Many of us focus on how efficient we can be. Many of our organizations want to maximize our output for every minute and hour of work. However, if we focus on effectiveness first, we create better outcomes for everyone. We don’t waste time working on things that don’t matter. An Example of Moving from Efficiency …
Leadership Tip 12: Focus on Effectiveness, Not Efficiency Read More »
Three Ideas to Boost Your Productivity Several Pragmatic Manager subscribers have asked me about how to build and maintain their productivity. They say they have these problems: The longer they work apart from other people, the less they have the “peer pressure” of a collaborative schedule. They find it hard to maintain focus for a long time. …
A potential client called me. “What’s a good tool to see the state of my projects? I need a tool.” I asked, “What problems do you see?” “Everything is late. No one’s synchronized. I can’t tell where the projects are.” “How many projects do you have in progress?” “At least 100.” (I was pretty sure …
Project Portfolio Problems Masquerade as Project Problems Read More »
If you are like most people I know, it doesn’t matter what approach you take to your projects—your manager has too much work for you to do. Instead of a potential career-limiting conversation, frame the conversation so you can show your manager you’re considering his or her perspective. Here are some options for how to …
I’ve been working with several managers at organizations large and small, who want to capitalize their software “earlier.” These managers have some strongly-held beliefs about the people: People are resources Resources can multitask on several projects at a time If “headquarters” does the difficult work, you can move the “grunt” work to lower wage areas …
Do estimates make you slightly crazed? Maybe you want to roll your eyes at the organization’s confusion between your estimate (guess) and a commitment. You’re not alone. I wrote an article about estimation, How to give IT project estimates—and when not to estimate at all. If you’ve ever struggled with estimating work, give it a read. …
Estimation Article Posted: When to Estimate and When Not to Estimate Read More »
Projects have problems. That’s why we select life cycles, approaches, and apply risk management as we proceed so we can manage these problems. What’s your #1 project problem? The nice folks at Mavenlink identified 5 major challenges in project management. Here are the top 3: Project plans and scheduling are not aligned (45%) Contention for …
3 Quick Project Portfolio Tips The second edition of Manage Your Project Portfolio is available now, in ebook and paper. I’m so excited. To celebrate, here are three tips to help you manage your project portfolio. Tip 1. Make your work visible. When I lead workshops to help people understand how to manage their project …
I’ve been teaching workshops these last few weeks. A number of the participants think that they need to create great estimates. I keep hearing, “I have to create accurate estimates. My team needs my estimate to be accurate.” I have found that the smaller the work, the better the estimate. If people work as a team, …
I was problem-solving with a potential client the other day. They want to manage their project portfolio. They use Jira, so they think they can see everything everyone is doing. (I’m a little skeptical, but, okay.) They want to know how much the teams can do, so they can do capacity planning based on what …