WSJ Interview on “The Experience Trap”

FYI, a Wall Street Journal article (“Dangers of Clinging to Solutions of the Past”) based in part on interviews w/ yours truly came out today (link here, page B4 in the paper).  Thanks to Kishore Sengupta of INSEAD for pointing the WSJ my way and to Phred Dvorak of the WSJ for conveying the perils of [...]

PM Quote of the Day — Abraham Lincoln

Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.
This quote is useful to counter colleagues who disparage planning in general. It is, however, important to remember that initiating and planning activities aren’t for simply “easing into the project” (in the unfortunate phrase of a [...]

Podcast on barriers to successful IT/CRM

Michael Krigsman over at IT Project Failures hosted the first in what he hopes will be a regular series of “Town Hall” podcasts (here)  It was originally supposed to be a meet-up, but the weather was dodgy at best so the session went virtual. 
Anyway, Paul Greenberg moderated an excellent discussion that covered a lot of [...]

PM Quote of the Day — Vince Lombardi

Practice does not make perfect. Only perfect practice makes perfect.
When I was younger, I never got the point of practice.  Sure, I knew that it would get me in shape and knock of the rust off.  However, I never got the idea that practice would help me perform better under pressure.  Too many times I [...]

Troubled Projects and Engaging Change Stakeholders

Glen at Herding Cats (here) points to a Center of Business Practices study (here) on the causes of troubled projects.  I’ve posted on some of our own findings about project success (here and here), but I haven’t elaborated on what we’ve found about the composition of change control boards.  Below is an extract from a comment I [...]

The Project Management Witch Doctors

Glen at Herding Cats hits back hard (here) at one of the breed of ”Project Management Impresarios”.  Not a bad label, though I like the term Witch Doctors myself (the Micklethwait and Wooldridge book is here, some second thoughts on the book’s ideas here).  Some of this stuff can be pretty wacky and verges on Gnosticism.
The arrant wankery Glen [...]

Value of PM in Business Transformation

I forget to whom I should give the hat tip on this topic, but Here’s a study by Logica that highlights what makes change “Winners” successful (study here, may require registration).  As you can see, project management was a differentiator in business transformation, which of course I think is great.
My take is that being good at [...]

Checklists and Change Programs

Jerry Manas’s post at PM Think (here) is a useful reminder to avoid a common error made when PMOs first implement processes and controls – over-engineering.   I can only say “Amen” to what Jerry notes:
We create forms, templates, and stage gates, in an attempt to gain control. But in doing so, we also create such barriers to implementation that it [...]

Tom Peters: 80% good, 20% overboard

Tom Peters has a list on how to lead during what he calls “weird” times (post here, also read the comments here).  As always, he’s thought-provoking.  My biggest concern is that folks like to cherry-pick from Tom without understanding that the points in his “lists” often build on or reinforce each other. 
With that caveat, here is Tom’s list.  [...]

Corner Cutting Survey Top Answer: Not communicating with senior management

The corner cutting poll’s top answer (at 22 percent) remains Executing planned communications with senior management.  This answer matches our own experience within SAP, which indicates that proper stakeholder management decreases the probability of risk events, shortens their duration, and lessens their total impact. 
In our experience, the most frequent communications mistake was failure to execute planned executive-level [...]