PM Resolutions: Three Improvements to Make Now

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.

  Career Development   Work Breakdown Structures (WBS)  

“I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well.”
– Henry David Thoreau, Walden: Or, Life in the Woods

The editorial theme for this month is philanthropy, and I was eager to put together a piece about applying project management techniques and time to worthy causes. If you’re like many project managers, you already give resources (time or money) to worthy causes in addition to managing multiple projects or programs. You probably balance your philanthropy work and project work with family time or time with other loved ones and friends. You might also be working hard to get some form of exercise and socialization into your already full schedule. In short, I found it difficult to apply a new and coherent thought to educating or inspiring project managers under the banner of traditional philanthropy.

Reflecting on philanthropy, I realize that the definition of the term is, in many cases, what project managers do every day. If we are honest about ourselves and our teams, we will recognize that giving our time to make life easier for our teams and customers is the normal business of a project manager.

I’ve often thought of our roles as project managers being similar to soldiers. I think of Shakespeare’s King Henry V, when good King Henry cries “…once more into the breach, dear …

Please log in or sign up below to read the rest of the article.