When I was about 8 or 9, my father taught me to shake hands. “No limp fish!” he explained as he taught me to grip the other person’s hand making sure our thumbs met. (I really hate it when men prevent me from shaking hands properly by grabbing my fingers instead of my palm. They’re
I’m now the proud and happy owner of a new reservoir for our tankless hot water heater. (Tankless is a relative term, when it comes to hot water heaters.) A week ago, the reservoir part of our system finally broke. We had a new reservoir installed on Wednesday, and our lives have changed for the
With effective project portfolio management, everyone knows which project is #1, which is #2, which is #3, and so on down the line. Then you commit to those projects in order, by making sure they have teams who can do the work required, that the projects have any other resources they need until you reevaluate
Seth Godin has a great entry, Saying ‘no’. No is the essence of project portfolio management, no matter who you are. If you don’t say No, your yes’s don’t mean anything. As Seth says, Saying no to loud people gives you the resources to say yes to important opportunities.
I’m in some variety of “final” editing on Manage Your Project Portfolio. I’ve reorganized the first chapter into two chapters, rewritten a bunch of things, added a new zero-sum game, and have managed to tighten up some of the writing. I’ve received great feedback from Esther, Don, and Dwayne that I’m still incorporating into my
I’m in what might be close-to-final editing on Manage Your Project Portfolio. Not everyone understands all my references for things. For example, one of my reviewers did not know what a backlog is. Since I hope that managers of every level will read this book, it’s entirely possible they may not all know what a
I get to see a lot of meeting behavior. A few rules I use for meetings: End the meeting at 5 minutes before the hour. Most people have another meeting starting on the hour, and this gives them a shot at transportation and bio-break time. Ask people to turn off phones, laptops, etc directly. If
Now that it’s a hiring manager’s market, I’m hearing that a number of interviewees are hearing questions such as “Why do you want this job?” or “Why Should I Hire You?” Hiring managers: that’s a shorthand question. You know what it means, but your candidate may not. You’re looking for ways to know if this
I taught my estimation workshop twice last week and once the week before, and one thing remains true: Estimation depends on the project lifecycle, how the project is organized, the state of the requirements, and the number of people you have available. I used a number of simulations to help people see how to estimate,
I’ve been at the PMI Regina PDC this week. I did a general session talk Monday, and am leading a two-day estimation workshop through tomorrow. Andy Nulman had a great riff on normal vs. abnormal employees. You can see a clip of it here. Warning: racy, not completely clean. If you think of normal as