The Lazy Project Manager
JULY 8, 2016
Critical to any projects success is having a good project manager we all know but after that then it is pretty important to have a good project sponsor, in fact it can be argued that the project sponsor is the more critical role; but, like the saying goes, ‘you can pick your friends but you can’t pick your relatives’ and the same is true of project sponsors.
Rebel’s Guide to PM
JULY 20, 2016
Regular readers will know that I’m not an expert in Agile, by any means. So I’m delighted to bring you this guest contribution by Elisa Cepale who lives and breathes this stuff in her day job. Elisa, over to you…. Elisa Cepale. I facilitate daily standup meetings for our support team. When I started working for White October we followed the conventional “scrum” format, where the team get together, share what’s new, what’s challenging and what’s happening, and everyone gives feedback
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Project Risk Coach
JULY 19, 2016
This is a guest post from Colin Gautrey, an author, trainer and executive coach who has specialized in the field of power and influence for over ten years. He combines solid research with deep personal experience in corporate life to offer his audiences critical yet simple insights into how to achieve results with greater influence. He is the creator of the Stakeholder Influencing Masterclass.
Musings on Project Management
JULY 22, 2016
And when your strategy depends on someone else doing something that's pretty weak strategy Jeff Roe. Politcal strategist Well, yes, but no. Certainly, self-sufficiency is the better game plan, but who gets to play in that green field? Certainly not PMs which are at the behest of sponsors, customers, and other business interests. If they don't behave and get on the same page with the.
Speaker: Chris Townsend, VP of Product Marketing, Wellspring
Over the past decade, companies have embraced innovation with enthusiasm—Chief Innovation Officers have been hired, and in-house incubators, accelerators, and co-creation labs have been launched. CEOs have spoken with passion about “making everyone an innovator” and the need “to disrupt our own business.” But after years of experimentation, senior leaders are asking: Is this still just an experiment, or are we in it for the long haul?
Agile Coach
JULY 24, 2016
Taking an idea from The Feedback Wrap , this post was written on a beautiful Sunday night by the pool on the eve of Agile 2016, and after a skimming of “ Why Business People Speak Like Idiots “ I’m in a mellow mood, but feeling a little annoyed with whole world of Agile lately. Remember when good leadership was good leadership? Now it HAS TO be Agile leadership.
Project Management Update brings together the best content for project management professionals from the widest variety of industry thought leaders.
The Lazy Project Manager
JULY 3, 2016
A guest post by my friends at Genius Project. The phenomenon of the sharing economy can be attributed to the likes of some popular names such as Uber and Airbnb. The magazine Alternatives Economiques, defines it as people creating value together. This form of economy is actually developing itself in the context of social media and internet platforms.
Rebel’s Guide to PM
JULY 29, 2016
There are a lot of people sharing project management articles, images and advice on Pinterest. Yes, really. It’s not just recipes and crafts, although I do use it for that too. I’ve curated this list of 12 project management pinners and boards so that you can check them out. I’ve tried to make sure that all these users and boards have over 100 pins (often a lot more) and a good number of followers.
Project Risk Coach
JULY 18, 2016
I learned a lot about how to keep stakeholders happy from my father. In the Deep South, he taught me, “If Mama ain’t happy, nobody is happy!” Daddy had a simple formula for a healthy home with a wife and four children. He found out what made Mama happy and he made sure she had it. Mama valued faith, hope, and love…lots of love.
Musings on Project Management
JULY 2, 2016
Every other posting about software these days is about 'go fast' or 'quick delivery' etc. Agile everywhere; Agile every time! But, there's a case for SLOW! How about when you're asked to code up some morality; when you're asked to code the decisions which are philosophical, steeped in moral decisions, and perhaps are quite personal? This project issue is embedded in this essay about coding.
Speaker: Timothy Allsopp
Payment challenges often lead to delayed projects, financial bottlenecks, and strained relationships. With construction projects becoming more complex, outdated processes are no longer sustainable. By refining financial workflow, companies can improve cash flow, reduce error, and foster trust between stakeholders. Discover practical strategies for redesigning payment systems to overcome workflow challenges while creating a smoother, more reliable process for contractors and subcontractors alike.
Kiron Bondale
JULY 24, 2016
As it is with jewelry, on projects gold-plating is all form with no substance. The increase in costs is rarely justified by the value provided by superficial “bling” It could be an analyst adding in requirements which they came up with on their own without ensuring that those are actually required, a developer who introduces a code change or feature they believe is useful without checking with others or a quality control specialist who decides to test above and beyond approved test p
Moira Alexander
JULY 18, 2016
Before you can help implement change management, you need to understand what this broadly used term in the context of project management. Change management is a discipline that allows businesses to effectively and precisely identify and document anticipated changes to the business as well as understand how those changes affect individuals in terms of their workflows/processes.
Ron Rosenhead
JULY 7, 2016
I said that this was an interesting topic and suggested they may want to start refining the ways they worked by looking at project management. ‘How do you mean’, asked my client? Well, let’s look at the projects completed in the last 12 – 24 months: which ones really delivered against the business case, the objectives and benefits? which ones did not?
Rebel’s Guide to PM
JULY 27, 2016
Today I’m shining a spotlight on how I manage my projects. I’m particularly interested in the communications between people on projects and regular readers will know that, as I cover it a lot. I wanted to tell you how I run stakeholder communications on my projects (I’ve also covered the ‘how’ of stakeholder comms before ). Not because I have amazing results from the strategies I use or anything, but because it’s always interesting to find out how other people do it.
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Project Risk Coach
JULY 4, 2016
How do you know when to respond to sneaky risks? Sometimes it’s obvious; other times you may experience a slow death march into ultimate ruin. Photo courtesy of AdobeStock.com. Part of our problem is unknown risks; these risks silently steal and kill over time. Even if we are aware of certain risks, we may be unsure of when to respond. Allow me to share a personal story to illustrate.
Musings on Project Management
JULY 31, 2016
From General Mike Hayden's memoir (paraphrasing from pg 428) Imagine two doors to the same room: One labeled risk manager; the other labeled visionary. Though the risk manager's door, entry is for the inductive thinker: I've got the facts; now I need to connect the dots to reveal a generality or integrating narrative Through the visionary's door, entry is for the deductive thinker: I've.
Kiron Bondale
JULY 3, 2016
It’s unfortunately an all too familiar scenario. You are assigned to manage a project and before you or your team have had an opportunity to start to chip away at the looming mountain of uncertainty, you get put on the spot to provide a cost or schedule estimate by your project sponsor or some other stakeholder. To make matters worse, your company’s project delivery methodology might insist that an estimate gets provided before work has even commenced.
Agile Coach
JULY 15, 2016
I worked at an organization years ago that was almost put under by a postal strike. Let’s say at the time, cash flow was a problem. The owner had to put in a substantial chunk of his own savings to make payroll, all because of a 3-ish week strike. Let’s say the owner had a little more to worry about than ‘ being Agile ‘ I remember when the Agile Alliance did their first executive forum at the big annual Agile 20XX conference.
Speaker: Jay Allardyce, Deepak Vittal, Terrence Sheflin, and Mahyar Ghasemali
As we look ahead to 2025, business intelligence and data analytics are set to play pivotal roles in shaping success. Organizations are already starting to face a host of transformative trends as the year comes to a close, including the integration of AI in data analytics, an increased emphasis on real-time data insights, and the growing importance of user experience in BI solutions.
LiquidPlanner
JULY 6, 2016
Modern project management was born around the time of World War II. Germany built the first interstate highway system, the Reichsautobahnen , in the 1930s, and the United States began The Manhattan Project approximately a decade later to create the first man-made nuclear weapon. These massive projects required planning on a staggering scale, and the people who undertook them needed new tools and techniques in order to carry them to completion.
Rebel’s Guide to PM
JULY 25, 2016
I work in a virtual team. In both my jobs, as a project manager and as a writer, I work in virtual teams, sometimes leading them, sometimes not. That’s why I was keen to read Virtual Leadership by Penny Pullan, and I was lucky enough to get an advance copy before it hit the shelves. I read it in one sitting on a long train journey – it’s easy to get into so it doesn’t feel like hard going to plough through it.
Project Risk Coach
JULY 27, 2016
This is a guest post from Colin Gautrey, an author, trainer and executive coach who has specialized in the field of power and influence for over ten years. He combines solid research with deep personal experience in corporate life to offer his audiences critical yet simple insights into how to achieve results with greater influence. He is the creator of the Stakeholder Influencing Masterclass.
Musings on Project Management
JULY 28, 2016
Did you see this witicism at herdingcats? A skeptic will question claims, then embrace the evidence. A denier will question claims, then reject the evidence. - Neil deGrase Tyson. Think of this whenever there is a conjecture that has no testable evidence of the claim. And think ever more when those making the conjectured claim refuse to provide evidence.
Speaker: Nikhil Joshi, Founder & President of Snic Solutions
Is your manufacturing operation reaching its efficiency potential? A Manufacturing Execution System (MES) could be the game-changer, helping you reduce waste, cut costs, and lower your carbon footprint. Join Nikhil Joshi, Founder & President of Snic Solutions, in this value-packed webinar as he breaks down how MES can drive operational excellence and sustainability.
Kiron Bondale
JULY 10, 2016
Retrospectives are a common, regularly practiced ceremony on projects managed using an agile delivery method. But why stop there? There’s no reason that retrospectives couldn’t be applied to traditional projects too, it’s just that some improvement ideas might not be immediately applicable in a non-iterative lifecycle. But won’t it cost a lot more effort to conduct regular retrospectives rather than waiting till we get to the end of our projects?
Ron Rosenhead
JULY 20, 2016
This could be an interesting meeting as it is the first time you have met and you want this to go well, setting a good direction for the project. It follows then that you need to start thinking about the preparation that is required for this meeting. There is a wide range of preparation you could do which means it really needs to be focused on what you want to achieve.
Zen Project Management
JULY 29, 2016
I ran an exercise at the beginning of a new project last week; Empathy Mapping. This is part of an overall approach of using Design Thinking along with agile development. The idea to empathy mapping is to get to understand your users. Per the diagram below, you want to get an understanding of what your user thinks, says, feels, and does (though I have seen other examples that are slightly different than this).
Rebel’s Guide to PM
JULY 17, 2016
I’m still constantly surprised when I hear that people work in a command and control style management hierarchy. It’s not something I’ve been part of for years and I don’t believe it works – at least not in a project management, office-based environment. If I was a frontline soldier I would probably think differently. I talk to a lot of project managers though, and it still seems that some of them are stuck in environments where being told what to do is the norm.
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This text offers practical guidance for project managers navigating diverse frameworks. It covers topics like centralized reporting, standardized metrics, communication, training, risk management, and alignment reviews. By implementing these strategies, project managers can improve efficiency and achieve their project goals.
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