Project Managers Anonymous

Hello, my name is Josh, and I used to put tasks on my WBS.

Whoah, it felt good to get that off my chest.

When I first began...

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Why Should You Care About Social Media?

I had a great time in Orlando recently for the 2009 PMI North America Global Congress. The PMI New Media Council did a presentation titled "Why Should You Care About Social Media?".

Bas De Baar (ProjectShrink), Cornelius Fitchner (PMPodcast), and I (pmStudent) collaborated for our segment of the presentation, focused on demonstrating the use of new tools to manage virtual teams and allow them to collaborate.

We practiced what we preached.... Read More»

Career Roadblock?

What can you do when you feel like you've hit a bump on your project manager career path? Here are my thoughts, and I invite you to add your own comments with advice for this professional. Read More»

Do You Project Manage Your Life?

Project managers are the worst to manage. You need a system for yourself.

Managing yourself via "mini-projects" and scaled down project management techniques. Read More»

You Project Managers Are Tools Crazy

I am contacted nearly once a week by some company who wants me to do a review of their new wiz-bang software that slices, dices, and makes julienne fries.

You'll notice however that I do not normally take them up on their offers.

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What Everybody Ought to Know About Switching Careers to Project Management

I love it when people connect with me. It helps me to know that real people are out there somewhere behind the screen of my laptop.

I can't believe you all fit in there. It must be cramped. Technology is amazing.

That said, on with the show.

How do you break into project management when you have been running your own business for over a decade?

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Run Away! (And Other Helpful Advice For A Career in Project Management)

Run Away! by Cirofono via Flickr I am passionate about project management in general, and helping people new to the field more specifically. But let's be honest. We're all nuts. Not Everyone Should Be a Project Manager There is a specific form of gluttony for punishment that comes with the territory (some consider it a clinical condition). The decision to head down the project manager career path should not be taken lightly. When I started out, there was a specific resonance I felt as I learned more about the role of a project manager. Everything I had really enjoyed about... Read More»

5 Steps To Recovering Your Project Sanity

ony had just finished a year-long project, and was exhausted. As a good project manager should, he had been keeping a lessons learned file throughout the project, and now that it was completed he was making a final entry, looking back over the whole year. Let's peek into one of the lessons learned Tony and his team picked for this particular project, and how they got to the root cause by asking a simple question. Why? Symptom: The project had gone through several "re-scoping" activities during the year...it seemed as if the goals were always changing. 1 Why was the... Read More»

Does Your Project Team Fall Prey To These Common Productivity Killers?

The dangers of multi tasking to project teams has never been more so. Now we have additional online services and mobile devices to deal with. What I wrote about back in January 2007 about Multi-tasking, Covey, and TOC is even more applicable now. Your project schedule should drive priorities, not a false sense of urgency in adhoc daily tasks. Raven blogged about this and embedded a video, the same one I'm embedding below. (If you don't know about Raven's Brain, you NEED to check it out. It's kind of noodley and gooey, but well worth it!) As project managers, I... Read More»

Are You New to Project Management?

I received an email from someone the other day who is very interested in becoming a project manager. She doesn’t have any experience in the field yet, and wanted some advice on how to proceed. She assumed that the PMP exam is what she should be looking into getting. She mentioned that she is saving up for a training camp that claims they can train her to pass the PMP exam without project experience. I want to thank her for writing to me and taking action towards her career goals! Unfortunately, that training camp is engaging in unethical practices. If... Read More»