PM skills

Four key drivers for team engagement

March 21, 2012

“Project management as we know it today is broken,” said Ty Kiisel at the Pink Elephant conference in Las Vegas last month, “and as a software vendor we were part of the problem.” Ty talked about why the command and control methods of managing people that were popular now no longer work. He explained that [...]

How do you deal with a bad day?

January 23, 2012

In this video I ask 9 project managers how they deal with a bad day at work. With thanks to Todd, Samad, Nathaniel, Cindy, Adrienne, Cornelius, Taryn, Dave and Melanie. Filmed on location at PMI Global Congress North America 2011 in Dallas/Fort Worth.

Why you should assume positive intent

October 19, 2011

Students coming to study in London for the new university term will quickly realise that in the capital you generally do not assume positive intent. In fact, Not Assuming Positive Intent is the default. You assume that other commuters will fight you for the last tube seat. You assume that your pockets will get picked [...]

Use your experts

September 28, 2011

The best thing about going to the hairdressers is having someone wash my hair. The second best thing is being able to sit there for an hour and be lost in my thoughts while someone makes me beautiful. I don’t talk to my hairdresser about holidays or work, and we have fallen into companionable silence. [...]

Managing up: how to help your managers help you

May 25, 2011

One of the questions I’m often asked is: “How do I get taken seriously at work?” And over my career I have asked myself that question as well. One way to build credibility in the workplace was explained by Dr Lynda Bourne recently at the PMI Global Congress EMEA in Dublin. Let’s talk about managing [...]

Focus on project management outcomes, not processes

April 6, 2011

We’ve been doing some thinking at work recently about how to improve the project management processes. The processes aren’t terrible, but it’s good to review them every so often to see how the rest of the business has changed and how we should keep up. However, project management outcomes are more important than processes. Processes [...]

Throw away your quality plans

March 30, 2011

None of my projects last year had quality plans. Shocked? The project teams delivered high quality results, on budget and mostly to the timescales agreed with the customers. But we didn’t do it with the help of quality plans. A quality plan is a document that sets out what ‘quality’ means to the project and [...]

Lessons learned: IET debate

March 28, 2011

The Institution of Engineering and Technology held a roundtable debate recently on using lessons learned in project management. I thought it worth sharing, so you can access the webcast of the discussion from the link below. Lessons Learned: One of the most powerful and effective project management and control tools. Alec Ray Broadcast on Friday [...]

Villanova Friday, Week 2: Personal Productivity

February 11, 2011

This entry is part 2 of 9 in the series Villanova Friday

This entry is part 2 of 9 in the series Villanova FridayLast week, I started the Maximizing IS/IT Team Effectiveness course with Villanova University. The online course has a weekly live session, but it’s held in the middle of my night, so I’m not able to attend. The sessions are recorded, so this week I [...]

Join the Virtual Working Summit!

June 16, 2010

Is your project team scattered all over the place, and most of your meetings done on the phone? Many project managers lead a virtual team and getting the best out of people and their time can be a challenge when you are not based in the same office. You can learn how to do work [...]

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