Eugenio « A PM's workshop

Risks and leadership

By Eugenio, on October 28th, 2009

Setting a new PMO is a different “sort of project”. It is a standard, perhaps a little worn statement that cannot be ignored. The diversity is made by many factors; the most striking one is the nature of the stakeholders. Often their weighting their biases toward the project are not easy because of the intimate nature of their expectations and doubts. At the end of the day, they are the most important part of the [...]

Risk – lack of “personal” awareness

By Eugenio, on October 26th, 2009

“People living in glass houses cannot throw bricks”

Therefore, there is “my” interpretation of the Emotional Intelligence tenets:

Self-awareness
“Am I conscious of my usage of the rules? This consciousness implies the ability of gauging the receivers’ acceptance of our “message”.
It could range from hiding behind the role, from bending the rules in order to gain some points.
Self-management
“Have I evaluated the required effort/skills for maintaining the promise?” The negotiation is useful for its opportunity to gauge the counterpart’s interest on the topic. With no metric to measure the goal, it is almost impossible to have a shared evaluation of results.
Relationship-management
Once my part of the deal has been assessed, “am I able to involve the other people? This needs that everyone accepts – at least – the previous rule.
Social-awareness
“Do I know the written and unwritten rules before to start any other activity?” The power of the “fait-accompli” (already done things) exists only if the others can reckon our done. This means to share the same set of metrics. [...]

Quality importance in report

By Eugenio, on October 23rd, 2009

A workplace is an ideal fabric woven by rules. Some of them are clearly set (taking the form of documents – e.g. RACI) others are to be read in each person behavior. The latter are much more important. It is amazing how much information can be retrieved just asking for them with no other intention that understand the person’s [...]

More on reports

By Eugenio, on October 22nd, 2009

The projects are set up for delivering a product. Therefore, all the efforts are sustained for obtaining that specific result. The PM(O) must be able to supply, to the Snr Management, the information needed for evaluating whether the project is still feasible (i.e. within the scope, the delivery date, budget and quality) or not.

From this viewpoint, all other information (upcoming results, risks and issues) can be better understood in order to take action whenever it would be [...]

Managing the “weekly” (highlight) report

By Eugenio, on October 21st, 2009

The most common tool for communicating with the stakeholders (outside the team) is the report. The quotation made by Von Clausewitz can be applied to many occasions.

There are several reasons for this, they span from excessive expectancies about the ability to produce information within the quality standard, to the lack of agreement about what it is worth being read (or viewed, when presentations are included). This post is dedicated to frame reports within the stakeholders’ management (the “Communication Management Strategy Report” has been published just today under Prince2 [...]

Honing stakeholders’ analysis

By Eugenio, on October 20th, 2009

…in order to make “real” things (either functions or reports) information is needed. Some data are essential in order to grant the necessary quality others are necessary for presenting the result in the best possible way.
People with technical background (e.g. with no specific training in sales and or negotiations) usually tend to focus on the delivery, with less attention to the factors that can influence the [...]

Risks and details

By Eugenio, on October 19th, 2009

“The devil is in the detail”.
In many job descriptions, the “attention to the details” is an essential value for evaluating a Project Manager. It seems to be contradictory with the holistic approach (Aristotle in the Metaphysics: “The whole is more than the sum of its parts”). However, the key is in the ability of understanding [...]

Contracting with resources

By Eugenio, on October 16th, 2009

The contract can take a written form where specific parts of the output are assigned to the person/group. In this case, he/she becomes responsible and accountable (see yesterday’s post) of the delivery
However, if the boundary is set within the group itself, the reason of the group as an entity is [...]

Profiling reports

By Eugenio, on October 15th, 2009

“The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.”

In almost every project I managed, every stakeholder had his/her “little” dirty secrets. And it was not related to the security needs; whether they were essential or just important.

Managing is about dealing with information

The accountability is the key [...]

Risk&Opportunity Register structurep

By Eugenio, on October 14th, 2009

“Bureaucracy is not an obstacle to democracy but an inevitable complement to it.”

The following list has been conceived as shared tool available to all stakeholders. It is the first step toward the full (balanced) involvement of anyone in the effort of delivering the successful project.

The choice of using the same registry for managing Risk and [...]