Ever wondered why some people get stuff done and some people don’t? The people who do (and I expect you’d count yourself in that group if you are a project manager) tend to have the right attitude and a simple process for staying organized and completing tasks. Whether you call that project management or not…
This is a video of Todd Williams, talking about his book, Rescue the Problem Project, and how project managers can manage failing projects. It was filmed on location at the PMI Global Congress in Fort Worth, and we are sitting in the glass atrium of the convention centre. You’ll have to excuse the sun coming…
Today I am interviewing Ben Snyder, author of Everything is a Project: 60 Lessons from Successful Project-Driven Organisations. I spoke to Ben about his book, starting with the idea behind the title. Hello Ben. Let’s get straight into it. Surely not everything is a project? What about routine repetitive tasks like manning a customer service…
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’…
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…
In 2009, the book that affected me most was Beyond The Boy’s Club, a book about career strategies for women in male dominated fields. I don’t work in a male dominated field, but I thought it was full of advice I put into play (and I’ve been promoted in the intervening years, so it worked)….
Summer of Books 2011 continues with an interview with author Joanne Flinn. Joanne Flinn is the author of The Success Healthcheck for IT Projects: An Insider’s Guide to Managing IT investment and Business Change, which I reviewed in February. I had the pleasure of meeting Joanne for coffee earlier this year when she stopped over…
Jeff Furman is the author of The Project Management Answer Book. I asked him why he wrote it and what it was like putting the book together. Hello, Jeff. Tell me why you wrote The Project Management Answer Book? Hi, Elizabeth. When I approached the milestone of my 500th PM trained, I felt I had…
In this video I talk to Penny Pullan, co-author of A Short Guide to Facilitating Risk Management. If you prefer to read a transcript, that follows below. This was filmed on location at the PMI EMEA Congress in Dublin in 2011. Elizabeth: Well, I’m here today with Penny Pullan who is the co-author of the…
Rick, welcome to A Girl’s Guide to Project Management! Can you give us a short description of what your book is about? The Cure for the Common Project is all about making the jump from project manager to project leader. Processes, tools, and templates are one thing. But they can be completely undermined by low…
Recently I reviewed How to Manage in a Flat World: 10 Strategies to get connected to your team wherever they are by Susan Bloch and Philip Whiteley. I was really interested in the shift towards flat structure management and a more coherent approach to managing dispersed teams, so I spoke to the authors to find…