
A Guide to Creating a 4 Blocker (four blocker)

Inherent Tensions
You deal with a lot of people and personalities in Project Management. And, you are often asking a lot from the people on your project. It is even more of a challenge if you have a group not used to project management. The result is a natural amount of friction and passive aggressiveness that can get out of hand if not dealt with early.
Understand the Team
At the beginning of a project, my first priority is understanding everyone on the team and their skills and experience. I approach this with a genuine respect for the work they do and the experience they have.
Mutual Respect
I have learned that respect is not a document you hand out or a box of donuts (though it helps). It is the attitude you have towards those on your team. It is a frame of mind that you have when talking to someone. So, start off on the right foot by nurturing mutual respect and the possibilities of what your team can accomplish will be endless.
Originally Published in 2009 and underwent a moderate update
Projects are Unique
As most people know, a Project is a temporary and unique endeavor to create a product, service, or result. It is the unique aspect that creates a good chunk of additional overhead in planning and defining the project scope and activities. Creating activities to be used just one time is also expensive. Fortunately, there are sometimes opportunities to operationalize a project. If you have a project that is not highly complex, and you will need something similar in the future, it might be something where you can create procedures for it as part of the project. By creating a repeatable procedure, you can remove the inherent overhead associated with projects. Continue reading
Common Names
Project Management Plan, Project Plan, Project Mgmt Plan, Project Management Planning
Description
Your Project Management Plan is a collection of plans that define how you will direct and mange your project or program. An easy way to think of this is your rule book and framework on how the project team will execute the project. It sets the standards and baselines for everyone in the project team to follow. For this Template I will list the most common sections you will see in a Project Mgmt Plan.
Note: There is a huge degree of variation in project management plans and it could be one standard document plus additional plans specific to your project. This is just an example to understand the value of having one as my own plans vary from one project to another.
Your Project Risks, Project Issues, and Project Change are key controls to establish in a PMO and your Projects. I like to call these your exception controls because they control the exceptions to your plan. In this article I will explain the differences of each, how they relate to each other, and how best to use them. To start out, I first want to give explain the relationship between each control:
Names Used
Project Proposal, Project Request, Business Case, Project Idea, Idea Request, Pipeline Request
Description
Making the case on why you should do this. A one page form to give a weighted score and identify the size, risk, and cost of the project. This also helps you tier the project so you know what type of process and due diligence is needed. Or you might find it is not a project at all and falls under support. Once this proposal is submitted, it will go into a pipeline of project proposals and scored against other proposals.