Wed, 27 Jan 2010 09:31:04 -0700 http://allpm.com/ Copyright © 1998-2010 by allPM - The Project Manager's HomePage en-us http://allpm.com/images/logo.gif http://allpm.com/ admin@allpm.com http://allpm.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2275 This is the first of a four part series of managing the stakeholders. The word stakeholder is very popular topic today and is a subject of heated discussions in the project management community. In this article we will explore the concept of stakeholder management, address some key issues and recommend practical activities for dealing with stakeholders on a project. This four part series consists of the following installments: Wed, 27 Jan 2010 09:31:04 -0700 http://allpm.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2274 Recently I was assigned as a PM (Project Manager) for an outsourced software development project for my organization, this project went through lots of issues and finished with a medium success but ironically you can learn more from less successful project than highly successful ones. Everything started very “cool and shiny”. The contractor showed high enthusiasm to take the project and finish it on-time, on-budget (it was fixed cost fee, so it was in the contractor's best interest to finish in-budget) and with the expected quality. Wed, 27 Jan 2010 09:26:48 -0700 http://allpm.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2273 This article was originally published for the Breakthrough Newsletter. "You have a choice. You can promote and support adversarial advocacy, politics and division or collaboration, synergy, exploration and excellence.",1 Wed, 27 Jan 2010 09:23:04 -0700 http://allpm.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2272 A popular biblical quote essentially says where there is no vision, the people perish. It is widely used in management and leadership material to help reinforce the message that a vision is a powerful tool for focusing and engaging people in business. This article is about what project managers need to know about how people respond to a vision and the role leadership plays in transforming apathy and compliance to commitment. Committed people want the vision. Compliant people accept the vision. Your challenge is to figure to who wants it and who is just accepting it and do something to make a difference. Wed, 27 Jan 2010 09:15:30 -0700 http://allpm.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2271 I have been writing articles about “Positive Leadership in Project Management” for several years. The reason for choosing this particular title as the main theme for each article is directly connected to my belief that project managers, when assigned to a project, are assuming a position of leadership regardless of project size. A positive, motivational, and inspiring attitude is essential for personal success and the success of the team and the project. Leadership is about creating change, taking risks, setting an example, and having the courage to keep trying when previous attempts did not work. Wed, 27 Jan 2010 09:13:39 -0700 http://allpm.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2270 A typical “business leader”, Bob, talks to a Six Sigma Black Belt, Will, about poor results” on the big monthly dashboard. Bob: These key performance indicators (KPI) are unacceptable! Heads will roll. Will: Why do you say they’re unacceptable Bob? Bob: What? Are you some kind of idiot? They’re red Will, RED! Can’t you see? I thought you were supposed to be some kind of smart analytical guy. Wed, 27 Jan 2010 09:10:06 -0700 http://allpm.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2269 Accommodating change in the software development process is the nemesis of all development projects. The generally accepted practice in linear methodologies to accommodate change is to freeze the accumulated requirements at a specific point in time. Change is not prevented nor are new requirements prohibited. The freeze simply slows down the change process because all changes have to be justified to management before acceptance. Wed, 27 Jan 2010 09:06:18 -0700 http://allpm.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2268 Dentro de las organizaciones existen sistemas complejos donde la interacción o relaciones de los grupos de trabajo se pueden dar con base en una serie de factores que probablemente son imposibles de comprender en su totalidad, lo que dificulta su estudio y su análisis; pero lo que sí nos queda muy claro es el hecho de que estas interacciones marcan la forma y el rumbo en el que las organizaciones llevan a cabo sus actividades productivas, políticas y hasta sociales, en resumen estas interacciones definen a las organizaciones. Wed, 27 Jan 2010 09:04:10 -0700 http://allpm.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2267 The term “risk management” covers many different types of risk, including strategic risk, financial risk, reputational risk, operational risk, project risk, environmental risk, legal risk, contract risk, or technical risk, as well as corporate governance, business continuity and disaster recovery. While each of these areas has its own special language, processes and techniques, there are some principles which apply to them all. These might be called “universal laws of risk management”. Wed, 27 Jan 2010 08:59:50 -0700 http://allpm.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2266 Wed, 27 Jan 2010 08:54:42 -0700 http://allpm.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2264 For more than fifty years, project management has been in use but perhaps not on a world-wide basis. What differentiated companies in the early years was whether or not they used project management, not how well they used it. Today, almost every company uses project management and the differentiation is whether they are simply good at project management or whether they truly excel at project management. The difference between using project management and being good at project management is relatively small and most companies can become good at project management in a relatively short time period especially if they have executive-level support. But the difference between being good and excelling at project management is quite large. Wed, 25 Nov 2009 09:19:58 -0700 http://allpm.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2263 There are those who say that future can be predicted by history, that study of history tells us trends and reactions to events that will determine where we are going in the future. Of course those who say that tend to be historians who are angling for jobs as news forecasters on CNN. A “news forecaster” is like a weather forecaster, but forecasts news instead of the next rain storm, for example: “For tomorrow, in the news there is a cloudy outlook to labor negotiations in San Francisco with scattered incidences of economic uncertainly throughout the world, and a 70% chance of a sex scandal in Washington”. Wed, 25 Nov 2009 09:15:12 -0700 http://allpm.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2262 One of the biggest problems commonly found in projects is in getting the projects in on time and/or within budget. Let’s take these two issues one at a time. How can we ensure that our projects are on time? The first question we should ask is whether the original estimate of time that was made by the Project Manager was accepted by Management, and if accepted, whether it was correctly estimated, using all the experience, past lessons, and any other information available to the Project Manager. Very often, the reason projects are “late” is that, for them to be on-time, they should have started far earlier than the actual start date to ever have had a chance of being on time. Wed, 25 Nov 2009 09:13:23 -0700 http://allpm.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2261 As I write this I am sitting at my daughters’ dance studio watching my youngest, Layla Blue and her friend Bailey, open the door for everyone who walks through. I would make a high estimate that maybe 55% of the people for whom they opens the door actually say “thank you.” Moreover, I notice that the “thank you’s” are more free flowing from the kids and more reserved (if even in existence) from the adults. The million dollar question is; “what does this have to do with project management”, right? Actually… a lot. As I sit here watching, I see the girls’ faces light up when someone says “thank you” and truly means it. They are fairly happy someone says “thank you”, even if they don’t really mean it. Their faces sink however when people walk through without even the slightest acknowledgement of their efforts. Wed, 25 Nov 2009 09:11:09 -0700 http://allpm.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2260 When the question is asked: “What is leadership?” the response is generally based on the characteristics of a leader. Most people describe the external manifestations that are frequently associated with a person in a leadership position. These characteristics include charisma, intelligence, knowledge, commitment, communications skills, the ability to influence people, assertiveness, and so on. These may very well be key characteristics of a leader but they do not actually answer the question “What is Leadership?” To answer that question, one must take some time and think about people who have been in leadership positions and actually accomplished something. This requires a bit more thought than simply describing what is perceived to be the qualities of a leader. Wed, 25 Nov 2009 09:08:05 -0700 http://allpm.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2259 Variation is the enemy. It’s the enemy to quality. It’s the enemy to improvement. It’s the enemy to management. There is perhaps no more misunderstood concept in business today than the concept of variation. This misunderstanding is the root cause of knee-jerk reactions, over control, micromanagement, and tampering with results. Quite frankly, when management does not understand variation their decisions can, and usually do, make things worse. The ramifications are widespread and costly. Employees feel frustration for having to explain randomness or things completely out of their control. Customers have no idea what to expect. Customer facing employees have no confidence in what can be promised or delivered. Wed, 25 Nov 2009 09:06:21 -0700 http://allpm.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2258 Have you ever been in a project that had time and cost constraints that were never going to be met? If you have, you know the pain that everyone suffers when they try to do the impossible. Effective project managers cultivate the courage and competency to push back against arbitrary budgets and deadlines to negotiate realistic win-win cost and schedule estimates for their projects. This article explores how to negotiate realistic estimates to set realistic expectations. Wed, 25 Nov 2009 09:01:36 -0700 http://allpm.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2257 Risk is defined in two dimensions: uncertainty and effect on objectives. It is common to use the terms “probability” and “impact” to describe these two dimensions, and assessing the significance of any given risk means considering both. It is relatively simple to assess effect on objectives, since this merely requires defining the situation after the risk has occurred, and then imagining what happens: “If this risk occurred, what would the effect be?” Probability is not so easy however. Risk practitioners and project teams alike experience repeated difficulty in assessing the probability that a given risk might occur. There are a number of reasons for this. Wed, 25 Nov 2009 08:53:27 -0700 http://allpm.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2256 Wed, 25 Nov 2009 08:47:47 -0700 http://allpm.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2253 Dear Friends and Colleagues, It is good to be back for a “visit” to all my old – and probably many new – allPM.com colleagues. I do miss you and our engaging dialogues! To catch you up, International Institute for Learning (IIL) has me focusing primarily on taking the simple yet profound message of the book The Power of Acknowledgment around the world, in many different forums. For example, I delivered the keynote address to an audience of 800 project managers at the IPMA conference in Helsinki, Finland in June. I had been told that acknowledgment does not exist in their culture, but the presentation then had people standing up to acknowledge their bosses, who just happened to be in the audience. Then there was the New York Police Department, many PMI Chapters, and hundreds of corporations that have taken this training. Fri, 30 Oct 2009 08:22:17 -0600 http://allpm.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2252 When conjuring up a mental picture of a project manager (PM), what comes to your mind? After reading this article, you may picture a team sport coach (coach). It may or may not surprise you that the responsibilities of a PM and those of a coach have many similarities – particularly on the human side of the disciplines, where “soft skills,” rather than technical or “hard skills” are put into practice. According to Career Opportunities News, 2002, “soft skills” is a sociological term relating to a person's "EQ" (Emotional Intelligence Quotient) – the cluster of personality traits, social graces, communication, language, personal habits, friendliness, and optimism that characterize relationships with other people. Soft skills complement the technical or hard skills required by a job assignment. Fri, 30 Oct 2009 08:19:20 -0600 http://allpm.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2251 Who is responsible for dealing with the soft skill dilemmas? The demanding nature of a project propels the project manager to a leadership position the very day he is placed in that role. He becomes the fulcrum of the project, the one person who is looked to by all stakeholders. It takes a colossal amount of effort, and an equal amount of varying skills to complete a project successfully. Fri, 30 Oct 2009 08:15:27 -0600 http://allpm.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2250 This article was originally published for the Breakthrough Newsletter. At the heart of any organization is the individual. Individuals assemble into teams and departments which take on a "personality" of their own and assemble into larger and larger organizational units. Individuals influence and are influenced by their teams and organizations. Fri, 30 Oct 2009 08:11:37 -0600 http://allpm.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2249 Leadership is a topic that continues to be explored, reviewed, analyzed, and scrutinized by authors and thought groups in every industry and discipline in the private, non-profit, and government environments. John C. Maxwell has an interesting view of leadership. In his book, “Your Roadmap for Success, 2002, Maxwell Motivation, Inc.” he provides two perspectives about leadership: Fri, 30 Oct 2009 08:03:36 -0600 http://allpm.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2248 This is the final article in the series outlining my experience studying and sitting for the PMI Scheduling Prep exam, click here to read Part 1 & Part 2 of this Journey. Finally it was time to study. The first thing I did was an Internet search for prep guides and came up empty. I really thought I had mastered Google and Live Search (now www.bing.com), but sometimes they don’t have all the answers. The only study materials I came up with were books from PMI®. Fri, 30 Oct 2009 08:00:53 -0600