PMcrunch

Presumably as a Project Manager you see yourself, as a leader…or at least an aspiring, developing leader. But are you a “maven”?

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The benefits of conducting an annual employee survey is widely accepted but many organizations have been put off by the amount of effort those annual surveys take to deploy.

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I am struck by one common thing called Integration Across Disciplines. I think this is one of the most important concepts in project management, and even more so in program management.

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In these challenging times, so many of our projects and programs are more challenging than usual. We are called upon to make tough decisions to solve difficult problems and to squeeze more out of every resource we have. How we face these challenges has more to do with our approach and attitude than anything else.

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Sunk costs are exactly as the name implies: they are costs that are “sunk”. The money spent is irretrievable. It is gone, history, sunk. However, often there is either a misunderstanding or an emotional attachment to money that was spent. This is a difficulty that we, as forward looking project managers, need to remember.

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As project managers, we often are handed projects once they are sold. For example, in a consulting organization, a sales force will often sell a project which then is assigned to a project manager. Similarly, within organizations, someone has “sold” a project to upper management and to stakeholders and then the project is assigned to a project manager for implementation.

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We all have different personalities – even project managers. But what makes one person more effective than another? Are there certain situations in which each of us is more effective than others? Is there something that we, as project managers, can do to become more effective through our personality? Are there situations that we should avoid?

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MBWA (Management by Walking Around) is a technique that has been around for quite awhile. I am not sure exactly where it originated, but I have practiced it myself and have observed others practicing it – both intentionally and unintentionally. It is very effective if used properly – and very ineffective if not used correctly!

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Delegation is something that we must do excellently in order to be managers, and we must do very skillfully to be leaders. At first glance, it would seem to be easy to delegate work to subordinates, but actually doing it well is often much more complex.

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I recently read a forum entry where someone was looking for advice on PM tools and PM software used across the globe for IT needs. The person mentioned that their company had some general tools like Critical Path, PERT etc., and various models for Estimation. The question was “What would be best software to support all these tools + models and standards like CMMI or ITIL, then support for SEI – indicator template for measurement analysis, Risk Management alerting + Alerting on Change management etc. Also requested were opinions on using lines of code as a metric.

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