Why is it that some weeks make you feel like you’re drowning and in others you’re just driftwood in the sea of project management, bobbing along with not a care in the world? This week has been a drowning week. I have found myself with two miniscule projects to sort out, and the smaller the…
When Sophie Hopkins, 24, took on the role of project manager for the Fordhall Community Land Initiative, I have to hope she knew what she was letting herself in for. After working for months without a salary, she now gets paid from an EU grant but her days often don’t finish until long into the…
This post is late too. Sorry – it won’t become a regular habit, but here’s a warning for next Monday: as I’m getting the sleeper train back from Nice late Sunday night I doubt I’ll be in much of a state to post anything lucid after getting off the train and going straight to work….
Sorry this post is a day late – I have been distracted with visitors and the Eurostar Da Vinci Code Quest. I gave my presentation on Scope Management to the British Computer Society’s Project Management Specialist Group on Thursday, which went well. They were kind enough to give me a souvenir paperweight as a memento…
Touching wood last week must have worked as lo and behold, after a few days of stamping my feet in a Gallic way my licences have arrived. And I already have one very happy client holding meetings with our Australian office, albeit rather cruelly on a Friday morning. Which is 6.30 pm Oz-time, when our…
After half an hour I was starting to notice that my fingers, wrapped around my block of ice glass, were no longer there.
The office is going into emergency mode at the moment in preparation for crippling strikes tomorrow. We’ve received flyers from the unions, an email from HR about how to get to work despite there being only 37% service on some lines. How the RATP have calculated their service that precisely I’m not sure, but given…
The restoration effort has been a significant project: 28 weeks, 9000 hours. Not bad for a boat bought for £1 and a gin and tonic
OTOBOS is On Time, On Budget, On Scope. This definition of what makes a project successful misses out quality, happy stakeholders and a whole host of stuff, but it’s a good starting point. If you can deliver OTOBOS, chances are that you are doing something right.
I think it’s about time I explained a little more about the projects I’ve got on the go at the moment. My role is about two-thirds projects and a third operational management. It’s the first time I’ve had an operational job and it’s great. I think what I like about that part of my day…
Part of a PMs role is to educate our colleagues in what PM means as a discipline. That you can’t just change the scope and give us no more resources. That you have to sign of a plan before we can start work on it. I had someone email me this week with comments on…
I hate change, which is ironic given the job I do.