PMcrunch

Telecommuting is a great option today and many people opt for the lifestyle that it provides. Thus provide people with the opportunity to be closer to home, to avoid commutes, and to often avoid some of the office politics and inefficiencies that might exist by being on site in a group of other people. However, everything comes with a price; and it seems that everything is a two-edged sword. Let’s take a look.

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As leaders and project managers or program managers, we are subject to the ups and downs of what we could call the “project or program work cycle”. While sometimes things seems to be flowing forward and progressing well, like a well-oiled machine, at other times it seems that no matter what we do, progress is slow and difficult. I leadership positions, this experience is inevitable, as everything is not “black and white”. How can we handle these situations?

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A CEO said, “I’d hate to lose you—you’re one of the few people around here who actually cares.” While highly dedicated people can be rare. Deliberate effort to find and retain such people is a worthwhile performance enhancement initiative. Here are 5 key ideas to implement to have more project team members who care!

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Critical Chain project management is a great idea, or really a great collection of ideas. It has similarities to the Critical Path Method in that it focuses on the critical path tasks for managing the project. But there are several innovative ideas that distinguish critical chain from critical path, and some unique hurdles to implementation.

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There has been a tremendous amount of buzz more recently about PMOs, otherwise known as Project Management Offices. Here is what a select group of experts are saying about PMOs today.

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As Project Managers, we are called upon to be leaders much of the time – and really should be thinking about it all of the time. Rather than suggesting that we merely “think outside of the box”, I am suggesting that we “think outside the project”, because, that might be a little more appropriate for the world we as project managers are traveling in. The keys to better leadership performance – and this is a very individual thing – probably lies in our thinking outside of our project.

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The old adage goes like this: “It is much better to tell someone what to do than how to do it”. Violation of this rule is often the cause for less than optimal performance. Here are some reasons why and some ways to handle this common management miscue.

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Building the Work Breakdown Schedule is a lot of good hard project management work. While it is fundamental to the practice of professional project management, often it is soft skills - including plain old determination and leadership - that in the end produce a strong WBS.

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Agile and Scrum are gaining in momentum and popularity. Here is a list of Agile and Scrum Project Management resources.

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One of the tough jobs of a project manager is to manage people and groups of people. The larger your project, the more apt it is to have splinter groups, clicks, and polarization. Equally dangerous - on small as well as larger projects - is the idea of a core project team being alienating towards certain ’splinter’ groups of stakeholders!

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