Teams

How to provide constructive criticism

May 20, 2013

This is a guest post by Sarah Clare. As a project manager, there is sure to come a time when you have to address poor performance or substandard work. We all make mistakes, and we can all find ways to improve our work. When you are a project manager, it is your responsibility to make [...]

Managing in a matrix – we are all project managers now!

April 10, 2013

This is a guest post by Kevan Hall, CEO of Global Integration. Project managers have had to deal with ‘matrix management’ for decades. They have to build the skills to manage short and long-term teams with representatives from different functions, regions and specialisations. The matrix actually first developed as a response to the need to [...]

5 Team structures for Agile teams

February 6, 2013

Catherine Powell, principal at Abakas, a Boston based firm, spoke about agile team structures at Øredev, the software development conference in Sweden at the end of last year. She provided 5 sample team structures as examples that we could use them putting together Agile project teams of our own. 1. Team generalist In this team, [...]

Gossip at work: turning it into something useful

January 7, 2013

We all like a good chat about our colleagues, don’t we? On challenging projects with big teams there is always plenty to comment about, from why so-and-so was late to work to whether someone else is doing a good job. I spoke to workplace behavioural expert Beverly Flaxington from The Collaborative about gossip, and how [...]

Book Review: Leading with Honor

December 3, 2012

“Our culture desperately needs courageous servant leaders – men and women who have clear vision and strong character, who instill confidence and inspire excellence, who don’t fold under pressure, compromise on principle, or practice deception. In short, we need leaders who are committed to leading with honor.” So begins Lee Ellis’s book, Leading with Honor: [...]

The Co-generational Workplace: Book review of Fuse

July 11, 2012

“Organizations need to create a mash-up of the twentieth-century workplace and the twenty-first century workforce,” write Jim Finklestein and Mary Gavin in their book Fuse: Making Sense of the New Cogenerational Workplace. They believe that this approach will create a more robust, compelling economy. From the cover you would believe that this is another book [...]

Talking Project Politics: Interview with Nita Martin

February 27, 2012

Politics. Every project has politics. Today I’m interviewing Dr Nita Martin, Managing Director of Pure Indigo. Nita’s book, Project Politics: A Systematic Approach to Managing Complex Relationships, deals with that difficult subject of how things get done on projects. Nita, ‘politics’ means different things to different people. How do you define project politics? ‘Project politics’ [...]

How to be a PMO Leader: Book Review of Leading Successful PMOs

December 14, 2011

Project managers have to be project leaders as well, at least some of the time. But what happens when you want to take the next step and lead a PMO? Peter Taylor’s new book, Leading Successful PMOs, explains. He discusses the PMO that he led at Siemens. It was a three year journey. They began [...]

Turning the Generation Gap upside down: 5 tips for working with Baby Boomers

December 7, 2011

PM Network last month reported that 65% of people feel that there is a generation gap in project management. We are living in the first period where five generations are working together in the workplace. Experienced (i.e. older) project managers now have Generation X and Generation Y people on their teams. The age differences at [...]

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