From Telling to Asking
Filed under: Leadership, People, Project management, Teamwork
There are a number of flavours of project management workshops I’m involved with these days, online and face to face, running the whole show or facilitating with wider participation. One thing that they all have in common is that many of the issues have to do with team dynamics, and the many ways in which this manifests itself. Here’s another example. Read more
Work Breakdown Breakdown
One of the most useful tools to support consistency across projects is also one of the most misunderstood and widely overloaded tools: the work breakdown structure. Let’s tear this thing apart and look inside. Read more
High Cost of Success
Filed under: Leadership, People, Project management, Quality
In all kinds of projects, despite all the theory behind project management best-practices or ‘branded’ methodologies or lifecycles, I would say that the majority of projects get done with more than a little ‘seat-of-the-pants’ effort. In construction circles you will see ‘as built’ notations on the drawings, in many projects you will see a lot of scurrying, sprinkled with some long hours, and a dash or so of frayed nerves. The project gets done, we declare success, but at what cost? Read more
What’s That PMO Doing?
I was running a workshop on project management yesterday, and one of the first things I did (as usual) was to go around the room to ask what people were looking for in the session. One person volunteered that back on their project, they have a PMO that drives things, and what he wanted to get out of the session was to “find out what goes on behind those doors”. I may not know what does go on behind those doors, but I do have thought or two to share. Read more
Many Sources, One List
On any project, regardless of the size or complexity or uncertainty involved, there is one thing you know darned well to expect: things will change. To ignore or be surprised by potential changes is to set yourself up for heaps of trouble. It is important to recognize that change can come from many different directions. In addition, once you have collected all these potential changes from all over the place, it is critical that you triage all of them together, in a single list. Read more
Where Do Lessons Go?
A good part of a formal closing for any project is a discussion of lessons learned. An even better approach is to get the stakeholders together to gather these lessons, both good and bad, in the form of a comprehensive retrospective. Unfortunately, in most cases, these lessons learned would be more appropriately called “things we should learn but are doomed to identify as lessons again on our next project.” Read more
Control and Management
Filed under: Leadership, Process, Project management, Quality
The terms Control and Management are often used interchangeably for a variety of activities in product development: configuration, change, risk, process, and so on. From my perspective, there is a difference between the attitude (implied or expressed) with these words, and for a couple of reasons, I tend to lean towards management over control. Read more
Norms and Rules
Filed under: Leadership, Process, Project management, Quality
I was chatting with someone the other day about my upcoming trip to Germany (I’m actually writing this one in the departure lounge). He was over there during the summer, and as a way of helping me ensure I had a good time, he noted “just remember, there are social norms over there, but there are no social rules”. Makes me ponder the relationship between the two. Read more
Pitching Value
For almost all of the projects that I have seen, the most difficult challenge for the project manager is to be able to clearly express what the expected value for the project will be for the sponsor. Without this, though, all that you are proposing is to spend some someone’s money in a given time period. Read more
The 5 Biggest Team Delusions
Filed under: Agility, Process, Project management, Teamwork
Over the years, there are a number of statements that I hear that make me step back for a moment. Some are relatively new, some have been around as long as I can remember, but every one of these, in my experience, usually means something very different (and less effective) than what the words might indicate. I’m sure there are more, but this is a start. Read more
