The Opportunity & Challenge of Being First

The start-up of a formal project management function requires initiative and perseverance. If you or an organization you work for is looking to hire a project management professional, there are several areas that must be considered from both the employee and organizational perspective. The project manager in this type of environment must understand surrounding processes will likely be fairly immature and there will be many areas of groundwork and the establishment of a framework that must be completed before you can begin doing day-to-day or tactical project management. Read More»

Rock Stars as BAs?

Many times we hear managers say they need a “rock star” for their project, meaning they want a talented and extraordinary performer, capable of impressing the key stakeholder crowd, by consistently delivering top quality, phenomenal results under stress and in high profile situations. And as much as companies and projects could benefit from a rock star's creativity, drive and ability to inspire, do we really want rock stars to write our business requirements? What would happen if we had real life rock stars as Business Analysts (BAs) on our technology projects? Consider legendary rock star Keith Richards' philosophy for writing... Read More»

Wake up! Three ways to improve your influence as a (project) leader.

When was the last time you thought about your influence? Has anyone made any comments lately about your ability to influence others or move others to action? What did they say? Were they compliments…or not so much? Would it be handy to have a greater ability to influence others, regardless of the authority vested in you by your current role? Here are three quick ways to improve your influence. Consider your wake – For your role as a leader, others look to you for direction, vision, and forward movement. For your role as a project manager, others look to you... Read More»

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»