PMcrunch

Most good managers in project and program management know the importance of maintaining relationships with team members and stakeholders. Basic human relations can go a long way in improving overall program and project quality. However, I have learned that there is a community beyond our immediate team members and stakeholders that are worth considering in everything we do.

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As a program or project manager, one must keep an eye on both the near term and long term.  Today, under tough economic conditions, we typically turn to more near-term thinking because the focus needs to be first on survival before considering future plans.  We need to be careful however to not take this near-term thinking too [...]

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The benefits of conducting an annual employee survey is widely accepted but many organizations have been put off by the amount of effort those annual surveys take to deploy.

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I love basketball and I enjoy each March here on the United States when March Madness and NCAA basketball tournament arrives. In watching the games this past weekend, I could not help but be amazed at the number of game changing plays made by the players. In many of the games, it was a matter of how many game changing plays each team made. And the one that made more won. But the fact of the matter is that, these teams are full of game changers and made every game changing play they could. What can we learn from this for project management?

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There is a simple and basic attitude that we, as leaders on our projects and programs, can adopt that will make all the difference in the world. That thing is the idea of engaging openly and creatively with our team members as opposed to either seeking constant agreement or taking an authoritarian stance.

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In these challenging times, so many of our projects and programs are more challenging than usual. We are called upon to make tough decisions to solve difficult problems and to squeeze more out of every resource we have. How we face these challenges has more to do with our approach and attitude than anything else.

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Loyalty has always been a big topic in organizations of all types. Back in the middle ages, kings spoke of their loyal subjects and gave severe penalties to those who were not loyal. For many years, in the post-World War II era, people were rewarded for loyal service with lifetime employment. However, in today’s fast-paced world the question in my mind is “What are the limits of loyalty?”

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We are living in an age of “standardization”. It seems that everything is standardized, from processes and procedures to management practices across the board. While we, as managers, try to standardize much ourselves in order to reduce error, create efficiencies, build a common vocabulary, and enhance communication, what happens when things just don’t seem to be working the way we like?

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Software project outsourcing and managing virtual teams are very hot topics today. They present new opportunities as well as new challenges for project and program managers. Below is a collection of recent articles and posts around the internet on this timely topic.

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As leaders, Project Managers and Program Managers need to communicate clearly. Communication is a tricky thing, and among other things, it is influenced greatly but what we see in the world, and what we see is shaped by what I call the “color or your glasses”.

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