Politics. Every project has politics. Today I’m interviewing Dr Nita Martin, Managing Director of Pure Indigo. Nita’s book, Project Politics: A Systematic Approach to Managing Complex Relationships, deals with that difficult subject of how things get done on projects. Nita, ‘politics’ means different things to different people. How do you define project politics? ‘Project politics’…
Today I’m interviewing Dr Lynda Bourne, author of Advising Upwards: A Framework for Understanding and Engaging Senior Management Stakeholders (Gower, 2011). Lynda is CEO of Stakeholder Management Pty Ltd, a training and consultancy firm based in Australia. Lynda, your book is about helping project managers communicate better with executive stakeholders. Let’s start at the beginning….
Business Life magazine – the one shoved in the seat pockets on British Airways flights – has a column in this month talking about project managers. It’s the light relief, ‘Business Lifer’ column at the back, written by an anonymous ‘executive globetrotter’. During January, Business Lifer has been recruiting as well as considering his own…
In the last part of the Focus on Coaching series, I’m interviewing Kevin Ciccotti, CPCC, ACC. Kevin is a coach who has chosen to work specifically with PMPs (although I expect he’d work with any project managers). I asked him why. Kevin, how did you get into coaching? I will say my path to coaching…
This short series is looking at coaching in a project management environment. Today I’m interviewing Susanne Madsen, author of The Project Management Coaching Workbook and herself a coach. Hello Susanne. Tell me, what made you go into coaching in the first place? I started coaching and mentoring project managers because I wanted to make a…
Phil Hayes is a coach with over 20 years experience in team development. He’s executive director of London training and coaching company Management Futures. I spoke to Phil about how team coaching can work with project teams. Phil, I’ve heard about coaching individuals, and I can see how you could extend that to a functional…
Robert Kelly and Rob Prinzo have started using Twitter to connect project managers in an unusual way. I spoke to Robert about how they are bringing project managers together online (and even better, how you can earn PDUs for hanging about on Twitter!). Robert, you use Twitter to coordinate conversations between project managers through a…
PM Network last month reported that 65% of people feel that there is a generation gap in project management. We are living in the first period where five generations are working together in the workplace. Experienced (i.e. older) project managers now have Generation X and Generation Y people on their teams. The age differences at…
It was the Computer Weekly Social Media Awards 2011 last night, and I was nominated in two categories. I won IT Professional Blogger of the Year, which was fabulous! Thank you so much to everyone who took the time to vote for me. Project management was poorly represented in the awards (we didn’t have our…
Elyse Nielson from Ascension Health and the blog Anticlue gave a presentation at the PMI Global Congress North America in Dallas in 2011 about sponsors and their interaction with the project. She talked about the importance of getting the right sponsor for the project and shared some myths about project sponsorship. Elyse pointed out that…
It’s the 4th Annual Computer Weekly Social Media Awards, and I am delighted to say that this year I have been nominated in two categories: Best Use of Social Media – Individual (under my name, Elizabeth Harrin) and IT Professional Blogger of the Year (for A Girl’s Guide to Project Management). There isn’t a project…
Last week, the BCS’s Project Eye blogged about the low numbers of women entering science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) to pursue careers. Project and program management is still required in this fields – so given that women choose project management as a career, why aren’t they choosing it in STEM areas? I’ve teamed up…