I am a big believer in the value of transferable skills, which is why I find the French education system so hard to understand. Essentially, you need to take business studies and do a business degree to have any hope of getting a decent job in an office. For me, university was (and is –…
Sometimes it is not the work that makes work difficult, nor the people. Today the challenge that made my day more difficult than usual was something much more mundane: the arrival of a new telephone. It came with a three-fold leaflet explaining how to do a multitude of things, except set up my voicemail. A…
When I was young I vowed never to be a ‘cabbage yakker’. That is, a woman who talks about the price of cabbages as if they were the most important thing in the whole world. I’m sure there are women for whom cabbages are very important, but I didn’t want to be one of them….
I heard from the publishers today that the first copies of Project Mangement in the Real World have come off the press and are looking great. If you’ve pre-ordered a copy, it should be on its way out to you shortly. There won’t be a blog entry next Monday as I’ll be speaking at the…
Following my (rather dismissive) comments about recognition breakfasts for project managers on Projects@Work (no longer available), I thought it would be interesting to consider what breakfast choices are available to the busy PM, in case anyone close to me feels like laying on a recognition breakfast in my honour to celebrate International Project Management Day…
The kind folks at the British Computer Society are throwing a bash for me to launch my new book, Project Management in the Real World. I give an entertaining yet informative speech for around 45 minutes, then take questions from the floor, pose for photos and sign any copies people feel inclined to buy. Then…
I was given a fab new wheelie suitcase as a gift at the weekend, which is great as I seem to be doing a lot of travelling at the moment. On the way to the UK at the weekend I found myself sitting next to a guy in a leather jacket. He obviously wasn’t taking…
“I came in last week and and you wouldn’t let me collect my debit card,” says the man in front of me in the queue. “You said I had to put money in the account and then I could have the card.” “We sent it to your home in the UK on Friday,” says the…
Last week was all go, so I was glad to have last weekend in Villefranche-sur-Mer, looking at the houses set into the cliffs, making the most of a little bit of free time before the project kicked off. Launch week for any project is always busy, but it’s my favourite time. It’s the moment when…
The main problem, in my opinion, with post-implementation reviews is the difficulty with sharing the results with other people: making sure others don’t make the same mistakes you did and benefit from reusing things that went really well. What’s a post-implementation review? A meeting to evaluate the project’s successes and challenges and record any learnings…
This week, in between watching the complete DVD box set of Series 1 of Un Paso Adelante, the Spanish version of Fame (what is Diana’s problem?), and trying too many perfumes in Sephora, I read an interesting report about the management of US government projects. The US Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is required…
A while ago I received a cheap-looking letter from the gym. You know, one of those where they have photocopied a photocopy and it ends up looking tatty and not-quite-black. “Your subscription is nearly up!” it helpfully informed me. “You should think about renewing.” I certainly did think about renewing. For about a minute, and…