Important PM Lessons Learned From a Life Behind the Keyboard

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.

  Career Development  

This month’s ProjectManagement.com theme is focused on real-life project management. That made me think about what my “everyday” looks like. I work with a lot of different clients on a lot of different topics, so it’s pretty wide ranging. But there are some common themes—I do a lot of writing, and a lot of it is for this site. And I think of my articles, and the process of producing them, as projects (not large or complex one, but projects nevertheless!).

So here I will take you through my process of writing (that has the potential to get confusing, doesn’t it?). I’ll highlight the elements that I think are most directly relevant to project management—and hopefully help you think about project management a bit differently, whether you are a writer or not.

At the end of the day, we all go through some version of the same things in our daily routines—and you may not always recognize that you are applying project management skills.

What fosters your creativity?
I can’t write an article until I have a topic to write about. That means that I need to come up with ideas, refine them to ensure that they deliver value—that you as the reader get something positive from them—and then give them structure, flow and substance.

That’s where my dogs come in. No, really. I would say that about three-…

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