For years, many project and functional managers have believed they need the “exact right person” in each role on a project. Those exact right people are specialists, and some of them have quite narrow specialties. Here’s the story of one specialist and her impact on several projects. Two project managers needed the same person, a […]
There’s a discussion on a mailing list about a partially committed-to project: there aren’t enough people on the project, the people don’t have the time to do the work because they are interrupted all the time by support of previously released applications. The only people available are part-time people who are not available when the
I’m trying to clean up the project portfolio management book for technical review, and I realized the other night (well, morning, when I woke up), that I’d missed explaining a key idea. We all work on several kinds of projects: Projects that maintain the organization, the kind we need to run. These projects “keep the
I’m writing for gantthead.com this year, about agile and lean project portfolio management. My first article was posted back when I was so sick. See The Game of Risk. You can leave comments there, or if you prefer, here.
I’ve been sick for weeks, and am finally coming out of it to be close to healthy. (I was still coughing in the 8-degree Fahrenheit cold leaving the gym. Oh well.) One of the problems is that my work doesn’t stop if I’m sick. I bet yours doesn’t either. Daughter #2 asked last night if
We are living in a time of economic uncertainty. Fine. For some people, that might mean a hunker-down, reduce-risk, stick with what we know mentality. I take a contrarian’s approach: Start the risky projects. If we don’t start the risky projects, how can we discover a breakthrough, reduce waste, or innovate enough to work our
My most recent Stickyminds Column, Decisions, Decisions, Decisions: Should You Commit, Kill, or Transform is posted. Enjoy!
I’m editing the project portfolio book. Yes, I’m trying to get ready for beta. No, I have no idea when I will be ready. I’ll have more information before Wednesday, if you want to know. I realized that when managers don’t make ranking decisions about the project portfolio, when they don’t fully commit to a
I’ve been writing a bunch of articles about project portfolio management, exploring the ideas about committing to projects. (See Serial Monogamy Project Management for some initial thoughts.) But, as I’ve been working with clients and writing more, I’ve been realizing that not only do the decisi0n-makers have to commit to projects, but that the project
This year, after I archived my last year’s inbox, I decided my email problem was getting worse, not better. “I’m Johanna Rothman, and I have a problem collecting email in my inbox.” I decided to make an effort, one day at a time, to get to zero emails in my inbox. I’m inspired by Merlin’s