not the “schedule” timeline that is aggressive; rather, it’s what we choose to fit into it. Adopting an attitude of progress refinement (perfecting over perfection) with the confidence percentage strategy helps reduce this tension between promised and actually delivered tasks.
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When are ultimatums appropriate?
Whether we are in the office or in a relationship, there are times when we hit a roadblock or impasse. So, when are ultimatums appropriate?
When are ultimatums appropriate? Read More »
Energizing Agile
We’ve all heard about Agile, the good and the bad. While to some Agile is relatively new, I started being