April 30, 2008 – 10:15 pm
The answer is you don’t. You can probably figure out if you have a good mechanic by how well your car stays in working order after a repair. But that is as dependent on the quality of the car as it is the mechanic who fixes the problems. Could you ever know that you have [...]
April 29, 2008 – 12:17 am
I’m a big fan of Manager Tools. The podcast provides practical management techniques that can be applied in any situation, including project management. One of the tools I like best is the DiSC profile. It is a personality model based on how someone prefers to communicate. By communicating based on someone’s DiSC profile, you can [...]
April 29, 2008 – 12:01 am
Last night, my wife was watching a recording of Oprah, where Marcus Buckingham was helping several women put their strengths to work. The stories were remarkable; some became more productive in their current jobs, some started transition plans from their current career to the next, others found more time for their family, and one almost [...]
April 28, 2008 – 11:49 pm
I’m a big fan of checklists, even if I don’t use them nearly as often as I could. My practice leader sent me a program readiness checklist that lists all the key things to look for in setting up a program. The intent of the checklist is to help us when auditing our client’s programs. [...]
April 28, 2008 – 11:42 pm
I was inspired by Penelope Trunk’s blog today about using Twitter. So I opened an account, and started using. I’m not famous, so I don’t expect many people to follow me (although I did invite my wife so she can see what I’m working on when I’m away from home). The biggest value is staying [...]
Last night my family took my sister and her family to Organ Stop Pizza. This is a pizza place that features one of the largest Wurlitzer organs in the world. There are two stories of pipes, bellows, chimes, drums, a piano, and many other instruments. For forty minutes we were entertained with a combination of [...]
April 16, 2008 – 12:19 am
As a consultant, I often wonder how my client measures the value I provide. I like to think that producing an organized project plan, implementing project processes to manage issues and risks, and tracking project progress are clear, stand-alone project manager deliverables. Therefore, that these suffice to demonstrating value.
On my current project, I came into [...]
I work for a projectized organization, one of the Big Four accounting firms. Every year during our busy season, we experience the same problems: clients missing deadlines, causing us to not finish projects on time, which leads to more missed deadlines and a lot of overtime for everyone involved (of course, our clients do not [...]
I finished reading for the second time “Critical Chain” by Eli Goldratt. I find the Theory of Contraints (TOC) to be intellectually satisfying: the idea is simple (although execution is not); it makes common sense; and it resolves some of the more persistent and difficult problems in project management. But I have never implemented TOC [...]
I recently participated in a kick-off meeting for my project. Technically, it was a kick-off for only the technology group; absent were the business stakeholders. We reached agreements on the majority of the timeline, risks, and issues; we resolved the open items in the next few days. However, without the business stakeholders, we could not [...]
