From the category archives:

Other people’s projects

Project management in schools: two case studies

June 6, 2011

Last week I wrote about what the PMI Educational Foundation does. One of the missions of PMIEF is to build project management skills in young people and teachers, better equipping students for the future. How exactly does it do that? At PMI’s EMEA Leadership Institute Meeting in Dublin last month two volunteers spoke about their [...]

Philanthropic projects: the PMI Educational Foundation

May 30, 2011

If you’ve been around projects for any length of time you have probably come across the Project Management Institute. You might even have heard of PMIEF: the PMI Educational Foundation. But what does it actually do? I thought it mainly sponsored research, but it turns out I was wrong. PMIEF’s Chair, John Rickards, gave a [...]

A right Royal project

April 29, 2011

In case you’ve been living under a rock, today’s the day that Prince William of Wales marries Catherine Middleton, and it feels like London has been turned into one big Union Jack. I planned my wedding in Microsoft Project, and I’m not the only project manager who considered their big day worthy of proper planning. [...]

Project success story: building a new steel plant

February 23, 2011

Have you ever wondered who makes the cables that hold up lifts (that’s elevators, for you people on the other side of the pond). Emocables makes them, and this video is from the Project Flow conference, where Emocables CEO Felipe Caballero talks about a complex project to set up a new steel plant in Columbia. [...]

The winning side: project management at Lloyd’s Register

January 5, 2011

“I left school with minimal qualifications,” said Roger Clutton, Programme Director at Lloyd’s Register Group Services Ltd. “I was probably programmed to feel not good at things.” Clutton is the self-confessed project manager for “horrible projects” at the risk management organisation which provides risk assessment and risk mitigation solutions across the UK. Lloyd’s started out [...]

Complexity in mega IT projects

November 11, 2009

“Everyone thinks they are the big boss,” says Laura Aziz. “Everyone thinks they are managing the others.” It’s one of the complexities that Laura is managing as part of putting the IT systems into a massive 7-star hospital in the Middle East: complete with wifi, electronic mediccal records and video conferencing. It’s a multi-year, multi-phase [...]

Do this! A research study for you

July 25, 2009

Back in February I interviewed Chris Haigh, who was doing an MSc in Project Management and had recently won a Shell Step award for one of his projects. Chris is now at the point of putting together his final bits for his MSc, from which he graduates later this year. His research project is about [...]

Five things I want to do before I’m 35

April 1, 2009

I’ve just come back from Jukkasjärvi in Sweden, a place I’ve wanted to visit for ever because it’s where they build the magnificent Ice Hotel every year. It was on the list of things to do before I hit 30, but I didn’t make it. It struck me as a coincidence that just as I [...]

Risks, improv and chocolate

March 5, 2009

“Most books on branding,” Adam says, “focus on what it takes for a brand to be great: follow these steps, tick the boxes on a flow chart.” “PRINCE2 training is just like that,” I reply. “If you complete these documents your project will be a success. That’s not how things work in the real world.” [...]

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