Teachable Moments: Sort Through the Clutter to Identify the Key Issue

Marv Goldstein, PMP, is a Program Manager with a legislative branch agency. He previously served as the Director of Research for an international project management training company. Marv has a Master's Certificate in Project Management and has extensively spoken on the subjects of project management, competitive intelligence and knowledge management.

 

Teachable moments are formed when you have done something--regardless of the outcome--and learned from the experience. Learning makes us better at what we do and provides a great opportunity to develop others and sharpen skills. We’ve compiled our best Teachable Moments from our community members for you to learn from and share with other project managers.

Projects have many moveable pieces with lots of events simultaneously going on. Some of these events are good, like the emergence of a superstar team member. Other events may not be as positive, as challenges with technology issues, budget and schedule constraints, communication problems or team member conflict. Most of these issues can be addressed by a skilled project management professional. An experienced project manager would be aware of the issues and implement a get-well plan. 

Every so often, an issue arises that is a show-stopper, something that may threaten the project from continuing. The challenge is to quickly identify any severe issue amongst the noise of everything else going on. There can be false positives, where an issue seems like it warrants greater attention that it truly deserves due to the emotions involved. Likewise, there could be a subtle issue that is persistent, like the constant drip of water from a facet that can be your project killer.

Several years ago at a previous …

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