pmStudent

It’s said there are no new project management sins, just old ones repeated. It’s also said that we don’t learn the lessons from past projects and this must be true, otherwise why would we keep making the same old mistakes? 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 »

My apologies, everyone, for going so long between posts. I’m not blog-fading though. I think finals in conjunction with all the parental duties during the holiday season really had be bogged down.
This week, I’m the guest blogger for the University of California Extension, Santa Cruz and their “The Art of Project Management” blog. [...] 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 »

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 »

Deming’s first point is an important one. There needs to be commitment from the top to make continuous improvement a priority. To do it right, most firms would probably implement a Project Management Office from which continuous improvement activities can be based, one that has dominion over methodology and training at a minimum. [...] Read more »

Finding the right balance of documentation and methodology can be challenging on small projects. Here are some tips.
I have been managing small projects for some time now. Some of my project are really tiny, I’m talking about 8 hours of work max. Others can be 2 week or month-long projects. Some [...] Read more »

In the April 2007 edition of PM Network, there is an article titled “Master Plan: IT executives need to develop an eye for project managers” that I would like to comment on.
The article is mostly based off a study done by Gartner Inc., in Stamford CT, USA. One sad but true statistic stated that [...] Read more »

Have you ever let someone down even though you had tried your best and thought you were doing what they wanted? Few things are frustrating as putting forth tons of effort only to find out you were working on the wrong things.
Expectations are such an essential and common component of human relationships and communication [...] Read more »

Human Resource Skills for the Project Manager: The Human Aspects of Project Management, Volume 2
This book by Vijay K. Verma provides a good overview of various project aspects regarding relationships, communication, and human capital in general. I personally found it helpful in the descriptions of various theories out there, and a good starting [...] Read more »

Today I received an email from Timothy Johnson over at Carpe Factum. I met Timothy when he did a presentation for the Sioux Empire chapter of PMI here in Sioux Falls, SD. His presentation was titled “What your project team isn’t telling you.” I wrote about the presentation back in January.
I found out that Timothy’s [...] Read more »

I listened to Cornelius Fichtner’s new PM Podcast episode today, How do risk attitudes affect your project?
As usual, Cornelius provides great content in this episode. The interview with Janice Preston was very insightful and helped me with the concept of risk management. In school, they teach you that risk management is almost like [...] Read more »

I had a great HR Project Management class tonight. We had a guest speaker from a local organization come in and tell us a little about what she does as a new project manager and some of the challenges she deals with on a daily basis. She reinforced what I’ve experienced and been [...] Read more »

I recently studied Frederick Hertzberg’s article on his motivational theory, in the Harvard Business Review. The title is “One More Time: How Do You Motivate Employees?” Read it here.
I’ve heard about the theory before of course, vaguely referred to as the hygiene/motivator theory and it usually managed to earn about 1 [...] Read more »

I contacted Larry Leach of www.advanced-projects.com to ask his permission to post a great presentation he did at a NASA project management conference in 2005. He graciously gave his blessing. If you don’t know Larry’s work, he wrote a book with great reviews called Critical Chain Project Management. I haven’t read it [...] Read more »