Diagnosing “Pakled Customer Syndrome”

Please give my brother a hearty welcome to the blogosphere, where he is now shamelessly flaunting his Spargel obsession. 
Stephen’s just getting rolling, but I can’t resist linking to his re-telling of one of my favorite development war stories: Pakled Customer Syndrome.  Star Trek TNG hasn’t aged very well at all — my episode yield is about ten percent [...]

Status of women in China…observations

This is a follow up on a conversation I had with someone about the improving status and respect for women in China.  I made a note to myself to pay more attention while I was here, so here goes…
I’m attending the Asia-Pacific + Japan PMO summit here in Shanghai — BTW, I can get to WP [...]

Cheering up a gloomy project or initiative

I’m curious whether folks have any good stories about humor…I’ve found that a little bit of insanity always helps keep a project or an initiative fun (or at least bearable).  Also, showing that I can laugh at myself is a great way to loosen up the team.
I was on a busy team supporting the wave of [...]

Embedding Employee Engagement in your processes

Mike King at Learn This has a fairly long post on promoting employee engagement (here) — one last Hat Tip to the PM Blog Carnival (here).  I liked the thoughts in this passage especially:
Make it Part of The System … In order to ensure that employee engagement is something that gets attention, is measured and has [...]

Acknowledging fear when leading change

Wow, the latest PM Blog Carnival (here) sure had some blogworthy entries in this edition…this must be my fifth post inspired by it.  Louise Manning at The Human Imprint had a set of key change management steps (here), the foundation of which is her riff on the well-known Gandhi quote:
“You must be the change you [...]

Delivering Global Projects

Craig Borysowich’s post on special considerations for international projects (here) IDs some important factors.   Also, I have to like a guy who went for the Modigliani image (see here).  Here is his list and my comments:
Impact of Distance — The extreme distance between “home base” and the customer site can be extremely costly to the project.  Make [...]

Training and qualifying sponsors

For those who need to educate their sponsors, the approach of the UK’s Home Office might at least inspire your next efforts (here, the syllabus is here).  The content looks very meaty.
This approach may only work in the public sector — I’m not sure how many senior folks in my organization would sit still for [...]

Mis-using Management by Exception

Mike Chitty’s post on “Whack a Mole Management” (here) prompted me to think about how I position and coach on management by exception.
Whack-a-mole is an arcade game in which you try to hit ‘moles’ that pop up randomly on a board using a rubber mallet….  Whack-a-mole management is based on the same principles.  The challenges [...]

Making sure that your deliverables’ benefits are realized

With all my recent scope management posts lately, here’s a timely post on benefits realization (here) at John Gough’s iJourneys blog (here).  I like the theme of his post, that “…benefit realisation does not start when the project ends.”   I also second his point that IT sees itself as apart from the “business” and [...]

Improving Trust

Extending my earlier post (here) on Charles Green’s Trust Quotient test (here), improving my strength in Credibility is related to my weakness: “Work on the “softer” sides of credibility—truthfulness, being more open, sharing more truth—about the emotional as well as the rational side of things.”
As you might guess, my primary weakness is in Intimacy, which [...]