Communication is one of the most critical aspects of managing a project. It must be efficient, effective, and must be managed by an organized leader on a project engagement – and hopefully the project manager is up for filling that communication facilitator role. However, in the project management world – the communication process is only […]
We have our project sponsors in the customer organization who have been tasked with getting a new technology installed or process implemented or accounting system built. But this is really often just a champion – someone who has some money and/or power to get things done in the organization. A decision maker and point person. […]
I realize this is a quote from Stephen Covey’s “7 Habits of Highly Effective People.” This one came to mind due to a recent post I saw on Twitter and it hit me that this is perfectly oriented toward project management. All PMs and all business professionals, really, should be keeping this mindset. Long range […]
I realize we often don’t get to deal with the fantasy world much in project management. If we did, none of my projects would ever have issues, all would have customers that would agree with everything I presented, and none of my teams would ever have conflicts or personal issues – or personnel issues, for […]
Seriously. You can’t make a perfect project. You can’t just “will” a project to success. Too many variables. But you can do all that you can do to make a project engagement successful. And the two biggest ingredients to that success that the project manager can have a great deal of control over is practicing […]
Most project managers will tell you that the projects they enjoy the most are the ones they get to see through from beginning to end. In the world of project management, however, it is often a rare thing…depending on your organization, of course…to get to see a project through 100%. People leave the company, new […]
What do you do when a customer complains about something on the project? Are you abrasive? Defensive? Apologetic? No matter what happens, no matter whose fault it is, we should always be apologetic. Not that the customer is always right, but if they are upset at all then we need to be concerned. Twice I […]
In Part 1 of this two part series we started looking at the first two areas of my list of five that a project manager who is working with an offshore development team needs to focus on. We covered identifying a leader for the offshore team and how scope needs to be very carefully managed. […]
Profitability on our projects is always a goal – especially as our senior management looks at our portfolio of projects. And there is probably no greater factor into that profitability than our own human resources that are charging to our projects. So, in terms of technical projects…one thing that many organizations consider is who to […]
Good communication doesn’t always = good decision-making. Think of it almost as a different take on “The squeaky wheel gets the grease” only from a different angle. And a more dangerous angle. Why? Because the squeaky wheel one is the complainer. Everyone knows who that is and they appease them by giving them what they […]
