PM 101: How to Project Manage Your Life
This week, as I was explaining one of my personal goals to a colleague, he retorted in disbelief, "Not everything is a project! You can't project manage your own life." Notwithstanding how much it irks me when someone tells me I can't do something, I beg to differ.
Reality Check Yourself
I met with a few folks this week who asked me to help them self-evaluate their performance. These conversations prompted me to reflect on some tips for self-promotion, which has honestly never been problematic for an extrovert from a state famous for our overly opinionated and brash self-confidence.
Product Review: Mindly
PMs wish we could spend more time mapping our minds and less time putting out fires. There's something tantalizing about the notion that, if we only had the right amount of time or the right resources or the right fill-in-the-blank, we could unlock the knowledge that could help solve our projects. Ergo, the (digital) mind map.
True Confessions of a PM: I Do Care about Document Management
Ever have one of those moments as a PM when your team asks you a question, and you hear yourself responding but think to yourself--wow, that statement was a bald-faced lie? I had that experience last week when discussing file sharing protocols with my team.
So You Want to be a PM: How to Manage Up
Hundreds of business books dole out advice on how to be a better manager, but the majority focus on how to manage from the top down. One topic that does not receive sufficient attention but is arguably just as important is how to manage not down--but up.
10 Tips for 10 Years
This past weekend, I celebrated my 10-year anniversary of being a project manager. Here are the 10 tips I'd recommend for my 10 years in the project management profession.
How to Get Lucky in Project Management
This St. Patrick's Day, I'm reflecting on the many sources of luck in my life. On this day when we celebrate luck, what should aspiring and seasoned project managers do to get lucky in project management?
(Daylight) Saving Time
On this daylight saving time, I challenge project managers to inventory their outdated practices and habits and ditch the ones that don't realize benefits--especially considering we have one less hour in which to get things done this week. Here are some preliminary suggestions for which project management activities to examine that you may have on auto pilot:
Product Review: Simplenote
As a PM nerd, I'm always on the hunt for project management hacks that will make my projects (and my life) more efficient. Today's featured tool is Simplenote. It's a desktop, web, and mobile application developed by Automattic, the parent company behind the Wordpress blogging platform. The application's purpose is truly as basic as it sounds--to offer a clean and simple interface for taking notes.
Sorry, but I Still Don't Get What You Do
The idea for this post came from two different sources. One of those sources is a good friend from when I was still a project manager in the making. (Early warning signs: my friends referred to me as "the glue" keeping our high school crew together. And, I wouldn't let anyone touch my day planner.) The other is the person who hired me for my first, official PM gig.
So You Want to Be a PM: The Importance of Follow-up
It's 3pm on a Wednesday, and you just pushed send on the report draft you've been slaving over for the past two weeks. Per your boss's request, you've sent the draft to the client two weeks ahead of schedule to solicit input in advance of the report deadline. With that task completed, you decide to take the rest of the week off. When you show up to work on Monday, your boss asks you where the client comments are. What went wrong?
Automation: The Future of Project Management
In an age of driverless cars, UAVs, and smart cities, robots appear to be on the rise. Project managers already suffer from a perception that we are unnecessary, costly appendages—substituting us with a mechanical appendage, therefore, may pose a very real threat.