The Green Machine

Rob Saxon is a Project Management Professional, Certified Information Systems Auditor and a trained Six Sigma Specialist. Rob is currently developing methods to integrate project management into previously unexplored areas of business.

  Communications Management   Cost Management   Knowledge Management   Lessons Learned   Quality   Strategy   Talent Management  

August is a time of change: The kids will be going back to school soon, the leaves will begin to fall and the seasons will cycle from summer to autumn. August is also a great time for us as project managers to consider how we might change our habits for the better. It’s very easy to get trapped into a set of activities without examining how we can improve our delivery. By incorporating the three “Rs” (reduce, reuse and recycle) we can better manage our projects.

We’re all familiar with this hierarchy from Earth Day advertisements and from the recycling requirements of our local towns. How, though, can we make use of these tenets in our projects? What can we reduce in our projects without sacrificing quality? What can we reuse without undermining our customers’ intellectual property? Finally, what can we recycle that will help us to be more efficient? We’ll explore a few simple “green” techniques in this article.

Reduce

“About 98 percent of everything printed out by a computer is garbage that no one ever reads.”
-- Andy Rooney

There are a couple of obvious techniques we can use to help encourage ourselves and others to be more waste conscious. One easy technique is to add a note to the end of emails saying, “Please do not print this email or attachments unless absolutely necessary.” Many…

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