The use of sports terminology and analogies is often overdone in the workplace, but applied in the right context they can inspire and illustrate how to get things done as a team. Here are eight areas where linking the worlds of sports and project management might help your next project.
By providing feedback and recognition, gamification can motivate team members, encourage engagement and boost productivity. By emphasizing collaboration over competition, games can also help teams become better at communicating, solving problems and meeting goals together.
In spite of the different ways we can achieve a goal and manage a project, we are often asked to imitate, rather than innovate. Call it linear, competitive or hierarchical thinking, but by any name it’s probably not the best approach for managing projects — or living our lives. Collaborative or team thinking seeks to connect rather than separate the many working parts of a project.
When the going gets tough in project risk management, you have to get tough with your tactics. Get the key participants you need in the session through proactive invitee management. Get the risks identified during the session by using pre-selected, mentally stimulating terms and phrases.
Are you putting your PMO in the position to make the right decisions every time? While the PMO has many functions, one of the most important is to facilitate decision-making--either by senior project stakeholders or within their own teams as escalation points for project managers. In this article, we look at how to ensure that we are as effective as possible in that process.
The way we frame our project issues can limit our ability to solve them. But innovative thinking is not just about creativity. It’s about harnessing good ideas that solve specific problems for a specific opportunity. Here are three strategies to make innovation a more repeatable, predictable process on your projects.
Agile methods make the most of closer ties to the business and customer to get rapid feedback on functionality. This works great when customer engagement is high--but runs into problems when engagement is lacking. Learn about some warning signs and engagement models that can help.
The PMP certification requires a certain amount of education and training. What can an attendee do to make sure he gets the most out of a training class?
Is your messaging ever overly complex and bureaucratic? You need to focus on transmitting clear, expected outcomes in your communications. By keeping these initial messages simple, sponsors create a positive environment and a solid foundation for success.
Having the ability to connect to systems with round-the-clock availability has led us down a path of high expectations and preconceived outcomes. These challenges exist for any organization that chooses to make some portion of its operation available to customers at all times, causing some resources and personnel to get stretched in all directions.
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"If you think you can, you can. And if you think you can't, you're right." - Mary Kay Ash |
