Strategy Tips for Project Communication

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palmspringschairs640x80 As a project manager your primary job is communication. Beyond the status meetings and project plan you will be giving and receiving information in a variety ways. Also, you are dealing with people who will be busy on multiple projects and support related problems. Here are some tips which take a small amount of effort for a lot of pay back. Continue reading →

Breaking Down Project, Program, and Portfolio Management

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Overview
People often get confused with project vs. program vs. portfolio so I thought I would give a quick rundown of the differences. Below is a simple diagram showing the relationships between each word.

 

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Three Roles of the Project Management Office

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PMO and Value Expectations
When someone says PMO most people think of a team of Project Managers with a long list of forms and procedures that everyone needs to follow. This might have been true in the past, but these days their is an greater expectations of the PMO to provide more value to the company. It is not enough to say you completed your project on time, schedule or budget if you can't prove those projects brought value to the company. This value expectation can vary greatly between companies and even within different departments of a company. Continue reading →

The Project Cartoon

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I remember first seeing a version of this on someone's wall and cracking up. I then noticed different versions so after doing some investigation I found the site where you can create your own versions of the cartoon at http://www.projectcartoon.com/. Continue reading →

Using the Five Dysfunctions for a Cohesive Project Team

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Five Dysfunctions of a Team Pyramid

One of my favorite diagrams on building a strong team is the pyramid from the book 'The Five Dysfunctions of a Team' by Patrick Lencioni (see below).

What I want to do is discuss this chart as it relates to project management and from a positive point of view. Instead of looking at this from five dysfunctions, the author also listed 5 functions of a cohesive team. This consists of the following:

 

  1. They trust one another
  2. They engage in unfiltered conflict around ideas
  3. They commit to decisions and plans of action
  4. They hold one another accountable for delivering against those plans
  5. They focus on the achievement of collective results

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The Pareto Principle for Projects

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One thing I find too often is people trying to throw in everything plus the kitchen sink when working on a project deliverable. I have always been a strong believer of Pareto's Principle which states that 20% of the methods will produce 80% of the results. Continue reading →