Herding Cats

Quote of the Day

Better is the enemy of good enough - Attributed to Sergey Gorshkov, Admiral of the Fleet of the Soviet Union, 1910 - 1988 Read more →

Revisiting Risk Management

Andrew Sparks Blog on Oracle's site mentioned a book he just read, The Failure of Risk Management. I have not read this book, but the publisher's jacket description and the Amazon reviewers like the book. What struck me as interesting... Read more →

97 Things Every Project Manager Should Know

Josh Nankvel of PM Student posted a link to a Web Cast 97 Things Every Project Manager Should Know Read more →

Agile Earned Value

Paul Solomon has an article "Agile Earned Value and the Technical Baseline," in this months SoftwareTech, a publication of The Data & Analysis Center for Software. DACS is a US Department of Defense Information Analysis Center (IAC). This site and... Read more →

Quote of the Day

As long as the arrows are landing on my back, I know I'm still ahead of the pack — Program Manager and Principal Investigator, large Algae CO2 sequestration project Read more →

A Thought on Status Reports

Dmitri Ivanenko has some good things to say about status reports in "Are You Ready for your Next Status Report?" One critical missing piece in this post the raw materials for the status report come from the plan. You plan... Read more →

PM 2.0 - Another View

Pat Weaver provides more insight on the issues of Project Management 2. I had not seen Wikipedia article he references. In it Traditional Project Manage is described as: Centralization of control Top Down Planning Authoritarian environment Implied structure Limited/Restricted access... Read more →

Simplifying Earned Value?

There are many discussions floating around about how and why to simplify the application of Earned Value. Some are credible some are not. There are several places to look for the discussion of Earned Value. LinkedIn has a forum for... Read more →

A Fool With a Tool, Is Still a Fool

I'm working a large ($100M) US Department of Energy Algae CO2 reuse project through early next year and haven't had time this week to post another round of the PM 2.0 thread. Shim Marom could not have said it better... Read more →

Quote of the Day

What If is a fearful approach to life If Then is the participants approach to life Read more →

Another Run At PM 2.0 Clarification

Here's another attempt to put some structure into what some authors are calling PM 2.0 I'll start with a simple list of what activities take place during a project. PMI calls these Knowledge Areas. This means knowledge of "what" to... Read more →

PM 1.0, PM 2.0, How About Just Project Management?

PM 2.0? What is PM 2.0? I'm not sure. Possibly the mechanisms used to manage the project. Tools based on Web 2.0 might be the "operational" definition of PM 2.0 But what are the core processes these WEB 2.0 tools... Read more →

Local Boy Rides the F-14

Rick Reilly is a Boulder son, who writes for Sports Illustrated. Here's an email/post going around attributed to him. I've re-posted for a simple reason. We work in and around aircraft and spacecraft is this class. There are simply no... Read more →

People, Processes, and Technology

People, Process, and Technology is a common management consultant set of "pitches." I'm here to say it's in that order. And the order steps done in logarithmic. Meaning Processes is e (2.71821) less than People. And Technology is 2.71821 less... Read more →

Calling BS on PM 2.0

The notion of Project Management 2.0 has trigger several responses. I'm guided by Scott Berkun's Calling Bullshit on Social Media post. For starters: Project Management 2.0 is a term without a context. 2.0 is borrowed from Web 2.0, SOA 2.0,... Read more →

Project Management 2.0 - How Can It Be Described

Frank Patrick commented on my quick post on what the OP called Top Down compared with Bottom Up project management. I had not meant to be so blunt as Frank made me out to be. But on second thought he's... Read more →

Top Down / Bottom Up = Project Management 2.0? Not with this approach

Bas de Baar posted a re-post of a concept about Project Management 2.0. Here's the picture that started my post. If we look at the three boxes individually, here's some observations: Top Down The description of this style of manage.There... Read more →

Friday Roundup

"Charlie, I'm convinced that half of the cost of a program is socially determined." John Mather, NASA's Nobel Laureate speaking to Charles J. Pellerin author of How NASA Builds Teams. I spoke at the Microsoft Project 2009 Conference in Phoenix... Read more →

Quote of the Day

There are three kinds of people, those who can count and those who can't This is posted on a sandwich board outside a coffee shop in Phoenix during the Microsoft Project 2009 Conference. It was attributed to Einstein. But I... Read more →

Project Management Principles from the Department of Energy

The US Department of Energy has $1.2B allocated for clean energy initiatives. Our firm is working a program that captures carbon from coal fired power plants and uses it to feed an algae farm that in turn makes a refineable... Read more →