Greetings Leaders!

As a project management expert, I often get to see first hand how an organization measures their effectiveness in project management. I find it intriguing that so many of them, don’t really understand what they are trying to measure. They just look at their list of projects and if they all get done, then they are successful. If they don’t they are not successful. Many don’t measure it at all. Measuring project management effectiveness (PME) is important, but overlooked by many. What about your organization?

Read the rest of this entry »

Greetings Leaders!

Statistically speaking, the 80/20 rule seems to apply to almost every situation. When it comes to your staff, it means that 20% of the people do 80% of the work. What would happen if we could somehow raise the level of performance of the 80%, just a bit? Or better yet, how can we move the bell curve to the right so that 40% of the people do 80% of the work? By moving the bell curve to the right, if the original 20% stay productive, and you increase the productivity of 25% of the rest of your staff, the amount of work that got done would have to go up. So, how do we go about accomplishing this?

Read the rest of this entry »

Greetings Leaders!

You don’t have to go very far to find a failed multi-million dollar project. To be clear, let’s define failure as a multi-million dollar project that ran consistently behind budget and schedule, that came in years late. If you’ve been around for any length of time, I’m sure you’ve involved with a few. I know I’ve seen my fair share. To give you a few examples, here are some interesting articles on failed projects:

10 Famous ERP Disasters, Dustups and Disappointments: From CIO Magazine

Famous Failures of Complex Engineering Systems: CalTech

Catalog of Catastrophe Why Technology Project Fail: Calleam Consulting

So… why are these projects failing? I’m sure you’ve seen the typical answers, Poor Project Selection, Scope Creep, Bad Estimates, Poor Project Management. However, there may be another reason  unrelated to project management or organization dysfunction that may surprise you…

Read the rest of this entry »

5 Leadership Skills for Project Managers

Guest Blogger Claudia Vandermilt

As a project manager, your teams rely on your leadership skills to guide and encourage productivity and project success. When provided with quality leadership, team members often respond positively; they build stronger relationships and rise to project challenges brought forth by their leader.  Arm yourself with these five critical leadership skills to help propel a winning team:

Read the rest of this entry »

Greetings Leaders!

While teaching a project management class last night, we got into a discussion about social media, technology and how communicating can overwhelm you due to the many ways we now communicate. Many of the younger (under 30) students said that they had a hard time managing their communications because of the myriad of ways that people communicate today. It was not too long ago that people joked about being addicted to the “crackberry”, but that was just the tip of the iceberg. Today we communicate by E-mail (old school), texting, instant messaging, phone calls (really old school), twitter and other social media tools. These make us more accessible than ever before, and if you’re not careful, you’ll find yourself texting, twittering, instant messaging and emailing all at the same time. With all these demands for your time coming at you at once, it can be overwhelming. Here are some tips to getting your life back under control.

1. Read the rest of this entry »

Greetings Leaders!

I’m the middle of teaching a project management class and we just finished up a section on Stakeholder Management. The discussion was lively, the group insightful, and as is often the case when I teach, I learned a few things myself. What I found interesting was the passion this particular group of students had about managing stakeholders. Most of the students are experienced project managers and they had a lot of insight into this vital but often overlooked area of project management. The two questions that got the discussion going were:

1. Would you consider yourself (as a project manager) successful if you met the requirements, the timeline and the budget… but your customers were not satisfied with the product?
2. Would you consider yourself successful if your project was delivered later than originally planned, over the original budget, but your stakeholders were happy?

Of course there are many situations that would influence your answer. But in general, and the class agreed, managing stakeholder and customer expectations were the keys to measuring project success.

Read the rest of this entry »

Greetings Leaders!

I’ve been hired to salvage troubled projects before. Sometimes I was successful, other times… well, not so much. Trouble projects are not hard to identify. In fact, it’s relatively easy. They’re chronically late, over budget, have poor quality, and the team is often in disarray. If you’ve been a project manager for any length of time, you will certainly have managed a troubled project. Saving a troubled project is not rocket science, but it is one of the more difficult things to do.

Read the rest of this entry »

Greetings Leaders!

I’ve been consulting in State and Local Government for 15 years and have seen quite a few things during my career. There have been successful projects for sure, but sadly, there have been many failures too. As I look back on my experiences, there are patterns that stand out between the good and the bad. I want to pass one of these on to anyone preparing to launch a large multi-million dollar IT project, in the hopes that you can avoid this deadly mistake.

Read the rest of this entry »

Greetings Leaders!

I often wonder why some people make it big and others not so much. A friend went to see the Rat Pack Tribute recently that highlighted singers that resembled Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Joey Bishop, Sammy Davis Jr. and Peter Lawford.  The singers were pretty good. But… why did the originals rise to stardom and these others just become good impersonators?

When I go to San Francisco and walk down the wharf, I always see talented musicians playing on the sidewalk for money. Many are often broke. What happened to them? Why aren’t they using their talents making a lot of money, or at least sharing their gifts to make a living? Instead, they live a life of poverty, hoping someone will come by and throw a buck in their guitar case. How about project managers? Why do some rise to stardom as a project rockstar, and others languish in mediocrity? Want to be a project rockstar? You can if you’re willing to follow some simple advice.

Read the rest of this entry »

Thomas Juli – Contributing Expert

Project managers all need and thrive for successful projects. But what exactly does project success mean? Is project success the successful and timely delivery within budget? Or is it the path to glory? Do results always matter the most? What else does project success mean? And what does it take to achieve project success? Does success fall from heaven? Is it limited to a lucky few who happen to be in the right place at the right time? Is it coincidence? Or can we actually plan success?

Read the rest of this entry »