This is the second of two articles dealing with the influence of organisational politics on projects and project managers. In the previous article I referred to a well-known book by Jeff Pinto,” Power and politics in project management”, which provides one of the best resources on how project managers can manage the complexities of dealing
Acquiring Organisational Power in Projects Read More »
For most of us, dealing with organizational politics is a necessary evil. Project Managers are often the first to criticise colleagues who are “too political”, spending excessive attention to their profile in the organisation rather than to the needs of their team. Sometimes it can seem a bit self-serving or predatory and certainly unprofessional, particularly
Decoding Organisational Politics in Projects Read More »
Scheduling Misconceptions The project manager’s job is to run projects and to lead them to success. It’s not their job to run software, apart from the most commonly available office tools, such as Word, Excel and PowerPoint, and possibly Zoom or Microsoft Teams. When we turn our attention from the main task of managing projects
Why don’t PMs “get” Scheduling Tools? Read More »
I recently reviewed one of my old books on team management that reminded me of the importance of the team life-cycle in developing a productive project team. Workplace teams are fairly common, both in the production environment (BAU) as well as in the world of projects. Teams are groups of workers tasked with a common
Five stages for a productive project team Read More »
A month ago I was browsing on YouTube and noticed that one of the well-established presenters on Udemy at put some of his older course videos online. In fact, he has released twenty-one videos from an introductory course in Microsoft Project 2013 onto YouTube and these now provide a verbose but good-quality introduction to that
Free Introductory Course on Microsoft Project 2013 Read More »
Project Quality is a perennial issue – how do we identify stakeholder requirements and success criteria? How do we communicate those requirements to our team? What activities do we need to add to our project schedule to control quality? In the PMBOK(r) Guide view we project managers also need to understand the broader world of
Project Quality – an overview of Process Improvement from PMI Read More »
Aileen Ellis is an American PMP instructor whom I greatly respect. I discovered her videos after reading one of her short books on scheduling. She has a series of free Youtube videos reviewing more obscure aspects of the PMP Exam with the benefit that they are usually recorded from live or online webinars with her
PMP Exam Sample Question on GERT (not PERT) Read More »
In response to some enthusiastic in-class questions raised in a recent workshop “Effective Stakeholder Management” that I conducted at Sydney University, I was motivated to delve deeper into the subject, adding some materials to the existing handouts I give on preparing for negotiations with key stakeholders. (You can read more about my usual sources later
Negotiation Skills – Stanford University Read More »
Macmillan publishing and project teams This famous English publisher is well-established in textbooks and literature. I discovered this series in 2017, and these two are selected from a set of 5 on YouTube. The series was released earlier in 2016 and have the virtue of being very short and very helpful in simple team scenarios.
Team Work videos from Macmillan Publishing Read More »
There are a few more advanced concepts used in Risk Management that are required for the PMP exam but not usually discussed in depth in some courses on project management. These include the concepts of decision trees and Expected Monetary Value (EMV), which is the statistical average long term cost of a risk (or value
Simple YouTube video on Decision Trees and EMV Read More »
As an extension of our presentation and discussion on dealing with difficult people in our effective stakeholder management workshop, you may find these YouTube videos of interest. They are a bit “homely” in their advice, but they do apply to workplace situations. They are serious presentations and should warrant either PDUs or CPDs with the
Dealing with Difficult People on Projects Read More »