Don’t miss the inaugural… fresh list of leave excuses

Do you want the day off to watch the inaugural?  Yes you can!  As a public service, one of the better leave excuse lists I’ve seen is here and reproduced below. Employee didn’t want to lose the parking space in front of his house. Employee hit a turkey while riding a bike. Employee said he had a heart [...]

PM Quote of the Day — Arnold Bennett

It is well, when judging a friend, to remember that he is judging you with the same godlike and superior impartiality.

Perils of being a “brand protector”

I’m sure you all have seen the bad publicity SAP Services got via a news story on Bloomberg about the Shane Company bankruptcy filing.  Josh Greenbaum picked apart the piece pretty comprehensively (here) and the Shane Company itself came out with provided a statement that SAP can use to clear the air (NOTE: struck out [...]

US1549 not only successful water “landing”

It is amazing how quickly a meme — in this case a “Mini-Meme” — propagates and persists.  This New York Post article has been cited repeatedly to the effect that USAirways Flight 1549 appears to be the first time that a large commercial jet liner ever has made a successful controlled landing into a body [...]

PM Quote of the Day — John Constable

I never saw an ugly thing in my life; for let the form of an object be what it may — light, shade, and perspective will always make it beautiful. 

Keynote on PMO — 6 February, Arlington VA

I just realized that I forgot to tout an upcoming talk I’m giving at the 2009 Project Management Office Summit, 5-6 February 2009 (info and registration here, brochure here).  My session is the Friday keynote at 0900h: Advance an Established and Operational PMO: Lessons from a Mature PMO.  You can find plenty of good advice [...]

PM Quote of the Day — Soren Kierkegaard

Face the facts of being what you are, for that is what changes what you are.

Still looking down in checklists?

Just saw this article of the power of checklists in medicine (here) which reminded me that I had forgotten to include a link in an earlier post (here).  Atul Gawande wrote a long piece in the New Yorker a little more than a year ago simply entitled “The Checklist“.  It is far too rich to summarize [...]

PM Quote of the Day — Anaïs Nin

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.

PM Standards are not Holy Writ

Andrew Meyer at Inquiries into Alignment provides a useful corrective to the faith that we project management types put in our industry standards and frameworks (post here).   He hits on a lot of topics that are only alluded to in our project management “bibles”: [P]rojects often pull people from different departments together to work on [...]