Guessing is not a strategy: How to build decision velocity with AI and real-time data
June 10, 2026 | Live Webinar
Tribute to a Giant in the Field -- Report from the PMI Research Conference
| The PMI Research and Education Conference that wrapped up yesterday in Washington, D.C. is getting rave reviews from everyone involved -- including trainers, university educators, students and practitioners -- groups that are represented in record-high numbers. Altogether, more than 550 people have attended over the course of four days. Tuesday night was one of the highlights of the conference. As part of the 2010 research awards ceremony, PMI paid tribute to a project management icon -- David Cleland, PhD, PMP and PMI Fellow. Many people gave audio or video tributes to Dr. Cleland, an instructor and author who has been in the field for more than 40 years. Among those who paid tribute were Gene Bounds, PMP, PMI Chair; Rebecca Winston, former chair; Dr. Cleland's frequent co-author, Bopaya Bidanda, PhD; Mike Rapach, PMP, PMI Pittsburgh Chapter President; and Larry Hager, senior editor for McGraw-Hill Companies. This was an appropriate venue for the tribute, as Dr. Cleland was a co-founder of the PMI Research Conference. Among the comments were that Dr. Cleland was the writer of the definitive text of the profession for two generations of project managers. Dr. Bidanda said that every project manager knows Dr. Cleland because of the volume, quality and content of his books. PMI's knowledge strategy was built on foundations created by Dr. Cleland, added Mr. Bounds. "He helped shape the project management profession as much as anyone alive today," he said. Others honored with awards at the ceremony included Professor Janice Thomas, PhD, receiving the 2010 PMI Research Achievement Award; Terence Cooke-Davies, PhD; Lynn Crawford and Thomas Lechler, PhD, for the 2010 Project Management Journal® Paper of the Year Award; and Jefferson Leandro Anselmo, PhD, PMP for the PMI Student Poster Award. Greg Balestrero, president and CEO of PMI, set the bar for this conference with his opening remarks. "It's all about the pipeline," he said. The pipeline is "your involvement from when you first think about the profession to your retirement." Training and academia is an extremely important part of feeding the pipeline, meeting the demand of organizations and government agencies, and making the profession vibrant and growing. Attendees were excited to hear a plenary talk by one of the biggest names in management strategy research, Kathleen Eisenhardt, PhD, discussing case study research and how best to employ it. The Monday plenary was a panel discussion on project management in government, much appreciated by the many practitioners from the local Washington area attending. New for this year's conference was student presentations of 20 minutes in length -- time enough for doctoral candidates to get great feedback from the audience. Professional poster sessions were also new. One practitioner who attended from the Netherlands was thrilled to be there. Daniel Amunwa, PMP, said, "it's fascinating to see that whimsical thoughts I may have had about project management have already been addressed by academics and taken to a higher level." Mr. Amunwa, a newer PMI member, said he's "proud to be a part of this organization that holds such a tremendous conference, and I wouldn't expect anything less." See more on special recognition and awards bestowed at the conference. |
The Project Manager as Intel Processor
Categories:
Career Development
Categories: Career Development
| The Intel Core i7-980X Extreme Edition processor is one heck of a piece of technology. It has six physical cores. Its base clock speed is 3.33 GHz. It supports three channels of DDR3-1066 memory and has 12 threads for your application to work with. It also has 12MB of L3 cache shared across all six cores. I'm not sure I understand all of that but here's something I understand perfectly: To become the proud owner of one of these will set me back US$999. I also understand perfectly that if I were to drop US$999 for one, I will have wasted my money. That processor, out of the box, is utterly useless. Unwrap it and set it on your desk. There it will sit. It will accomplish nothing. In practice, it will be completely indistinguishable from a stone of roughly the same proportions. Let's look at what it will take to get our US$999 worth out of this little jewel. First, it needs to be directly connected to a source of power, something that will bring it to life and keep it alive. It also needs to be connected to and communicate with memory and storage, with a keyboard, a mouse, a display, speakers and a printer. It requires software, too, of course. And even then, it can't really do anything. The real power of that processor can only fully be realized when the computer it runs in is connected to a network of computers. Power. Contacts. Connections. Input. Output. Software. Communications. A network. You, the project manager, are that processor. As necessary and valuable as your technical and project management skills may be, they're not enough to ensure project or career success. It's impossible for you or the stakeholders on your projects and in your career to realize the value you bring unless you are well and fully connected, playing a central role in your stakeholder networks. We increase the value we bring to our stakeholders by increasing the number and quality of our contacts, by developing strong connections, by creating input/output channels and cultivating communication skills, and by being connected to sources of power and influence. To the extent that we can increase our own value proposition, we can make ourselves more valuable to our stakeholders and in the marketplace. |
Risk Simulation
Categories:
Risk Management
Categories: Risk Management
| When we prepare our risk management plan, we believe it will work. The irony is that its effectiveness is only revealed when the risk actually occurs. But have you ever thought of simulating the risk? Let's start with two very basic risks that can occur with any IT project: 1. Critical project worker goes on emergency leave 2. Database server goes down one week before the release How would you simulate and manage those risks? In the first scenario, the best option could be just asking the worker to go on leave and see how you manage the work and team. Ask your team members to take leave on alternate schedules so you can measure the impact of each one of them. In the second situation, ask your team to shut down the server and verify your mitigation plan. It may seem foolish, but this is best way you can determine the effectiveness of your mitigation plan if the risk actually occurs. What do you say? |
Lessons Learned About Lessons Learned
Categories:
Agile
Categories: Agile
| Many teams benefit from reflecting on their process after they complete their project. Any errors in the process, however, have already had their impact. Agile software development includes ways we can improve our lessons learned - not just for software, but for any project. These lessons from agile projects may help your projects too. Lesson 1: Perform lessons learned sessions during the project. This lets you benefit from your ideas in time to make a difference. Lesson 2: Smaller, more frequent meetings flow better. There aren't as many items to discuss and it becomes easier to focus on observations. Lesson 3: Don't whine, refine. Avoid spending a lot of time digging into why problems happened. There won't be enough time to plan for positive changes. Lesson 4: Follow the cadence of change. Sometimes we forget the team will be busy with work. Try limiting the changes to two actions. But nail those actions! And don't start new process improvements until the other ideas have been deployed. Lesson 5: Changes should be by the team, for the team. Lessons learned should not be viewed as a scorecard -- it will make all the metrics climb to suspiciously good levels. Management should have visibility into the process used and some lessons learned, and anonymous examples of triggers that led to their discovery. But the retrospective itself has to be a judgment-free zone where all problems can be discussed. If you're using scrum or another agile method, this might sound familiar. Lessons learned or retrospectives are built into your iteration cycle. How do these tips fit with your project's life cycle model? |
PMBOK® Guide for the Trenches, Part 6: Quality
Categories:
ROI
Categories: ROI
| We hear a lot about how quality can make a project management world full of butterflies and rainbows. But I have a bone to pick with quality. C.F. Martin has making guitars since 1833. The company's quality is legendary -- and so is its price. It was Martin that developed the Dreadnought body style, so called because its size was increased dramatically to boost volume and bass response. The resulting models, the D-18 and D-28, became the standard by which all other acoustic guitars are measured. Sir Paul McCartney played a D-28 at his recent White House performance. Elvis Presley started off with a D-18 and moved up to the D-28 as soon as he could afford to. And from the time I started playing acoustic guitar, I wanted one. I finally scraped together enough for a D-28, and my obsession started before I even left the store. The custom cases are so precisely made that you can't leave the strap on the guitar. So, I bought a quick-disconnect device for it. Then, my salesman informed me that Martin's lifetime guarantee doesn't cover cracks for guitars because of low humidity. In my home state of New Mexico, that's a problem. So, I bought an advanced humidifier and after-market insurance. And, of course, I needed new strings. (One does not put medium-grade strings on a D-28.) The beginning of my enslavement to this highest of high-quality musical instruments had begun. The first time I used it in public, I was aware of a certain sense of dread. I realized that I was walking around with US$2,300 worth of fragile wood strapped to my torso. Microphone booms, chairs and other instruments loomed dangerously close by. My proximity bubble -- that area around your person where you're not comfortable with others -- had just grown significantly. In past writings I've been a tad harsh on the quality fanatics, primarily because they can (and often do) place project managers in a position of being vulnerable to cost and schedule variances should high standards prove elusive. Those project managers should take heart: The ultimate consumers of your projects are held hostage to these same high standards, as I have come to realize. I tried playing my other guitars, but it's too late. I have been spoiled. I have also reached the conclusion that quality has a distinct downside. |