Micromanage? Never! But How Will Everything Get Done?

Few project managers will admit that they micromanage their teams.  But when the heat is on from the executives demanding tighter control and the due date seems like an oncoming locomotive, many PMs resort to micro-management thinking it gives them tight control; but they are wrong. Read the article.

Dick Billows, PMP
President 4pm.com

At What Stage is your company’s PM: "AD Lib Projects" or "Resource Grid Lock infighting?"

At Tier #1, projects are few, simple and fun but by Tier #3 its disorganized chaos with too many projects, too few people and way too many priority #1 projects. Learn the challenges and opportunities for project managers at each of the 5 tiers so you know the best way to survive now plus how to get ready for what’s coming next to your organization’s project management world. Read the article

Best Regards,
Dick Billows, PMP
President of 4pm.com

Status Reports That Stupefy

All too often project managers give status reports that undermine their credibility and give executives little information on which to base decisions. What’s even worse, bad status reports don’t give early warning on big problems. Let’s look at some common but useless ways to report status and then talk about the best practices techniques to use on your status reports.

Read the article on status reports

Dick Billows, PMP
President 4pm.com

Cross-functional Projects: Is Conflict All They Deliver

Succeeding on cross-functional projects is a survival  requirement for many organizations.  But  these projects require that we handle authority, workloads and rewards  differently.  When we don’t, the  cross-functional effort usually follows a downward spiral of conflict and blame  avoidance. Read the article
Dick Billows, PMP. GCA

President 4pm.com

Multiple Project Fantasy Land

As projects multiply like weeds in an organization, they devour the time of technical staff and line supervisors leaving little time for people's "real jobs." Yet despite a project failure rate that can inch past 70%, some executives and project managers continue to live in a fantasy land.  Let's look at the fantasies and then the survival techniques you should use in a project dense organization.  Read this weeks article

Regards

Dick Billows, PMP
President 4pm.com

Your Project Team: Galley Slaves, Pirates or the Love Boat?

Do your project teams expend their energy on relentless problem solving or on avoiding blame?  Does the team challenge every idea so the best solution emerges or is there too much concern about rank and job titles or hurting people’s feelings? This week's article looks at the various paths project teams take as they form and then we’ll discuss how a PM should guide the process.

Visit our Project Best Practices center



Regards, 

Dick

Dick Billows, PMP, GCA

Best Project Management Practices: Videos and Techniques

We've assembled lectures, project manaqger in action videos and some of the most popular articles from our student center in a new "Best Project Practices" center.  It has videos, articles and slide shows on the best techniques and approaches in project management.  Compare what you are doing to the best practices

Regards,

Dick

Dick Billows, PMP, GCA

Is it Always the Project Managers Fault?

In an airport waiting area, a project manager asked me...

"At my company most of our project are late, produce less and cost more than planned. Everyone always blames the project managers. Are we the only ones at fault?

Project managers do screw up. But in working with over 300 organizations, every time I've seen high overall failure rates, there are organizational problems as well.

Specifically, when organizations fail to set project priorities (saying that everything is Priority #1, is not setting priorities) chaos reins. Team members are torn between conflicting assignments, and every project is usually late. On top of that too many pointless projects get started and drain off resources.

In that environment, the absense of priotities is always accompanied by the absense of resource allocation and work load management. Project managers are left to fight it out over team members who have too many assignments plus a rea job.

Add to that ineffective change control processes and scope creep runs rampant. Even the most skilled PMs have no chance of performing consistently well in this kind of environment.

Best regards,

Dick
Dick Billows, PMP, GCA

Playing Games with the Project Sponsor

The project approval process is fraught with peril and games. Sponsors kid themselves that they can "improve" the completion dates with no other consequences. Project managers play their own games, faking cardiac arrest whenever anyone suggests reducing the project team, the budget or the post-project reward dinner menu.

Let's look at three of the fantasies the happen during project approval.

Critical path: a Simple Story

It is astounding how few project managers use critical path analysis. It's a simple tool to ensure that you don't waste resources and that your schedule is optimized. It's also great for answering the question that project sponsors and clients always ask which is, "How can we finish sooner?"

Why don't all project managers use this marvelous critical path tool to optimize? Well, your project schedule has to be built on a predecessor network, work estimates and resource availability, not due dates plucked from the sky. In other words your project schedule has to reflect reality and not be a fairytale. Meet that simple criteria, as you'll see in the story, and all the benefits of critical path will come to you.

In this month's article, a simple critical path story, you will learn about using the critical path to do all kinds of good things for your projects.

To learn how to build project schedules the way the professionals do and master the art of optimization with the critical path, consider taking one of our project management courses. You'll get personal, 1-on-1 instruction and work at your own pace and schedule. Look at our certifications too.

Regards

Dick Billows, PMP, GCA

President 4PM.com

The project management website

WBS Lecture Video

Hello

It's often unclear how the WBS should flow from the scope statement. Here's a sample lecture from our new PMP Prep course shot on snowshoe in the Rockies. Watch the Flash Video Work Breakdown Structure to see how to do it and also watch a project team building their WBS the right way.

Enjoy

Dick
Dick Billows, PMP, GCA

The WBS: Making the First Mistake

Far too many PMs start off their projects building an impressive "to do" list of everything that has to be done. Initially, the client or boss is impressed at the tight control and attention to detail.

The project starts and within a week or two, so much is changing that the project manager is spending hours trying to keep up. Soon the PM can't keep the plan current and soon no one uses the schedule anymore. At the same time, the team is confused and getting concerned about what they should deliver so they gold plate the work and worry that they'll get blamed.

The PM and team get within a few weeks of the due date and worry mounts so the slap together some piece of crap and then spend 6 months fixing it.

There is a better way. Read the article and watch the WBS Video.

Best regards,

Dick

Dick Billows, PMP,GCA
President 4PM.com

Micro-management

No one thinks they're a micro-manager but it's a prevalent affliction in project management. Learn the signals of micro-management and the consequences for your project performance. Then learn the cure and how it leads to better team performance.

Me a Micro-manager? Never