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Why We Work
Ah, summertime. The bees are buzzin’, the lightning bugs are lightin’ and the mosquitos are bitin’. Warm temperatures and high humidity (at least around these parts) engender a torpor that seeps into...
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The Right Personality for Project Management? It's Yours
From time to time, especially when things are sliding down the proverbial tubes, you’ve no doubt asked yourself why you ever became a project manager. My guesses as to why you might have entered the...
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Project Management and Personality Type
What sort of personality is best for project management?Insane? Well, insanity is more a pathology than a personality type, so let’s set that aside and consider an article I ran across a while back at...
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Personalities Again!
I’m still on my personality-type kick, but don’t fret—I think this will be the last post on the topic for a while.You may recall that in our last exciting episode there were several personality types...
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Plan Something Unplanned
Early on in this blog adventure, I mentioned I was building my son a treehouse. Well, I’m still at it and it has gone from a couple of 2 x 6’s bolted to a tree to a partially-finished structure with a...
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Communications is 90% ? No Way!(?)
All the gurus say communication is 90% of the project manager’s job.Thanks, gurus. That leaves us 10% for everything else, including lunch.So what’s a PM to do? Skip lunch? Never!Surely “everything...
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Ultimate Project Management: Weddings at WaterColor Inn
Recently, I spent a few glorious days at WaterColor Inn on the Florida panhandle (oil sitings: zero). During the visit, I had the good fortune to chat with Cheryl Walton, the Inn’s wedding and events...
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Have a Goal for Your Project Communications Plan
Okay, now that I’ve gotten weddings out of my system (see the previous post), it’s back to project management communications (see the post before the previous post).If your project communications are...
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Project Communications Planning: Stakeholder Identification
If you’re going to analyze your stakeholders, or even just take them to lunch, you need to know who they are first. After deciding on the goal of your communication plan, the next step is to identify...
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Project Communications Planning: Stakeholder Segmentation (Analysis)
To communicate effectively, you’ve got to know what’s appropriate. After all, you wouldn’t screen a movie like The Evil Dead for a bunch of kindergartners, would you? A solid stakeholder analysis is...
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Project Communications Planning: Who Gets What
Way to go! You’ve set the goal for your communications plan, identified your stakeholders and divided them into segments. Now you’ve actually got to send them something.You can take a couple of...
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Project Communications Planning: Deliverables
It occurs to me that after my waxing philosophical and getting all academic about communication planning, some of you might want to know what deliverables you might actually have to come up with. Fair...
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Social Media According to Rhonda Lowry: A Possible Project Management Tool
Does social media have anything to do with project management? Well, inasmuch as social media is an avenue for communication and collaboration, I suppose, in the right circumstances, it can be a...
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Flipsides: The Unity of Risk and Opportunity
First, let me wish happy holidays and happy new year to you, cherished readers. I’m a little late for Hanukah, a little early for Christmas and Kwanza, absurdly late for Ramadan and completely ignorant...
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Ideals for Project Information
I was reading an article* in Phi Beta Kappa’s periodical, The Key Reporter, the other day (I borrowed it from somebody smart), and happened across an article that mentioned “two great dreams that are...
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Perspective and Project-Induced Stress
It’s the wise project manager who garners tools for dealing with stress. One such tool I have to suggest: Perspective.Last night I went to the memorial service for a friend of mine. A swell guy,...
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Oh, No... Not "Quality"!
A while ago my wife gave me a collection of cartoons called Dilbert Gives You the Business. There are a lot of great strips in there about the Quality craze of the 1980s and 90s. I was there, and...
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Change: The Basic Condition of Life--And Projects
Change is the basic condition of our lives. Buddha said, “Everything changes, nothing remains without change.” Jesus was hip to change, too: “…no one pours new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the...
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Big Picture Change: Becoming an Evangelist
In the last post for this blog (feel free to wax nostalgic for a moment), I brought up the idea of two types of change: Closeup Change and Big Picture Change. The former is the type of mundane project...
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Change Management: Overcoming Objections
I’ve been through several big organizational changes in my corporate career. Some were train wrecks, while others rolled smoothly along. I worked for one company where 90% of the finance department...
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