As regular readers will know, I’ve been on maternity leave since January, and I’m now easing myself back into work. I spoke to Janice Haddon, a coach and management consultant who specialises in helping people return to work successfully (amongst other things). This is what she had to say about returning to work after a…
15 weeks in and we are starting to get a bit more sleep in the Otobos household. And as with anything new, we’re also getting better at it. At least, I think we are – we’ve managed an overnight trip to the seaside staying in a hotel and a couple of long weekends away staying…
I did not expect to be the kind of parent that dressed my child in comedy outfits – in fact, before Jack was born I was adamant that I wouldn’t do that. Parents are embarrassing enough when you are 18 without having them bring out all the embarrassing photos of you as a child. But…
Recently I spoke to risk expert Dr Wilhlem Kross about risk communication and the challenges facing project managers talking about risk. Here is the second part of that interview, in which Wilhelm and I talk about how project managers can best communicate about risk on their projects. Wilhelm, you talked about how sometimes people communicating…
It can be hard to talk to stakeholders about risk, but project status reports should include information about the risks faced by the project. In 2013, risk expert Dr Wilhlem Kross, a partner of Plejades and the Amontis Consulting network, spoke at Project Zone Congress in Frankfurt about real-life risk management. I caught up with…
This is a guest post by Kevan Hall, CEO of Global Integration. Project managers have had to deal with ‘matrix management’ for decades. They have to build the skills to manage short and long-term teams with representatives from different functions, regions and specialisations. The matrix actually first developed as a response to the need to…
The video of me at Øredev speaking about how customer centricity improves success is available online on the conference website. It’s a presentation about the case study in the book I co-wrote with Phil Peplow last year, Customer Centric Project Management, but it also includes an updated project case study and some material that didn’t…
Eight weeks or so in, and The Parent Project is causing a lot of debate in our house. Thanks for all your lovely comments and emails about Jack, and your advice about how I can use my project management skills in parenting, as many of you do already. Here are some of the other things…
Change is hard, and project managers aren’t particularly good at doing it to themselves – in my experience we prefer to implement change for others. Kevin Baker, Head of Project & Programme Management Operations at Airbus, took on the challenge of changing the way they manage projects. I spoke to him about how he implemented…
Today I’m interviewing Dr Andrew Makar, IT programme manager, blogger and author of Project Management Interview Questions Made Easy, about managing your personal brand at work and building a professional project management profile. Andy, why is it important to have a professional project management profile? Would you hire an individual dressed up in a bed…
As regular readers will know, I’m on maternity leave. And I’d like to introduce you to the newest member of the Otobos family: Jack. There was a bit of a discussion after my recent article about 6 things I didn’t know about being a project manager about how project management is like parenting, and it…
This is a guest post by John Roberts, director of project and change management consultancy myProteus. The clarity of corporate direction, the impact of project complexity and the effectiveness of project sponsorship significantly influence what project managers need to be able to cope with. What a good project manager looked like even 3 years ago…