The Project Coach

For those of my PMP friends and colleagues who are firmly immersed in the waterfall way of doing things but who are hearing more and more about agile and scrum and wondering what all the fuss is about, I thought it might be a good idea to write a series of articles comparing and contrasting the two approaches.  I’d like to start by stating that I am very much a fan of agile and scrum and believe that the traditional PMI methodology, when practiced in a sensible manner and the agile scrum approach have more in common than you would think. At the end of the day the purpose of both is the same – to get work done well.  › Continue reading…

Let’s start with a definition of social media.  According to Wikipedia  (and that’s an obvious place to go for information about this topic) “Social media are media for social interaction, using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques. Social media use web-based technologies to transform and broadcast media monologues into social media dialogues.” The last part of that explanation is really powerful for project managers, as we strive to turn monologues into dialogues.  › Continue reading…

Since we are on the topic of troubled projects, I started thinking about what has now been branded the Deepwater Horizon Response Project.  This situation has similarities to many project calamities one might encounter in the course of dealing with internal or external customer organizations.  A customer organization messes up, BIG TIME, and you have to step in and turn it around. 

In this case, the project manager is retired U.S. Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, who is in charge of the federal government’s response to the oil spill resulting from the April 20^th explosion at one of British Petroleum’s (BP) offshore oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico.  › Continue reading…

In last week’s article, Susan discussed the emotions involved when a project is terminated, “back burnered” to death, or mercifully euthanized.  But what about those projects that don’t or can’t get cancelled when they should?  Whether due to mandatory regulatory requirements, or being beyond the point of no return some projects simply leave us no choice – they must be finished.  Managing a troubled project to prevent it from becoming a failed project, and then turning it around and steering it back to a successful project requires super star skills.  Typically project specialists at the highest end of the project management spectrum are brought in as an outsider for these jobs to function as a special recovery project manager.  › Continue reading…

It’s the end of the 2^nd Quarter and the first half of the year, and for many organizations, it’s a time when projects and programs are reviewed and analyzed.  Some will ultimately be nurtured:  more money, resources, attention, whatever the scare resource is.  Other projects and programs will not fare so well and will be terminated outright or “back-burnered” to death. › Continue reading…

In our previous 2 articles, we’ve discussed how business requirements should originate in a cascading manner from goals and objectives, to assist in assigning their relative priorities.  We also reviewed tools that can be leveraged to help us remember the different areas or categories of requirements to capture.  But now let’s step back and consider, just what is a requirement anyway, and what is it not?  › Continue reading…

In her blog last week , Cindy Vandersleen talked about the challenges of gathering requirements and how the devil is always in the details.  I think many people would agree with this assessment; I know I do.  My best practice for gathering a comprehensive set of project requirements is to build a Requirements Template, and this week I’d like to share with you some tips for creating a model that your organization can use again and again to collect a comprehensive set of requirements and manage scope creep from the word “GO”.  › Continue reading…

There have been many articles written about requirements development from many perspectives.  I happen to believe this is one of the hardest tasks of any project, and one of the key contributors to scope creep.  As the initial scope statement is defined, everyone believes they understand it.  But the devil is always in the details.  As detailed requirements are elaborated from the scope definition, the misunderstandings emerge and the estimates in time and resources get blown.  Now as project manager you are faced with the all too familiar triple constraint dance of getting permission to add more resources, or time, or reducing some of the requirements. › Continue reading…

We all know that developing the project team is a responsibility of the project manager.  In broad strokes, we know that “developing the project team improves the people skills, technical competencies, and overall team environment and project performance”. (Project Management Book of Knowledge, 4^th Ed., pg 230).  

We know that it’s important to put some effort into the team dynamics.  We plan team building activities, and can find a plethora of ideas on how to use team building events to improve communication, build trust and learn to solve problems and make decisions as a group.  If you have ever been lucky enough to engage is some high quality team-building exercises, you know that they really can provide some value.   And sometimes we hold team-building exercises as a way to reward the team for hard work and a job well done – just a chance to let people who have toiled together, through moments of panic and hours of boredom, kick back and have some fun. 

But in the heat of the battle, it’s easy to forget that the project manager actually has a responsibility to develop the individual project team members.  › Continue reading…

So the project is finally finished, the customer has accepted the deliverables, and the documentation has been finished up and handed off.  Ready to go off to the next big adventure?  Not so fast.  Before you disband the team, and lose all that knowledge they have about the last so many months you’ve all toiled together, be sure to hold a lessons learned session.  A Lessons learned session, or post mortem, as it is sometimes called, is typically held › Continue reading…