The book »Alpha Project Managers: What the top 2% know that everyone else does not« presents results from a research among a large number of project managers conducted by the company Velociteach. The purpose of the research was to discover what the best project managers do differently as well as to find out what they know that everyone else does not.
The researchers invited more than 3000 project managers to participate in the study and they finally chose 860 qualified participants who fulfilled strict criteria to be included in the research. Among others, participants must have had at least a certain number of hours of project management experience, they must have led at least one project worth more than a certain amount of money and they had to secure the participation of their superiors, team members and clients.
The first part of the research was to rate the project managers. This was done by their superiors, team members and clients while the project managers themselves...
In the February issue of PM Network magazine you can read an interview with me about my views on sex discrimination in IT. The article is written as a debate between two project managers with opposing views. My opinion is that based on my experience there is no sex discrimination in IT. Who knows whether my opinion might be different had I been exposed to different experiences?
My co-interviewee in the article (whom I never actually met because the article was composed through several e-mail exchanges) says that I was lucky that I always managed to work in environments without sex discrimination. Her opinion made me wonder whether this may be because I always worked in environments where they hired women in IT - after all, they hired me - which shows that they had nothing against women in the first place. I've worked both in places where I was one of a handful of women in predominantly male environments as well...
The end of the year is near and it's time to look back and review what was noteworthy in the past year and whether last year's predictions came true. Information Week published a list of the 20 most important IT trends in 2011. According to the article's author Eric Lundquist, the first on the list is the realization that IT is too slow, something that the magazine wrote about at the beginning of the year.
It strikes me as so true because my experience in IT also collaborates that IT is often like a heavy brick that drags behind and makes business more difficult instead of just the opposite. IT was supposed to make business faster, better and more efficient. The pace of business is faster and users are more anxious to get quick results and immediate responses to their queries. IT must constantly struggle to catch up. And IT isn't too slow just because of poor technology or slow information systems....
Everyone in project management has probably heard of or perhaps even quoted the Chaos study, conducted every two years by the Standish Group which repeatedly concludes that IT projects have an amazingly low rate of success.
Finally we anticipate clearer skies ahead because the newest Chaos study finds that IT project success rates are slightly better compared to the success rates in previous years. They cite stronger awareness of project management in general and higher project management maturity in companies as the reasons for greater project success. Improved risk management is an additional factor for greater project success.
Another aspect of better project success might be that the projects that were analyzed in the current study are typically smaller compared to those in previous studies and therefore they may be less complex and easier to manage. The current economic crisis is probably related to project size, as companies don’t want to embark on huge and riskier projects but rather implement smaller, more manageable...
PMI introduced the »New Media Council« in 2009 whose members were tasked with writing blogs, delivering web presentations and do anything related with modern social media technologies. Their goal is on one hand to promote PMI in the web environment and on the other hand to understand how new trends in social media affect project managers.
Elizabeth Harrin, a member of this council and author of the popular blog A Girl's Guide to Project Management, authored a book on the topic of how to successfully utilize social media in project management. According to her, social media is »Collaboration and Communication with Purpose«. Since the work of a project manager is mostly communication, this fits together well.
In her book the author first describes different media that are available to project managers, such as messaging systems, videoconferencing systems, podcasts and webcasts, blogs, microblogs, social networks, Wikis and more. She indicates how each technology could be incorporated into project management.
She then discusses implementing social media...
As a member of the PMI Slovenia Chapter I was given the opportunity to attend the Project Zone 2011 project management conference in Budapest. It was organized for attendees from the Eastern European region and was attended mostly by project practitioners from Hungary, Romania and Slovakia with a few people from neighboring countries as well.
The keynote speaker was Gregory Balestrero, former president of Project Management Institute (PMI). Although he clarified that due to his retired status his speech is not officially from PMI, the spirit of the organization which he led for many years with tremendous success was nevertheless not far away. He spoke about sustainability, for example, how we humans influence the environment, how we drain its resources and what we can do today to ensure that future generations can still have a world to live in. Gregory Balestrero also spoke about his personal life during retirement. He bought a motorcycle to ride across the USA and raise awareness about environmental issues and money...
We have asked 5 questions to 5 Organizational Department Heads from different companies about project management.
I was interviewed in the SAS AR Newsletter about project management. The last question was on a less serious note and asked what profession is most closely related to project management. My answer was what I always say in such situations: managing a project is often like parenting teenage children. You can't make them do anything, you can only motivate them.
SAS AR Newsletter, April 2011
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Project managers spend most of our time communicating. This takes place within our project teams as well as outside of the project environment. Traditional communication methods, such as meetings, telephone calls and email are supplemented with more modern forms that include chat rooms, blogs, social media and similar. - International Conference on Organizational Science Development, March 23 – 25, 2011...
I participated in a meeting to prepare the proposal for a solution for a customer. They insist that the the proposal must contain a fixed price. Before the proposal can be prepared, the developers would like to know the exact scope of the solution so that all stakeholders would agree what will be delivered for the quoted price. But the customer is very vague because they are still not sure what exactly the want except that they want a fixed price proposal.
These discussions have actually been going on for months without an ending in sight. An impasse? Probably. We don't know how it will finally end up. It could go in various directions, such as:
the developer defines the scope and hopes that it is the same as the customer understands it;
the developer estimates the cost of the project based on his understanding of the scope and adds a reserve amount hoping it will cover the unknowns;
the developer estimates the cost...
Project managers often work in matrix organizations where they don't have formal authority over their project team members. They have to discuss and negotiate their resources with the functional managers or other stakeholders who are involved with the project. In addition, project managers typically don't authorize their own project budgets and other project constraints, their only job is to get the project done within the defined constraints. Although it might seem that it is extremely difficult to successfully complete a project under such circumstances, Tom Kendrick's book Results without Authority enlightens us that there is another side to this story. Project managers actually do have many levers and methods at their disposal that they can utilize to succeed in their projects even without formal authority.
The book focuses on the three most important aspects of project management in matrix organizations: communication, business processes and measuring results.
As with any other project, not just limited to matrix organizations, project managers must be strong in communication....
