- Homepage
-
Is reactive planning a good approach to running projects? Or is waterfall a better approach?
I often tell my wife that I am a lucky project manager – that I can often just let things play out let them come together. My wife claims it is not project management at all if there is no planning and no management. She is right of course, but there is such a thing as…
-
Is bureaucratic project management a good idea? Or is agile better?
Is bureacratic project management a valid way to run projects? Yes – rarely but sometimes this is a good approach. Generally though, bureacracy is bad and using agile approaches is better. So that was a short article :) But if you have time for a biased and semi-accurate history or bureacratic project management then read on. This is…
-
Is agile better than waterfall?
Many IT teams are moving from “waterfall to agile based approaches” in their projects. So clearly a lot of people think that agile approaches are better than waterfall approaches. But are they really? And if they are then how are they better? One argument I often hear in favour of agile approaches is this one:…
-
Some downloadable notes on estimating
One of tha participants from a course asked for some more information on estimating – so here is a downloadable copy of my mimi-ebook with some rough notes on estimating. Most of the material also appears in this blog somewhere and I have since updated some of my thinking (as I am continuing to do). …
-
Unusual predictors of team success
I was reading Daniel Pink’s book “Drive” and I came across a passage about predicting which teams are likely to be successful. It describes a guy who counts the number of times he hears people use the word “we” and the number of the times they used the word “they” when referring to their own company. Apparently the…
-
The one thing you can’t outsource is innovation – or is it?
This blog is normally a collection of my own thoughts rather than a source for links to other people’s thinking. But it seems a lot of companies are now deliberately asking others to do their thinking for them, so it seems fair enough for me to do the same. Here is an interesting link to…
-
Should measures be “SMART”?
I was having a debate with a friend of mine recently. He said that all measures should be “SMART”. The term is usually used for goals and says that the goal should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and timely (or something similar). The problem I pointed out was that the M in SMART means measurable so…
-
A role profile for poject teams
According to management theory, we all do a better job if we have a clear understanding of our role and what value it is adding to the team and the organisation. We also find work more satisfying when this is the case. But quite often the role profile, position description and annual performance agreement become more of a…
-
The “what would someone else suggest” technique
Today I ran a workshop on workshops and predictably one of the things we did was brainstorming. But one of the participants was a little bit bored with putting post-it notes on the wall, so we replaced our standard brainstorming with “what would someone else do””. This approach can work really well in either a…
-
How do you mean?
I am running a workshop workshop today – a workshop on workshops. Actually I am running a training course for some experienced facilitators and the course is about how to run workshops better. So I have been reviewing conflict management techniques, ways of engaging un-engaged participants and issue resolution techniques. Interestingly I have just noticed…
James King 