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Create a Project Plan to Migrate to a Project Management Office

6/14/2012

The irony of project management is that the bigger the deal you make of the new standard PMO and process in your company, the less likely people will want to adopt your approach. Consider these words used frequently to describe organizational project management:

A standard approach
A dashboard for control
An audit of our project

None of the words in italics create hope and excitement in a project manager. Each of these words implies that there will be layers of overhead added to the already ambitious projects people are working on, making it more and more likely that projects will be late and over budget. Avoid teeing up your approach with these types of words.
Here are some of the wrong reasons to create an organizational approach to project management:

Continue reading at http://www.trainingmagnetwork.com/discussions/show/3623
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Project Leadership Group Dynamics

6/6/2012

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Wilfred Bion was an influential British psychoanalyst in the mid 1900s. His observations about the role of group dynamics are set out in his book Experiences in Groups (Routledge, 1991).Bion identified reoccurring emotional states that groups adopt,which he labeled as assumptions. Although dedicated project teams are rare in today’s work environment, even temporary, highly matrixed project teams adopt similar emotions that help or hinder project success.

One of the things that he found was that people hold certain beliefs based on what he called “common ground.” Whether it is our family, our work teams, or even our friends, we adopt certain beliefs that influence our choices, especially during a project. If we think that something is going to pull us off this ground, or violate these beliefs, we will fight it in very predictable ways. Use Sidebar 6.2 to think about groups that you are part of and how they influence your beliefs.
A project team is at its best when everyone is working on what they are supposed to be doing. But that can’t happen forever. At some point in the project an issue arises that everyone is afraid to deal with. Together, the team will silently agree to not talk about this issue— Continue Reading...

An Excerpt from Managing Projects by Lou Russell © Russell Martin & Associates www.russellmartin.com

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June LearningFlash Contest

6/4/2012

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You can still participate in the Q2 Learning Flash Contest. Here's the final chance. Answer by 6/30 to participate. Answers for all of Q2 will be posted here after winners have been chosen.

It's time for vacations and I thought it would be fun for you to see pictures of six of the most beautiful places in the world. Tell us where each picture is taken (1 thru 6) to win prizes! Send answers to Brittney: bhelt@russellmartin.com 25 points for each correct answer.

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Reviewing a Completed Project

6/1/2012

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The Review phase is used to take a big-picture look at the project, quickly answering the question, from multiple angles:

What can I learn from this project that will help me be more effective at my future project work?

Review simply gives you the space to stand back a bit from the day-to-day chaos of a project to look from beginning to end at the choices you made that either influenced the success of the project or added to the chaos and rework. Review can take a full day or a few minutes, depending on your personal situation. It is very rarely done, which explains why project management as practiced in the real world doesn’t seem to get much better, and why there is very little “new” material about project management.

How you approach projects from the start predicts whether you’ll be open to thinking about how they went. If you approach projects thinking you will control them, you may avoid doing a review because of your feelings of failure. If you approach projects thinking that insanity will happen that must be managed, you will be more likely to take a minute to learn and internalize.

The larger the project and the more cross-functional it is, the more important it is to do a review. Such projects are also more difficult because the value comes from sharing the perspectives of all the diverse stakeholders. The most powerful reviews I have been part of have come from these larger projects. Some of the lessons learned included simple actionable ideas such as: ... Continue Reading
Purchase your signed copy of Managing Projects
Join us for our Virtual Book Signing on June 5th!
Be part of the FIRST Managing Projects Web Series

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Create a Project Plan to Migrate to a Project Management Office

Project Leadership Group Dynamics

June LearningFlash Contest

Reviewing a Completed Project

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