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Kimberly Wiefling had an article today on Projects@Work (www.projectsatwork.com) giving us a taste of some hard-learned lessons when dealing with project sponsors.
I’ve always loved Kimberly’s sense of humor and highly recommend just about anything she’s written. This is a great example of education a la entertainment. Check out her book too, you can [...] Read more »

Cutting’s Edge is one of my favorite project management blogs. Thomas recently posted on the cost of project success. I enjoyed the examples of the construction of several wonders of the world as projects and their often overlooked consequences on the project teams that built them.
Thomas draws out a parallel to contemporary projects, and [...] Read more »

Lately I have been working on thinking about the best way to go about project planning, especially in terms of objectives and deliverables. Based on my experience at several companies and some independent research, here are my current thoughts on the subject.
Hierarchy
I’m fairly convinced that in most cases, this is an effective hierarchy to [...] Read more »

I had a stimulating discussion today with Travis, a friend and colleague about communication styles. It reminded me about the importance of catching people doing things right. Many managers and co-workers miss opportunities to congratulate or thank people who go above and beyond, but rarely miss an opportunity to criticize when mistakes are [...] Read more »

I recently read a new book by Curt Finch, CEO of Journyx, Inc. titled “All Your Money Won’t Another Minute Buy - Valuing Time as a Business Resource.” I have always been a student of time management, so I was delighted with the opportunity to interview Curt about the book. Please enjoy the interview. Read more »

One thing that never changes is the constancy of change. That seems like a self-evident truth, doesn’t it? So why do we plan as if change will not happen?

People in general are fairly good at managing change, but of course we vary widely in those abilities among individuals. As a result, I [...] Read more »

I finally got a chance to read this month’s PM Network magazine. There is an article on keeping project team motivated that caught my attention starting on page 38, written by Simon Kent.
The article reminded me of a previous post I wrote back in February, 2007 titled Motivational Theory in Project Management where I [...] Read more »

In order for continuous improvement to become organizational culture, it must also become a personal goal for every employee. Self-improvement should not be limited to immediate application, that would be an example of short-term thinking. Employees are the most important assets of an organization, and therefore require effort to retain and enhance them.
On project teams, [...] Read more »

This may be the most controversial point, but in my opinion it is aligned with the rest of Deming’s philosophy nicely, and I agree with this point totally. In the US especially, Management By Objectives (MBO) is very much the status quo. I’ll give a short explanation of my opinion from an operational [...] Read more »

It is the age-old distinction that usually merits much lip service and little true implementation. There is supervision/management, and then there is leadership. Project managers can either be supervisors or leaders, regardless of their job title.
Supervising/managing is simply overseeing and directing work. If you know everything about PMBOK and other methodologies, [...] Read more »

The textbook wording of this point varies, but is usually something like “Stop making decisions purely on the basis of cost.” When I read the various descriptions however, I believe the textbook title is not an adequate summary.

When Deming talks about not making decisions purely on the basis of cost, he is referring to [...] Read more »

Deming’s third point urges practitioners to design quality into processes, using inspection as an information-gathering tool to do so. In project management, the processes and systems make up a methodology. Does your organization have a consistent methodology, or does everyone run projects their own way? Inspecting project performance through the lens of [...] Read more »

I came across this London Times Online writeup on Moore and Sonsino’s book, “The Seven Failings of Really Useless Leaders: How to Inspire Your People to Higher Levels of Performance, Productivity and Profitability” Every one of these failings apply to project managers just as well as functional management.
I have not read this book, but [...] Read more »

Tonight I had my HR Project Management class. One of the key topics we discussed was managing project team diversity. We watched the PBS production “A Class Divided” to start with. If you haven’t seen it, I recommend it. It was especially interesting when we discussed it within the context of [...] Read more »

I’m about half way through the book I’m reading now, Management Dilemmas: The Theory of Constraints Approach to Problem Identification and Solutions. It was difficult to get into it at first, perhaps because the author made an appropriate introductory section going into the conceptual aspects of the TOC thinking processes, the Throughput world versus [...] Read more »