Archive for April, 2008

Carnival of project management #19

Posted on April 29th, 2008 by by Elizabeth

Welcome to the April 28, 2008 edition of carnival of project management. Yes, it’s a day late. Sorry about that.
This is a new blog for me: the Semi-Charmed Wife presents Leadership: Part 1 posted at Semi-Charmed Wife, saying, “This post is the first in a three-part series about how to be a good leader.” [...]

Cross-border reading list

Posted on April 28th, 2008 by by Elizabeth

Enjoyed the series on managing international projects? Here is some further reading that you might like:

Emotional Intelligence for Project Managers, Anthony Mersino (Amacom, 2007)

Polyglot Dictionary of Project Management Terms, John Bartlett (PMToday.co.uk)

Managing Without Walls: Maximize Success with Virtual, Global, and Cross-cultural Teams, Colleen Garton and Kevin Wegryn (MC Press, 2006)

And of course my own [...]

Working smarter, not harder

Posted on April 23rd, 2008 by by Elizabeth

Did you know that an individual typically works overtime in a year equating to not being paid until 22 February? That’s nearly two months of ‘free’ work we give our employers because overtime is unpaid.
As project managers, we are generally quite a well organised bunch, and I didn’t think I’d learn a lot at [...]

Tackling the issues of cross-border projects

Posted on April 21st, 2008 by by Elizabeth

This is the last in a 3-part series about managing cross-cultural and international teams. Missed the earlier posts? Read the first bit here, and the second bit here.

The biggest issues for international projects are cultural understanding and communication. The former isn’t something that can be neatly tackled by a software package. [...]

Consultation on positive discrimination

Posted on April 17th, 2008 by by Elizabeth

Kingsley Napley sends the womenintechnology.co.uk network a quarterly update on employment law, with a focus on how it impacts women in the workplace. One particular item stood out this quarter: a consultation has kicked off about whether or not to repeal equality laws, which is ironic given that a Single Equality Bill is going [...]

Something to listen to

Posted on April 15th, 2008 by by Elizabeth

I had the opportunity to speak to Ron Holohan at The pm411.org recently.  We spoke about office politics, techniques for self-promotion, communicating with project stakeholders and loads of other things (yes, including my book, although you won’t have heard these case studies before).  You can listen to the podcast here.
Ron has a really dry sense [...]

Challenges for the project manager

Posted on April 14th, 2008 by by Elizabeth

This is part 2 of a 3-part series about managing cross-cultural and international teams. Missed part 1? Read it here.

Project managers taking on international projects face a variety of practical challenges. For example, time zones are important. How will you conduct real-time team meetings? Who is going to be the [...]

Cross-border projects

Posted on April 7th, 2008 by by Elizabeth

This is the first in a 3-part series about managing cross-cultural and international teams.
The world of business is continually shrinking: we work in an environment with real-time audio visual communication with colleagues on the other side of the world and online translation tools. Even small companies can operate internationally with outsourcing agreements and partners [...]

Free stuff!

Posted on April 6th, 2008 by by Elizabeth

Lonnie Pacelli, President of Leading on the Edge International and someone who gave me a very interesting case study for my book, is giving away free stuff on his website. I’ve just downloaded a host of papers and presentations to read.
If you want to download things for free you have to provide your [...]