PM Quote of the Day — Harold J. Smith

More people would learn from their mistakes if they weren’t so busy denying them.

Power of Strategic Commitment — Interview Intro

I’m catching up on some great material — at least great IMHO — that has been locked away in my notebook. Last month, I got a chance to talk strategy with Josh Leibner and Gershon Mader, founding partners of Quantum Performance, Inc.   They have worked with Fortune 500 companies around the world including: Capital One, [...]

PM Quote of the Day — St. Thomas Aquinas

Beware of the person of one book.

“Live” prototying/proof of concepts

It has been a busy few weeks here at MJN as we get the transition to stand-alone rolling. Like many large programs, our main transformation initiative — Sunrise (nice name, eh?) — sometimes acts as if it were the first program of any importance ever executed. Its size and stature also obscure other [...]

PM Quote of the Day — Carol Burnett

You have to go through the falling down in order to learn to walk. It helps to know that you can survive it. That’s an education in itself.

PM Quote of the Day — Joseph F. Newton

A duty dodged is like a debt unpaid; it is only deferred, and we must come back and settle the account at last.  

Which PM “faux pas” make your hair stand on end?

In my last post about the “school solution,” I noted that there’s something unnerving about project and program managers who skip over the basics.  As Glen Alleman noted in his comment, the PM school solution or black letter law almost always has some merit as a start.
Thinking about this post brought to mind the various [...]

PM Quote of the Day — Truman Capote

Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.

At least acknowledge the “school solution”

“School solution” is a military-phrase for the standard way in which one would approach a problem or scenario.  While the phrase often is applied pejoratively, it doesn’t have to be so.  In fact, sometimes I wish I heard more folks at least make a gesture towards such standards.
This concept came to mind when I reviewed [...]

More on bridging the PM/Executive communications gap

I hope I didn’t scare you off the latest PM Network (September 2009) with my recent lament about a column (my lament is here).  The piece assumed that we still needed to convince PMs that they had to be business savvy. 
In fact, this issue is chock full of articles that assume PMs get that and want to get savvier.  [...]