If you’ve wanted to catch some of my presentations but were unable to make it to a conference or one of my speaking engagements, you have three opportunities this fall that don’t require you to leave your desk. I’ll be doing a series of webinars for Orasi, about the impact of people and relationships […]
I have an article on Computerworld.com, Three Tips to Managing Across the Globe. Please leave comments here (because you can’t leave comments there.)
In the past few months, I’ve been teaching a variety of project management and hiring workshops. And (surprisingly to me), we’ve had discussions about whether someone is a manager or a lead. Some organizations have an aversion to calling people “managers.” Instead, they call them “leads.” One organization called their project managers “people lead.”
I taught a project management workshop earlier this week. I include a small project as part of the workshop, so participants can practice planning, organizing, and a little steering of a project in a safe setting. One of the project teams thought they were going to implement their project (a mobile), with an assembly
I’m catching up on my blog reading, and Udi Dahan’s Programmers don’t make projects fail is a keeper. Make sure you read to this part: My philosophy is followed with an operative task: If you ever have to do more than 2 hours of overtime in a week, let me know. I understand the 2
We talk blithely about the “crisis” in software development or IT. But most of the time, that’s just projects over schedule, over budget, and under featured. Real project crises are about people. I heard that one of my clients died today. She was a young-ish project manager. I’d never met her in person (she
It’s been a tough week, and it’s only Wednesday morning. We’ve had a bunch of family illnesses — nothing deadly, but difficult to diagnose with long term effects. A very old friend of the family died. And because it’s June, the kids have a gazillion things with school and sports. I’m not quite back
If you’re managing a project longer than a few weeks, you may realize that the project’s progress is not quite where you think it should be. It can seem impossible to change course. But choosing to continue what you’re doing is a choice. So you can choose to do something different. I started thinking
I’ve been thinking a lot about impossible schedules. I’m talking about the project schedules that no matter how you organize the project, it’s not possible for this group of people to cram that set of features into this much time. At least, the developers don’t think so. If people are up against impossible schedules,
I’ve been thinking about project retrospectives. Too few project teams participate in end-of-the-project retrospectives, and to few managers arrange for them. My clients seem concerned by the price of an outside facilitator and the cost in time to the next project. To address the facilitator cost, I’ve suggested that any facilitator not on the