Project Summit recording on project maturity/best practices

Posted on: May 6th, 2014 by Jim

I recently participated in a Project Summit wherein I spoke on the topic of assessing your project managers in a 360 for their perceived skill set. The long-term purpose of this (and of project health checks) is to improve the project maturity of your organization. Short-term it can assist in deciding what training and/or mentoring […]

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Project Manager Success Summit

Posted on: February 18th, 2014 by Jim 2 Comments

NOTE: The summit is over. But you should still be able to purchase audios of the presentations as below.       On Sunday April 27 at 2pm EST, I’ll be presenting at an exciting symposium called “Project Manager Success Summit.” It runs from April 25 – 27, 2014. It’s not “live” but is in […]

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Ideas for project management book

Posted on: November 29th, 2013 by Jim 1 Comment

I am planning to write a book on project management which (I trust) will be a useful book for the every day project manager. I want someone to pick this book up and better understand things such as stakeholder management, communications, running meetings, important project artifacts, etc. It won’t be some gigantic compendium of everything […]

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Effective communications (email) 2

Posted on: November 26th, 2013 by Jim

So I talked last time about the importance of effective email communications. One thing I should add to that discussion is the following: is this email really necessary? As we know, everyone on a project is inundated by far too many emails. One student of mine went so far as to create a rule in […]

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Effective communications (Email)

Posted on: October 29th, 2013 by Jim

I have heard through students and from reading articles that some people, especially in the millennial generation, are getting away from email. Towards what I wondered. In one article a team member said something along the lines of, “By my tweets ye shall know me.” Well, that’s fine if he can somehow convey information concisely […]

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Effective project communications (3)

Posted on: October 7th, 2013 by Jim

As mentioned in my last post, PMI has recognized that a significant number of projects fail due to poor communications. So knowing that, our goal on the project is to prevent bad communications as much as possible, thereby reducing risk to the project. How can we do that? I will suggest a few things: -Communications […]

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Requirements to become a PMP

Posted on: September 27th, 2013 by Jim

I held a webinar yesterday to discuss what it takes to become a Project Management Professional (PMP). It always astonishes me how little people know about this, even including students who walk into my classes. Some of them have done zero homework and are greatly disappointed when they find out that yes, there are pre-requisites. […]

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Effective project communications (2)

Posted on: September 23rd, 2013 by Jim

In line with my recent post about communications, PMI has published a “Pulse of the Profession” report entitled, “The Essential Role of Communications.”  This report only serves to buttress the importance of excellent communications on a project. I’ll summarize some findings below:  The most crucial success factor in project management is effective communications to all stakeholders.  […]

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PMI study – Poor project performance leads to dramatically higher costs

Posted on: September 3rd, 2013 by Jim

The Project Management Institute published a paper (appears to be 2012) called, “PMI’s Pulse of the Profession: The High Cost of Low Performance.” The executive summary is this: “When organizations continue getting better at executing their projects and programs, they drive success. But when organization executives undervalue the benefit of effective project, program and portfolio […]

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Job growth in project management per PMI report.

Posted on: September 2nd, 2013 by Jim

Recently (March 2013), PMI published a report called “Project Management between 2010 – 2020.”  In the introduction it says, “Between 2010 and 2020, 15.7 million new project management roles will be created globally across seven project-intensive industries. … The enormous anticipated growth… will make the next seven years an opportune time for professionals and job-seekers […]

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Portfolio Management Certificate from PMI

Posted on: August 15th, 2013 by Jim

PMI has added a new certification in portfolio management. Other than as a cash cow, I don’t see why. According to the PMBOK, “Portfolio management refers to the centralized management of one or more portfolios to achieve strategic objectives.” This sounds to me very much like a senior management role. Question – do senior managers […]

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