Rosemary Hossenlopp, founder of Project Management Perspectives is the facilitator of an audio series by key project management professionals on what Business Leaders must understand about accelerating execution of strategy through project work.

She interviews Rafay Badar, the founder and CTO of Emilia LLC in Dubai. Rafay is a PMP, Computer Engineer, MBA and an Organizational Project Management Maturity (OPM3) consultant. Over the last 14 years Rafay has been passionately involved in offering value Project Management services to his clients in the Middle East, North Africa (MENA) and South Asia. Rafay has vast experience in both the functional management and project management arenas working for multinational companies with multinational teams.

Click below to listen to the interview. Approx 7 minutes.
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The project management industry is facing challenges. One of them is delivering value on complex, multi-country, multi-vendor, multi-sourced projects.

Rafay Badar is interested in this topic based on his experience and background. (more…)

Rosemary Hossenlopp, founder of Project Management Perspectives is the facilitator of an audio series by key project management professionals on what Business Leaders must understand about accelerating execution of strategy through projectized work.

She interviews Mike Jenkins, the Managing Director of the Quilogy Healthcare National Practice. Mike is a PMP(r), an MBA, a member of HIMSS and MS-HUG, and has been influencing the vision and development of technology solutions in the healthcare space for a decade.

Click below to listen to the interview. Approx 6 minutes.
Interview

(more…)

I was invited to participate in writing the 77 Sins of Project Management. I had fun looking over the juicy list of sins. It was hard but I choose Blaming, Rigidity and Satisficing. Why? I had some great project examples and suggestions for project improvement. My thoughts:

Blaming is an aggressive and often acrimonious assignment of blame for project failure.

During project execution blaming is a reflexive, speed of light response. It is part of our human nature. We are rational. We want answers. The sound byte nature of guilt assignment is beguiling. Quick and witty assessments resonate with us. The issue is decided; maybe only in our mind. So we blame, dump on others and move on to the other 50 action items that we need to accomplish . . . before noon. But is blame that simple. No.

Many of the 77 Sins of Project Management are organizational or cultural issues. This one is personal. The following solutions will improve project practices and so they look like they are fact based. Actually the solutions are about controlling your emotions. If you don’t control your emotions, when you feel under attack, you will attempt to blame back.

Basic marriage counseling principle is changing yourself before you request change from others. What does dysfunctional communication have to do with project management? Lots!

Dysfunction 1: Recognize when we blame. This doesn’t need to be a weekend offsite retreat event. It is a quick process of self-evaluation. Watch for when your emotions are engaged. There might be a bit of judgment, criticism. Stop and picture the situation from the others perspective or a longer time frame.

Dysfunction 2: Recognize when we are at fault. Great project managers are authentic and genuine. Have a sense of humor and humility if you have publicly expressed an erroneous or uninformed decision. Model humility and fess up to the thought process that got you here.

Dysfunction 3: Recognize a team opportunity for improvement. If you model open and honest communication, you can request that the team does the same. Paybacks in loyalty are immense.

Reprinted [adapted] with permission from The 77 Deadly Sins of Project Management, © 2009 by Management Concepts, Inc. All rights reserved. www.managementconcepts.com

Whew – this social marketing is causing me a late night. But if you are a FaceBook User – become a fan on my newly created FaceBook Page.

Click Below – the link is in blue and really, really small. But click below to become a fan.

How does a project portfolio office go about answering the question of what value does the portfolio provide the organization? There are bunches of obstacles to creating and maintaining a set of projects that can deliver the most benefits to the enterprise.

Project Management Portfolio Office Challenges:

- Chaos in the external environment

- Clashes in the executive suite

- Competency in the portfolio office

Portfolio offices are staffed by senior project management professionals assisting business leaders in steering the funding of the organization to respond to the chaos in the external environment, politics and personalities in the C-suite, and they may not be prepared to understand the details of the content of the projects or the mechanics of portfolio data analysis. Whew.

We can help by understanding business needs, ensuring those needs are included in the business case for portfolio selection, and creating forums for portfolio alignment. Yup – I’ve done these things.

But what is really the answer to surviving a job in a project management portfolio office? I believe that in large part it is a focus on outcome management. This is a phrase coined by my peer in the industry, Russ McDowell. We need to help an organization identify the key measurements that drive the health of the organization. Next, we identify how projects support improvement of those metrics.

What are the key outcomes your organization needs to manage? Vote Now! Enter your vote below:

Copyright 2009 PM Perspectives LLC Rosemary Hossenlopp PMP