Finding Time
I spent a couple of days last week up in Campbell River, working with a group at their very isolated location there, going through tips on personal productivity. Whenever I run that program, I am reminded of tips that I had forgotten myself, and get a bit of a boost myself. Read more
Administrative Reporting
I’m just finishing my first round facilitating an intensive project management program with a local university. If there is one thing to distill out as a common challenge among the teams is that there isn’t nearly enough depth of reflection as we move through the project phases. There is a lot of administrative reporting. Read more
Harnessing Down Time
We all have far more that we would like to get done than we have available time to do these things. This is true in the workplace and outside as well. Wouldn’t it be great if we could take advantage of all the down time we seem to have during our day to accomplish more? Read more
Fostering a Project Along
I was working with a team in a technology company this week, going over some of the soft skills and hard practices of project management. This is a team from a variety of disciplines that works together on projects. They had recently completed a project that people in the organization characterized as a ‘train wreck’. On the surface, one would think there would be opportunities to improve on their performance. Read more
Putting a Finger on Rework
I gave a couple of presentations at a conference this week. In both talks, I dropped the oft-quoted industry statistic (appropriately prefixed with the dreaded “Studies show…”) that in software teams, 30-40% of all their time is spent in rework. Reference to the same stat was used by at least 2 other speakers at the conference as well. Read more
