The Critical Path

Beth Spriggs,PMP is the Vice President of Technology for Leadership for Educational Equity (LEE). She's contributed some amazing webinars to the community and will be speaking at our virtual Information Systems Technology Symposium on 30 September 2015!

1.  How did you get involved in project management?

I was working for a very small nonprofit association as a one-woman IT department. During that time I got a lot of tech exposure including managing servers, the website, databases, hardware, budget, vendors, events, and marketing. Amongst that was a lot of IT project management. I then realized I could take my career in one of two directions, either systems administration or project management. I really enjoyed and had a skill for planning, communications, user adoption, and the personal factor of project management so I was naturally drawn in that direction and focused my career on IT project management.

2.  Who or what inspires you to be the best project manager you can be?

My team inspires me. They are an amazing group to work with, and I encourage all of them to develop their project management skills. I do my best to lead by example, so they are my source of inspiration.

3.  What is one thing you wished you'd known when you first started out in project management?

I wish I had an appreciation for the value of humor and having fun while doing the work. When I first started I think I took myself too seriously and was missing the fun part of project management. In truth, it stifled my creativity and ability to think outside the box when problem solving. Now I try to have lots of laughs while working hard.

4.  You’ve come to the realization that an important project you are currently managing is going to be a massive failure. Somehow, every red flag has been missed or ignored and it’s far too late in the game to turn things around. Maybe you inherited the mess, maybe you’re the cause of the failure, or maybe it’s just the way things turned out and there’s nothing you could have done to prevent it. What 3 types of things will you do, mentally, physically, or even spiritually, to cope until the project is over?

1. Laugh – find humor anywhere I can
2. Empathize with others sharing in my struggle
3. Update my resume (personal risk management

Please introduce yourself to Beth below in the comments and add her to your network. Is there a community member who you think deserves some recognition for their contributions to the community? Let us know! Email the member’s name and a brief explanation as to why you think he/she should be featured in our Member of the Month to [email protected].

Did you know that we have over 1,000 templates on ProjectManagement.com to help you perform your job better?

Need a Project Plan/Project Definition template? We've got one here! 

• This template walks you through building a very detailed and comprehensive description of your project. 

Looking for a general Business Case template? Check this one out!

• Use this template to provide a detailed business case for your project. Once complete, it will give you a very tangible way to justify your project to executive management and sponsors.

In a hurry to communicate your project status to your sponsor? You might be interested in our At-a-Glance Weekly Project Status Report!

• Status reports keep everyone on the same page. This weekly report is an easy way to report status, issues, and more! It will call to your attention any unresolved issues and action items that might come back later and bite you.

Visit our Templates page to discover all of the deliverables, project plans, presentations and checklists in our library designed to make your life easier and more efficient. 

We are always interested in deliverable templates and project plans. Even if we already have something similar in our current library, your approach may be different enough help out a PM in a pinch. If you have a template that you would like to share with the community, please visit our Contribute Content page. 

Did you ever walk out of a meeting and think to yourself, "what just happened?" We can help with that! While we can't guarantee that it will never happen again (because then we would be magicians and are clearly in the wrong line of business), we can give you some tools that will help you ensure that your meeting has an effective structure and help everyone walk away with the same understanding of what is expected next.

Take a look at our Better Meetings page, where we offer a few downloadable templates to help make your next meeting a successful one. You can also view the following webinars (and earn PDUs!) to help put you on the path to a productive meeting:

Project HEADWAY: Managing the Team Status Updates: Making it More than a Bored Meeting

Fixing Bad Meeting: Make Your Meetings Effective and Interesting

10 Minutes a Week to Great Meetings

We hope this information helps! If you have tips to share with your fellow project managers on having an effective meeting, we’d love for you to share them below!

I'm excited to announce that we've been able to implement a few of suggestions from the community on how we can improve the ProjectManagement.com experience. 

So far:

1. We've made it easier to connect with other members! You can now easily connect by clicking the blue "Connect" button:  
2. You can now subscribe (or unsubscribe) from any Practice Area right on individual practice area's landing page. 
3. You can now unsubscribe and adjust frequency of emails by clicking on links at the bottom of the email.
4. We launched our Contribute Content page - learn how to get more involved here.

Thanks for all of your input and suggestions. And stay tuned - we've got so many more improvements on the roadmap for the year ahead! 

The roles of project, program and portfolio managers are changing at an exponential rate. Changes in technology, new competitors, high demands—all require you to be more agile. Yet, you can’t pivot to change as quickly as you need to. So how do you convince your company to be more agile?

Join us 15 September 2015 for the PMI 2015 Organizational Agility Conference: Setting the Stage for Innovation. It’s virtual, it’s value-packed, and it’s available only to PMI members.

PMI 2015 Organizational Agility Conference brings to your desk new and innovative ideas on today’s hottest agility topics such as Hyperagility and the emerging role of DevOps.

After the conference, you’ll know how to bring your organization closer to this norm, with practical tools and techniques for:

• Agile planning
   
• Adapting to non-stop change—both internal and external
   
• Getting ahead of changes on the horizon
   
• Positioning for success in a constantly evolving environment
   

Copy the web address below into your browser to access the registration page. Get your enterprise ahead of the curve—and the competition.

https://vts.inxpo.com/scripts/Server.nxp?LASCmd=AI:4;F:QS!10100&ShowKey=26344