PMcrunch

After someone has been managing projects for some time and has achieved certification, he or she will feel more than comfortable with the basics. The big question is how can more experienced project management professionals continue to advance in skill and maturity by leveraging training. Let’s explore.

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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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On your project teams over time, there surely have been “pivotal performances”. Just like in a basketball game there was something that the winning team did throughout the game, that proved to be pivotal to the outcome of that game. There are things that each team member, and the team as a whole does throughout a project, that are pivotal to the projects success. The question is, how do you find those things, and how do you get your project team to turn in pivotal performances, routinely.

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One of the challenges that many managers have is organizing the plethora of projects AND processes that are part of their organizational realm. The first step to dealing with this is to clearly distinguish what is a project and what is a process. Getting clear on gray areas can pave the way for a forceful visions and way ahead on any program.

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Successful delegation requires granting both responsibility and authority. These two, combined properly, constitute “empowerment”. However, these two are often not properly executed by the project manager or program leader, and the blame is often placed on the delegate, not on the leader! We, as project and program leaders, need to look at ourselves in the mirror and ask if we are delegating properly.

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Project organizations really are not unlike other organizations. Like a small, medium, or large sized corporation, projects have specific objectives that need to be supported by its own project culture. Projects inlcude collections of people and stakeholders, surrounding a concept or idea and particular action, take on a persona. Discovering, and even more important creating, and maintaining the character of that persona, is an important job of the project manager and supporting organization.

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The Student Syndrome is something that we all have experienced one way or another. It is evident that most of us tend to do at least to some degree of cramming for exams, completing papers, completing projects, doing problem sets and more. The student syndrome is based on our human tendency. For example, the student syndrome is demonstrated where, if we have 25 days to do an assignment, we put off most of the work until the final days or hours before it is due!

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RSS feeds are an important component of project communication online, albeit indirectly. They are highly valued commodity, depending on what they can offer and who wants them. They are also one of the fastest growing methods used online to reach a wider audience. In terms of the distribution of information, RSS feeds can also be quite reliable, capable of being used to focus on a highly targeted segment of the market. Hence, they can also be valuable to automatically bringing information INTO the project that is highly relevant to the team and stakeholders.

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I find that the Juggler’s Dilemma is a great concept and provides an analogy that I can use on a regular basis. Beyond right brain analysis, it also provides a simple “gut check”, as the juggler surely FEELS something in his gut when he is getting to the tipping point!

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