Project management is often more about knowing what to leave out than anything else. Every project will need a different blend of methods, procedures and processes, and you need to use your judgement to know what to apply. It’s easy to buy a book on project management which will hand you a set of processes … Read more
Building a team is tough. That seems to be the consensus. Which is pretty odd, when you think about it. After all, human beings are social animals; we like to form groups. So why is it that we seem to find it so hard to form a team in our projects? The problem isn’t really … Read more
Last time, I talked about the importance of teams, and the importance of making sure they didn’t turn into cliques. That got me thinking about the good side of teams. A team is really just a small community, a group of people who work together to achieve something. Now, a team at work is unlikely … Read more
Building a team is important, we all know that. Having a team that are happy working together, that are committed to the project and the goal, can be the difference between a successful project and one that fails. But what about when building a team goes too far? There is a danger that a team … Read more
Tom Wujec talks about how we understand ideas. He discusses the different ways our brain interprets what we see around us, and how this builds up into a mental map of what is happening. This is a good video, but what I found particularly interesting was the look at how Autodesk work to create strategic … Read more
If you look at pretty much any contract job board online, you’ll see an awful lot of the project management roles call for someone with the ability to ‘handle senior stakeholders’. I think this is a pretty revealing request in a job advert. For a start, while I don’t deny this should be part of … Read more
Growing up, I was surrounded by my dad’s books of classic science fiction. He had always had a fascination and interest in science, and the ‘hard’ science fiction of the Golden Age naturally attracted him. The cheap paperbacks and, much rarer, the hardbacks of that time still occupied many bookshelves in our house by the … Read more
There are three broad types of project manager – the Courier, the Facilitator, and the Thinker. The Courier is, I am afraid, the worst type of manager. He doesn’t actually add value to his team, and in fact often gets in the way. But what does he do? Well, the Courier just acts as the … Read more
Project management isn’t just about project managers. We are just part of a team that works on the project. Our job is to help the rest of the team to be successful at their job. So what are some of the signs of a project team that successfully works together? I’ve come up with ten … Read more
Communication is vital in project management. In fact, I’d say good communication skills are one of the most important qualities a project manager can possess. But is a project manager getting involved in the internal communication of the project team actually providing value? As a quick thought experiment, let’s imagine a team of five members. … Read more
