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Andy Jordan is President of Roffensian Consulting S.A., a Roatan, Honduras-based management consulting firm with a comprehensive project management practice. Andy always appreciates feedback and discussion on the issues raised in his articles and can be reached at [email protected]. Andy's new book Risk Management for Project Driven Organizations is now available.

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As we start a new year, I always look back on my career and see how the last year has helped me to advance personally and professionally. Of course it’s easier to see progress in your career when you are starting out--a year can be a large part of that career, but even now I always find a lot of things that I have learned and some areas of my PM skills that I have been able to improve.

I have also found that there are a lot of key things that have remained with me throughout my career--little nuggets that I learned early on and that are still of great assistance to me today. As we start 2011, I wanted to share a few of those with you in the hope that one or two may resonate and be of assistance to you in the next 12 months and far beyond.

It starts with approval
One of my first projects was an absolute disaster--I got several months into it and the sponsor denied ever having initiated the project. I was faced with customers clamoring for a product and an organization that was refusing me resources because I didn’t have an official project that they could track time and effort against.

It was a very painful lesson that a project doesn’t exist until it is signed off. When I teach introductory project management courses, I always tell my students that they should refuse to work on a project that isn’t formally approved (ideally through a …

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