Career development and project management tips for project managers
Project managers are trusted to deliver on time, within budget and scope. The longer your track record of successful deliveries, the more executives trust you to deliver the next big, hairy, audacious project. In turn, you need to trust your project team members to complete their action items on time, raise risks before they become … Read more
For many years, agile teams have focused on delivering the Minimum Viable Product (MVP). Project managers transitioned from traditional or predictive approaches to adopting an agile mindset with sprints and pivots. However, building a product or delivering a service is not enough. It is of limited scope. To truly deliver value to the enterprise, project … Read more
What does project risk mitigation have to do with putting out fires with coke? Well, firstly there is the risk of fire breaking out at home, in a vehicle, at the office, wherever you are. The typical way to mitigate that risk is to have a fire extinguisher nearby. However, fire extinguishers cost more than … Read more
Leadership is about observable results and performance. However, like an Olympic athlete, the performance you see in a few minutes is the result of years of training. What is the training arena for leaders? It is what others don’t see, at least not physically. It’s what lies beneath the surface, your thoughts, feelings and emotions. … Read more
Looking for how to configure the Due Date or other fields in JIRA is like looking for a needle in a haystack. Here’s the step-by-step instructions: 1.Click Project Settings on the left sidebar 2.Click Fields in the left sidebar 3.Click the Edit icon (it’s the pencil in the red box highlighted in the screenshot above) … Read more
By now, the result of the Canadian Federal Election held on September 20 would be known. Was it a good decision by the people of Canada? I believe James Surowiecki thinks so. After all, what is a general election if not a decision made following “The Wisdom of Crowds”? There are some basic assumptions though, … Read more
The role of Program Manager exists in many organizations but there is some ambiguity around whether this is an operational-type role or a project-based role. What is the difference? In my experience, operational Program Managers are more widespread than project-based ones. There is no end date to operational programs. The Program Manager is expected to … Read more
The value add of a project manager tends to be missed if you do a good job and everything goes smoothly. If a project was a one-year international road trip, the project manager: Maps out the entire journey Foresees problems along the way e.g. forest fires resulting in road closures, bad weather necessitating slower speeds, … Read more
I recently became upset at someone because I observed certain behaviours and told myself a narrative about why this person did what they did. That started a spiral of negative emotion fueling an imagined narrative, that in turn amplified the negative emotion, and boosted the story with even more negative charge–over and over again. When … Read more
In many project management offices, the term “smart failure” is shunned. It’s not smart to be associated with any project or initiative with even a hint of failure. Thomas Edison begs to differ: On progressive elaboration, iterative development, and lessons learnt:• Results! Why, I have gotten a lot of results. I know several thousand things … Read more