5 “things” to promote learning in projects

1: generate immoveable deadlines – forcing project teams to focus on what is required (to meet the milestone) and to rethink problems and look for creative solutions
2: encourage cross-functional teams and/or construct teams of people who rarely or never work together – enhances the chances for new thinking between different disciplines and the reframing [...]

Top Five Reasons Why Prince2 Sucks – link

An interesting post here on the problems of Prince 2 or any PMM where project energy is caught-up in templates and processes arather than project results. I can’t comment on the technical points (reason 3) but some of the other issues identified, I’ve commented on before.

Learning in project teams

I’ve been thinking more about learning in projects and the infrastructure & processes to enable more effective learning and knowledge exchange and development. I see the experience of project working as the building block for ‘deep’ collaborative working. Learning in projects operates broadly on three levels:
Individual: often focused on developing new skills and knowledge but [...]

Project Management 2.0 Blog: Social Project Management: Another Point of View – link

An interesting post here on PM 2.0 – a more ‘emergent’ approach to managing projects that is more about collaboration and learning – especially in the build, test, rebuild approach.

Managing Complexity: Train Your Brain -link

svprojectmanagement have this article on complexity thinking in projects. The article reflects some of the key questions I come back to about projects and organisations in general, especially the question on a “school of fishes swimming together without a manager. Why don’t they need overhead?”. See managing complexity by nurturing emergence – interesting stuff [...]

Planning sessions

Interesting article on running a planning session using what they call a ’storyboard’ approach – I’ve used something similar (described here) but utilising de Bono’s six thinking hats. Its interesing to see the glee in some people’s faces when we get onto the black hat stage of basically destroying ther initial plan!

Project management & complexity – link

Cognitive Edge
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now this should be an interesting study to keep track on
to project management sense-making complexity …

Real project management – link

svprojectmanagement.com » “We don’t need no stinking Gantt chart!”
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an excellent article on managing projects through team commitment and enabling the project manager to manage the project as a whole venture rather than (a) managing the plan(ning) and (b) getting in the way of getting things done. Marvellous!
to project projectmanagement … 1 [...]

Project manager competences

Was pointed to this post on PM Hut from Raven’s Brain on project management skills and competences. The emphasis on the ’softer’ people management skills:
be a leader and a manager
be a team builder and a team leader
be a negotiator and an influencer
be an excellent communicator
alongside other skills you’d expect in terms of planning, be [...]

Pushing paper

This post from Raven’s Brain on the role of project managers included the following conclusion:
Beware the perception of PM as paper-pusher. Schedules, status, coordination, all matter. But if this is what people think our job is, forget about being highly valued. Paper is a tool for, and can help with, analyzing, summarizing, communicating, and [...]