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 20th explosion at one of British Petroleum’s (BP) offshore oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. › Continue reading…
Tags:
expert judgment,
lessons learned sessions,
project manager skills,
risk management,
stakeholders,
Triple Constraint
Well, the season has wrapped up, and for project managers, there were plenty of lessons to learn. We saw failures in communication, planning, execution and risk management. We saw poor ideas that were well-executed and good ideas that suffered in implementation. We saw coalitions form and break apart.
Ultimately, it came down to Holly Robinson Peete and Bret Michaels, neither whom I would have predicted would be a finalist. › Continue reading…
Tags:
bret michaels,
Celebrity Apprentice,
coalition,
success
My New Year’s Resolution is to focus on creativity this year. Even though today is only December 31, there is no time like the present! So, let’s get started.
For the next few weeks, I will be blogging about how we, as project managers, can help our project teams think more creatively. In my last blog, I looked at the systems and causes of teams that are in a creativity crisis. Today, I offer the first technique for helping your team break out of a creativity rut. I will follow with many more techniques over the next several weeks. › Continue reading…
Tags:
Communications,
group dynamics,
project manager skills,
project team meetings,
teambuilding
Communicating about tasks, roles and responsibilities takes up a great deal of time for most project managers. After communicating, a project manager documents and tracks task assignments in a project plan. So everybody has something to do, and the plan forward is clear to all. But how do you translate those task assignments into a real sense of ownership by individual team members? How do you make sure that each member of the project team feels accountable for the project’s success, not just the project manager? › Continue reading…
Tags:
group dynamics,
project manager skills,
project team meetings,
teambuilding
