PM 202: Manage Constraints
The last step of setting up a project management plan for your life is to manage external constraints that may affect project success. Being able to manage constraints is one of the most important skills for a project manager.
PM 201: Manage Stakeholder Expectations
Creating SMART goals in priority areas for your life is a daunting first step on the journey to project managing your life. At the define requirements stage, we started to address the feasibility of pursuing some of these goals. The intermediate coursework demands—what else?—further planning.
PM 102: Define Requirements
Failing to plan is planning to fail, and your life is no exception. If you don't take the time to contemplate what you want out of life, how will you ensure that you get it? The first step in project managing your life is to define just that--your requirements.
The Best Non-Project Management Training for Project Managers
Congrats! You've put your PMP behind you and are reading this article to log PDUs. Or maybe you're waiting for the requisite years of experience to qualify you to take the exam. In the meantime, you may be wondering whether any of those other certifications out there are worth pursuing.
Tales from the Field
Project management is both a science and an art, the latter primarily because you're dealing with people. One of the best tools in your kit relates to the scientific aspects of PM--the ability to observe stakeholders in their natural habitat.
Fete Accompli
Why is it that we don't take the time to honor our accomplishments the same way we obsess over our shortcomings? I'd recommend that project managers institute a process for accomplishment review so that this activity is sure to become a fait accompli.
What's So Special About Being a Generalist?
I met with an aspiring PM this week who asked me a series of questions about how to succeed in the field, including one that resonated with my own past challenges as a rising project manager. “I’m a generalist,” she said, “but everyone keeps telling me I need to be an expert in something.”
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.