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Social Networking Changing the Business Propositions
Written by Atul Gupta, PMP, & Alankar Karpe, PMPSocial networking has changed the traditional communication channels in today’s era of tablets and smartphones. This has created different ways for project managers to manage projects, collaborate in real time, and find solutions quickly by going through the problems.
A social network is a social structure made up of a set of actors including individuals and/or organizations and the dyadic ties between these actors. The social network perspective provides a clear way of analyzing the structure of whole social entities. The study of these structures uses social network analysis to identify local and global patterns, locate influential entities, and examine network dynamics.
IT has assisted marketing, administration, and business operations with their implementations of social networking and various media including websites such as Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook. Now we have some ways to make social-style communications deliver value to the IT department.
Major IT work challenges continue to revolve around project management, resourcing, technical problem resolution and consultation, accuracy and timeliness of information, and the responsibility of running round-the-clock operations. This is where social network comes in handy and provides opportunities such as peer-to-peer networking, quick communicating, gathering required information, and idea sharing.
The Video Test is about . . .
Separating out what people are saying, or think they are doing, from what they are actually doing so you can help them improve their behaviours.
When I was being trained to facilitate groups I was often asked to conduct an experience with a group under the watchful eyes of my mentors. Following the session we would meet together to debrief, with honest feedback, about what I had done and how I had done it. They would say, “We saw you being aggressive and interrupting people.” (A set of behaviours that I get into when I am nervous and unsure of myself.) In the beginning I responded defensively with, “I didn’t do that!” The sessions were always video-taped.
“Play the tape!” they would say.
And there I was exposed and embarrassed about what I had done. It was a most useful, difficult, learning experience for me learning how to remove my “blind spots.”
The inclusion of a programme management office in line with their project management software tool has become a popular choice amongst organisations and project managers in recent years. The decision to implement a PMO is often taken when the number of projects being undertaken by an organisation has grown to the point where the costs involved in delivering them and the risk of failure to the business is so great that centralised control and standardised processes are a necessity.
A programme management office is a structure that organisations design to provide them with assistance and assurance around change management and delivery of projects and programmes. A programme management office or as it’s more commonly known, a PMO, can support a basic single project or programme through to an organisation’s entire programme of work.
When a new programme of work is launched within an organisation a PMO is given the tasks of managing it. All aspects around the management of the programme from organising to controlling are all handled by the PMO.
Are You Writing Checks Your Team Cannot Cash? Here’s How to Stop Over Committing on Sprints
Written by Greg Smith
One of the top 5 mistakes Agile teams make is to over estimate how much work they can deliver in sprint.
Is this due to customer pressure, a desire to please, a hero mentality, or pressure from a manager? I see all of these items being a factor, but I believe the main issue is a lack of knowledge. Specifically, teams are bypassing a critical process, sprint planning.
In my experience teams often talk about story points and how they use them to estimate project releases and sprints. You can see how story points are used to create release plans in my previous article here.
An unchartered project is an oxymoron to most project managers. Kind of like the unsponsored project. It just doesn’t compute. No sponsor, no project. No charter, no project.
But take a look at the mountain of stuff on your desk. How many unchartered projects are in there? After all, it’s not like there’s a magic threshold for budget, time, or other resources needed for something to be a project.
If it’s got a beginning and an end, i.e., it’s temporary, and it’s creating something new or unique, it’s a project and it should be chartered. Look again. How many do you have?
Why wouldn’t you charter everything that fits the definition of a project? A number of reasons may be given for not getting charters for small projects, including:
Money’s tight. Resources are constrained. And clients’ expectations continue to rise. Yet, there’s more work than ever and the right projects need to get done faster. Welcome to 2013 and the world of project management—a world dominated by the need for better project leaders, faster development cycles, and project management offices (PMOs) that are adding value not cost! As we look at the year ahead, here are the trends shaping our industry.
When Failure to Plan a Project Portfolio is a Good Thing
Written by Abid Mustafa and Dirk JungnickelWinston Churchill once remarked: “He who fails to plan is planning to fail.” There are number of other variations of this famous saying, and all of them imply that without proper planning success cannot be achieved. However, there are situations in the real world, especially in project portfolio management (PPM) where the exact opposite holds true.
Now you may be wondering why professional PPM practitioners would allow this to happen. After all, many of us recognise PPM as an indispensable practice that is essential to aligning the company’s strategy to its performance. Or in other words, PPM practitioners help companies to answer and manage the question: Are we doing the right things? And this goes against the very moral fibre of portfolio managers to intentional plan for the failure of project portfolios.
When I was running an IT-PMO at my previous company we faced an interesting dilemma. As we finished work on a large integration project there was a ton of unmet demand for IT work from all corners of the enterprise.
This ranged from tweaks to the purchasing system to an all-new global training environment. We quickly realized even our ability to analyze the demand would be swamped by the incoming flood of work.
So, we devised a scoring system. Why? There were three main reasons, all of which really comprise some fundamental principles when creating a scoring model.
Everything Goes Through Me - The Project Manager’s words to live by!
Written by Bill Dow, PMPDo you remember the old saying "the bucks stops here"? US President Harry Truman had a sign of it on his desk, making it clear he was accountable for all decisions. Everyone knew if there was a decision to be made, he would make it. The buck stopped with him.
I heard another version of that saying the other day, and I began thinking about Project Managers and Project Management, in general. I thought if project managers would take on the same kind of accountability, leadership, and decision-making attitude that is stated so succinctly on that sign on Mr. Truman’s desk, the industry as a whole would get much better at delivering projects across the board.
Ten Critical Steps to Achieving Magnetic Leadership
Written by Dianne Durkin & Carey EarleWhat do the leaders of top companies do to create an inviting workplace filled with fully engaged and enthusiastic employees?
“The best leaders, are people who know how to listen, can make a promise and deliver on that promise, and have stepped up to the plate and made the necessary investment to successfully engage their employees”.
The best leaders motivate, inspire and energize people by connecting the vision, values, purpose and business goals of the organization to individual values and needs. Here are some of the top actions I recommend to people seeking to improve their success as a leader.