Is It The Triple Constraints or Quadruple Constraints?

If you are working in project management you have probably heard of the Project Management Triangle or the Triple Constraints. The constraints being scope, schedule, and budget. When managing the project, if one changes we have to look at the other two and see if they change as well. If they have changed then we have to perform some type of control to get the project back in line. My career has been in industry and I am used to the Quadruple or Four Constraints which is more applicable. The four constraints are Scope, Schedule, Budget, and Resources (SSBR) as... Read More»

Are you listening to me or hearing me?

Communication is a critical skill for project managers. Some leaders are able to listen to and other people are always hearing instead of listening to their membership. Every time that I think about listening some images come to me regarding a common situation in a project between a project manager and a team member. The team member wants to talk to his project manager because he/she has a problem or an issue. The project manager meet him and say: Ok, I'm ready to listen to you. Please tell me about your problem. The team member starts speaking and the project... Read More»

Think Simple Whenever Possible

I recently went through the exercise of bringing on a contractor for a six month period to assist with an overload of analysis on various Project efforts. I am continuously surprised at how many different interpretations of “Agile” I get, and how often practitioners within the Project Management arena seem to feel that their value to the discipline is their ability to use tools. Although I agree that the ability and capacity to use tools is important, I don’t see that in the top three skills required to be a good/great Project Manager. I asked each candidate what the bare... Read More»

Managing Out

Perhaps the most difficult job a manager faces is dealing with an employee that just isn’t performing up to expectations. Even if you’ve been coaching them all along and their performance is no surprise to them, taking the formal steps to manage them out of your organization is painful for both of you. With any luck, they already have another position lined up. Regardless of how well prepared they are, you need to be prepared. The first step is to give the employee a fighting chance to redeem themselves, as soon as the performance problem becomes apparent. Remember, that it... Read More»

Why Project Kickoffs Matter

A friend of mine said something this morning that inspired me the minute he said it: Teamwork in random teams has to start with you. Most people don't inherently work together unless you say something. Yes, he's a gaming friend, and he was referring to fragging noobs in battlegrounds rather than any sort of project work. (We talk about this sort of thing on Friday mornings. It's OK, though; geek is cool now.) Battlegrounds aside, his offhand remark struck me as the sort of profound conventional wisdom that has to become a blog post. Whether you're talking about orcs vs... Read More»

Now Why Would They Do That?

At a recent workshop one of the attendees had a question about pipe specifications. The majority of facilities have company specific pipe specifications and this engineer worked for a large oil company. Apparently a consultant working on one of his projects wanted the facility to have a company engineer stamp the pipe specifications. This was an unusual request as the pipe specifications are not pulled out of thin air. Within the oil companies there are typically a group of engineers who oversee the pipe specifications for the company worldwide and update the specifications as needed. This process is typical for... Read More»

Scrum Master-Project Manager without the Bureaucratic Fat

Being completely absorbed in an organizational transition from waterfall to scrum, I spend a significant amount of time reviewing material related to the comparison of the traditional Project Manager role to that of the Scrum Master. Naturally, making such a transition has a lot of project managers in the organization concerned about their role in the scrum world. I recently read an article comparing the two roles that left me at a Titanic-resting-level depth below impressed, to say the least. I would've paid it little attention, except that it was found on a very credible institute's site; alas, several will... Read More»

Are you stressed as a project manager?

We are living difficult times where budget and money are on the mind of most Executives in organizations. On the other hand more and more project managers are fired in European countries. Project managers that still work for a company are asked to manage more activities and more and more projects with budget reduction, and at the same time some of those project managers are getting their salaries reduced too. Because of the financial crisis more and more companies need to renew and reinvent different ways to run their business more effectively and efficiently. All those factors are generating some... Read More»

Why we're behind before we start...and what we can do about it.

Have you ever thought to yourself, "wow - we haven't even started this thing yet, and we're already behind the 8-ball!"? I heard a colleague express that he was having that feeling yet again this week, and it seemed that that happens more often than not. Everyone in the conversation agreed - both that the project at hand was behind before it had even started, and that it seems to happen more often than any of us care to admit. So why are we behind before we start? And what can we do about it? I'm suggesting a couple of... Read More»

Think and Work Differently

For any of you that have ever read anything that I have posted in the past, you know that I always lean towards doing what makes sense rather than what is written in some book. Each organization, culture, team, and Project is different, so why assume that anything and everything is cookie-cutter? With all of the specific steps in many of the methodologies, to follow them to the letter would make Projects so process heavy that you would never get anything done. Sure, documentation and process are required to avoid total chaos, but isn’t our role as Project Managers primarily... Read More»