Project management coaching and career development tips
It can be overwhelming to return from even a short vacation to an overflowing inbox. I brace myself before checking my email. How do you deal with the overflow upon your return? Do you stem the flood by checking and responding to messages during the holiday? First off, you have already set an out of … Read more
PMI’s Talent Triangle is Evolving: Is this merely a change in nomenclature or is there more to it? In my humble opinion, this transition reflects the takeaways from PMI’s Pulse of the Profession 2021. (I took a deeper dive with four posts based on the Pulse.) Based on my coaching work, technical PM is a … Read more
Are you Driving Your Project with the Brakes On? “Driving with the brakes on … swimming with your boots on,” these lyrics from Del Amitri’s song remind me of some projects I worked on. Getting work done was like stepping on the accelerator. Decision-making, on the other foot, felt like stepping on the brakes. The … Read more
As a project manager, you scan the future for problems. You foresee the pitfalls, You warn your stakeholders about them, And you give them options to avoid the risks. But they don’t decide early.They take a wait and see approach.They want to keep their options open.The longer they wait, the fewer the optionsAnd the more … Read more
Last month, I published a post emphasizing that project managers should focus on delivering the project goal instead of the project plan. PMI’s 2021 Pulse of the Profession calls this the gymnastic approach: where all available PM methodologies were used to deliver the outcome. Traditional corporations only rely on proven methods, retaining process rigidity and … Read more
I once worked in a corporation where you never talk to the CEO. Then I joined a new organization. One day, I was checking my slot in the mailroom when the CEO walked in. I pretended not to notice. He greeted me by name and we exchanged some small talk. Wow! That blew my mind … Read more
Projects are initiated based on business cases with assumptions and promises of return on investment or the attainment of some benefit. Once the project starts, these are forgotten. When the project ends, the project manager reports on the completion of deliverables within schedule, budget and scope. If it stops there, you may never get the … Read more
Back in 1992, Robert Kaplan and David Norton introduced the concept of a Balanced Scorecard to manage a company. This is instead of using one sole measure to manage a company: the bottom line. It is wise to use the same approach when introducing Benefits Realization to project management. Revenue or profit cannot be the … Read more
One of the ways that you can add value as a project manager is to bring clarity to projects, especially project decisions. How do you do that? 1. Keep a list of unanswered questions. Prioritize them and go about finding answers.2. Create a framework of unknowns such as budgets, timeframes, people, approvals; use forms, templates, … Read more