Project Managing Your Body: A New Perspective of Traditional Knowledge Areas

Following 20 years at a large Canadian telecommunications firm, Bruce established the project management consulting firm Solutions Management Inc (SMI). Since 1999, he has provided contract project/program management services, been a source for project management support personnel and created/delivered courses to over 7,000 participants in Canada, the United States and England.

  Career Development   Risk Management   Scope Management  

If there’s one project we all hope to have assigned without volunteering, it’s managing the aging process. Unlike a work initiative, this project doesn’t begin with a kickoff meeting or a tidy Gantt chart. Instead, it sneaks up on you. One morning you wake up, notice your knees sound like popping corn, and realize you’re suddenly the project manager of a complex, multi-system initiative: your own body.

To bring order to the chaos, I’ve turned to some of the traditional PMI knowledge areas. They’ve helped organizations launch rockets and manage billion-dollar portfolios. Surely they can help with stiff backs and misplaced reading glasses…

Scope Management: Shrinking Deliverables

When the Project Charter Doesn’t Cover Hairlines

In professional life, scope creep is the great enemy. In aging, we face the opposite: scope shrinkage. The project deliverables such as stamina, eyesight, and my hairline are trimmed back without so much as a change request.

Take my Portugal Project. The scope there included climbing castle towers in Sintra, strolling the cliffs in Lagos, and tackling long lines in Lisbon. This summer, it sometimes feels like the scope statement has been revised: “Walk around the block, call it cardio, and reward myself with coffee.”

Time Management: The Slower Critical Path

Why Morning …

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