The Project Coach

The Art of War Room

I just established a war room for the beginning of a new project.  In its simplest terms, a war room is a workspace dedicated to a collocated project team, enabling team members to work together to quickly create a solution to a business problem or address a business opportunity. 

 Over the years, I have been responsible for many war rooms and I have been collocated in war rooms run by other project managers.  I love a good war room.  When done well, I think a war room contributes to better work, shorter cycles and a really positive team experience.  When done poorly, a war room is just another meeting space.  › Continue reading…

All too often I hear about organizations that declare “We are now Agile…” or someone in management looks at the development team and says: “go forth and be Agile…”, and then throws them to the wolves to figure out how without any training. Some in the leadership may embrace it enthusiastically and say “we need to be more agile…”, while others are complete skeptics and believe that without all the usual documentation, no work of any quality could possibly be getting done. Indeed one of the biggest challenges in trying something new like agile practices in an organization is managing expectations of the leadership. › Continue reading…

Undoubtedly, the masters would agree hands down that the recommended approach for any project team practicing agile methods would be co-location. The benefit of this arrangement is all the casual conversation that team members naturally tend to engage in, or are forced to overhear from their co-workers, which in turn promotes collaboration on the project – or so the theory goes. Unfortunately with the fabric of today’s multi regional, global, or outsourced organizations, co-located teams are not always an option. › Continue reading…

In my last article I discussed characteristics and roles of the agile scrum methodology as compared to waterfall.  In this continuation article, I committed to examine the artifacts, meetings and processes involved and also discuss what they compare to in a waterfall context.  By design agile and the scrum methodology deliberately minimize processes, artifacts and meetings › Continue reading…

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…

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…

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…

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…

This week’s Celebrity Apprentice was an object lesson for just how badly people can handle conflict.  Women are particularly guilty of avoiding conflict so they won’t have to hurt anyone’s feelings. 

Cyndi Lauper has consistently been a distraction to her team in the first three episodes of Celebrity Apprentice.  Several of her team members on Tenacity, the women’s team, have whined about her in their camera confessionals.  › Continue reading…

Multi-Voting is a useful technique for helping your team rank or prioritize a list of options.  It is particularly useful if the first choice or top priority is clear, but you can’t get your group to agree on the 2^nd and subsequent priorities. 

The basic premise is quite simple: each participant gets to cast multiple votes on a list of options.  If the list is static, one not generated by the group, this can even be done before a brainstorming meeting.  › Continue reading…