Category: Project Management
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Organizational Continuity
Albert Einstein once said “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”. When I first came to the PMI SFBAC board, we had a serious problem with continuity: The entire board was elected every year, and terms were limited to two, which meant there was little chance…
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Serenity
A project manager has to be able to be in the moment and calmly react to any situation in order for a plan to succeed. Reacting to everything that might go wrong, or things that don’t help to achieve the goals of the project doesn’t get us to the product of the project (our “ends”…
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Communication Lessons from Mom
I grew up in a fairly large family: three boys, a girl and Mom and Dad. We had a gazillion aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents , relatives and friends. Because of this, there were a LOT of communication channels, and as a natural part of her position in the family, that meant that Mom was a…
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Governance Change (A Fable)
nce upon a time, there was a kingdom of people who were busy managing projects named Pee-Em-Eye Ess-Eff-BeeA Sea. They were busy doing this work, and they found themselves wondering if there was a better way than just telling people what to do, and then scurrying off to the next project. A small group of…
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Who is Policy Governance®
The court room quieted as Paulie C. Governance took the stand. He was sworn in on a stack of PMBOK‘s and the prosecutor was ready to begin. The following was taken from the transcript and witness accounts: Prosecutor: Please state your name and occupation for the court Paulie: Paulie C. Governance, trusted advisor to the…
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Stupid Project Tricks #2010
I’ve been working with Office and Project for a while now, and one of the things I love about the new 2010 version is that you can save as PDf from almost any application. So today I was saving a Project plan as a PDF, and noticed it was breaking across pages in weird ways.…
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Project Vision
One of the key success factors for any project is the “vision statement“, which is the Executive Sponsor‘s opportunity to excite the team, stakeholders, and customers with their vision of where we are going and how the product of the project will improve things. When well done, the charter can be condensed into an elevator…
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Practical Planning
Tonight’s the night we make history … Image via Wikipedia This last weekend, a group of us from the San Francisco Bay Area Chapter of PMI were set to attend the PMI – 2011 Region 7 Leadership Summit in Reno. We made it to Reno and back in record time (although not in the direction…
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Project Managing my Career
I was talking to my friend George Ross the other day about the job search that we both unexpectedly find ourselves in, and it occurred to me that I haven’t been approaching my career management with the same level of commitment to planning that I have when managing projects and programs. A while ago, I…
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Meeting Roll Call with OneNote
I’ve made a slight change to the way I’m doing meeting minutes for standing meetings that I find helpful. I am using a feature of OneNote that allows me to check off attendees a bit more easily. It’s a bit of setup in the beginning, but it really works nicely once you have it done…