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Project Professionals: Don't Let a Little Tiger Get in Your Way
Categories:
PMI Global Congress 2012 - EMEA
Categories: PMI Global Congress 2012 - EMEA
| If anyone could get a room full of project and program managers mimicking a jockey on a horse, it's Jim Lawless. The closing speaker at the PMI® Global Congress 2012 -- EMEA in Marseille, France, Mr. Lawless holds the United Kingdom's underwater deep-dive record and once became a licensed jockey to win a £1 bet. So when he outlined his 10 rules for taming the tiger within -- the voice inside that makes people afraid to take action -- the audience listened. Mr. Lawless reminded the group that each person writes his or her own life story. "In the end, you're not going to ask 'Did I have a good story,' but 'Did I write it? Or did the tiger dictate it for me?'" he said. A project or program manager might have a game-changing idea, for example, but is too afraid to take it to the CEO. The result is regret -- because the person let the tiger write the story. Mr. Lawless' 10 rules for taming the tiger are:
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Pay Attention to Your Project Management Career
Categories:
Career Development
Categories: Career Development
| Throughout the workday, project professionals are bombarded by an overwhelming number of stimuli. And yet we can only take notice of a very small number of things. The majority of what we encounter simply has to be ignored. At a subconscious level, our brains constantly sift through all of the inputs, deciding what can be ignored and what warrants consideration at a conscious level. This process is managed by the Reticular Activating System (RAS). When we learn a new word, for example, the RAS sensitizes the unconscious mind to that word. When we encounter the same word again (which we had ignored in the past), we will immediately take notice. We can take advantage of this sensitization process to help us advance our project management careers by setting an explicit career goal. In the same way that the "new" word we learned existed before we learned it, there are things taking place in our lives that could be enormously helpful to us in our careers -- but we are ignoring them. Setting a goal sensitizes the mind such that we will take notice of things that we would previously have ignored and we will assign meaning to things that were previously meaningless. Simply setting the goal mentally does a lot to sensitize the mind to events that can help us achieve the goal. Articulating the goal in writing sensitizes it even further. Reviewing the goal periodically sensitizes the mind further still. Know what you want to achieve in your career. Write it down. Review it periodically. These three steps will make you consciously aware of your goal and give new meaning to the same old stuff that has been happening all around you. This "new" conscious awareness will further sensitize the mind to related and useful things. As you then pursue possibilities with such heightened awareness, the process accelerates. All of the sudden, everything seems to become aligned to your purpose. It was all along. You just weren't paying attention! Do you have any examples of how goal setting has heightened your awareness of events that have helped you fulfill your goals? |
European Commission Makes Project Management Progress
Categories:
PMI Global Congress 2012 - EMEA
Categories: PMI Global Congress 2012 - EMEA
| The European Commission is looking for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth through technology. And it's using project management to get there. "Project management is at the heart of our activities," said Francisco GarcÃa Morán, directorate-general for informatics at the European Commission, the keynote speaker at PMI® Global Congress 2012 -- EMEA in Marseille, France. The commission's goal is to create a new generation of open, flexible and seamless e-government services, he explained. For example, e-health projects could help address Europe's aging population. The vision calls for innovative digital services, simplified processes and better alignment between business and IT. Yet the commission has faced many challenges, including insufficient infrastructure, higher workload and staff cuts -- even as it faces greater pressure to deliver value. Mr. GarcÃa Morán also said there's a new generation of workers demanding better technology. "We have to provide the Facebook generation with the tools they're most familiar with." To help achieve its vision, the European Commission implemented an information services project management board. It also created its own approach based on good practices from around the world, including A Guide to Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide). "We believe we have raised the project management capabilities in the European Commission," he said. The greater focus on project management has helped the group achieve a more holistic point of view and strike a better balance between business and project management. There has been some resistance, however, which has to be managed through communicating the value of project management to the staff. "Change management is essential," he said. "It's an area where we are working harder." In a later session, Stefan Tostmann, PhD, spoke about some of the other project management work at the commission. With 27 sovereign states, 500 million stakeholders and 23 languages, it can be difficult to identify common project interests, said Dr. Tostmann, CAPM, resource director (acting) and head of financial services, European Commission. The type of projects addressed can cover everything from aid delivery to IT. And one of the biggest challenges is ensuring that proposed projects can actually be implemented in the member states. Despite progress, there remains a lingering misconception that project management is exclusive to the IT realm, where project management first took hold at the group. "There's not a project management culture in the European Commission yet," he said. Echoing Mr. GarcÃa Morán's comments, Dr. Tostmann said the commission is facing increasing pressure to prove its own value. "Stakeholders want to know what they're getting out of it." That means the commission must become more efficient, he says, and like Mr. GarcÃa Morán, he says project management can help in that process. Read more about change management. |
Top-Down Leadership Doesn't Always Work in Today's Complex World
Categories:
PMI Global Congress 2012 - EMEA
Categories: PMI Global Congress 2012 - EMEA
| There's no single definition of leadership. Whether they opt to emulate Sun Tzu or Steve Jobs, project professionals should assess their teams and organizations to carve out their own leadership strategies, plenary speaker Andy Craggs told project professionals at the PMI® Global Congress 2012 -- EMEA in Marseille, France. Mr. Craggs, a global business consultant at The Learning Partnership, dubbed today's business world as VUCA: volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous. As a result, the top-down, individual-driven leadership style prevalent 10 years ago is no longer as effective. Instead, leadership must happen at four levels: society, organization, group and individual. That means leaders must cross boundaries to encourage interdependence, collaboration and innovation among three types of people:
Drawing on his time working with Disney and Apple, Mr. Craggs demonstrated how different leadership styles can be effective in the proper context. At Disney, the bulk of activity takes place in the operations sector, with the focus on protecting intellectual property and the brand. In the modern VUCA world, though, Disney's top-down leadership doesn't always work. Although the company did enjoy a record box office debut for its movie The Avengers, it has struggled to compete in the application and video game development fields. Apple takes the opposite approach. The organization's leadership, being more agile and connected across the organization, is more responsive to market changes -- which has allowed it to thrive. Mr. Cragg concluded his presentation by identifying three types of organizational leadership cultures:
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Improve Burndown Charts for Your Projects
Categories:
Agile
Categories: Agile
| Agile teams use burndown charts to show the amount of work completed over time to monitor their progress. There are three common patterns to look for in a burndown chart. When progress stalls, the line becomes flat. When work is added, the line shoots up. And sometimes, the rate of work slows and floats above an ideal trend line. Let's look at some baseline data, reflect on the meaning revealed by the charts and see where teams can improve. The following burndown charts show how many task hours are left for the team. The goal is to drive the remaining work down to zero by the end of the time-box. We'll start with a graph of three iterations completed by one team in two weeks. Sprint three is still underway, which you can tell because the line for it is unfinished. But what happened in these other iterations? In sprint one, there is a catch-up pattern. The team stalled in its progress from days 8 to 11, and then made a push to finish. As a result, the team signed up for fewer hours in sprint two. This is common, as teams plan for more work than they can get done at first to help them plan for the next sprint. In sprint two, the team faced a different problem. A bubble of work formed at the beginning because the team didn't plan the sprint process correctly and had to add work. Both of those issues in the normal rate of work can confuse efforts to forecast the rate of progress based on the first few data points, allowing for improvements down the line. Instead of looking at the trend from the first day's allocated work, for example, take the maximum amount of work anticipated and plot that from day one. Ideally, the maximum amount of work will be accomplished on the first day. But in the case of "bubble" sprints where work is added mid-course, drawing a line from the sprint's maximum workload as though it were known on day one will give a better presentation of the ideal trend line. The next problem is a plateau every few days. The graph originally provided data for 14 days including weekends, not just the 10 working days in the sprint. It looks like the team is unproductive every few days, but it is simply a reflection that they took the weekend off. Adjust the burndown chart, as I've done below, by accounting for added work and masking non-workdays and your team will have a clearer picture of its iteration's progress. What adjustments do you make to burndown charts to ensure an accurate depiction? |