Keeping up: New Ways of Working
By Elizabeth Harrin

Today’s economy and business culture is not the same as the one that most of our project management tools were designed for. The business world has moved on, and some parts of your organisation have probably moved on more than others. It’s likely that your project management function hasn’t moved on at all, and you are still doing the same old stuff you did 10 years ago. If it hasn’t broken, then why fix it?

I believe that as project managers we should make it easy for other people to work on our projects, and that means working in the same way that they do – both at work and at home.

Here are some new ways of working:

Podcasts

• When I started working in healthcare I downloaded everything I could about the industry to my iPod and learned on my way to work.
• Could be used for training courses and other project communication

... full article

What makes a good project sponsor?
By Elizabeth Harrin

Having a good, active project sponsor is one of the ways you can ward off project failure. So if you are in the enviable situation of being able to choose who you have as your project sponsor, you need to look for someone who will do a good job. And what sort of person is that, then?

Well, a sponsor is the project’s figurehead, someone who represents the project team at board meetings, who looks out for the project’s interests, who can provide strategic direction and most importantly, wants whatever it is the project is going to achieve. Every project should have a sponsor. Ideally, they should be someone who is going to have to live with the results of the project for long after the project manager has moved on. A sponsor who is not implicated in the delivery will find it hard to be motivated by the project and may be unable to take decisions about something that is outside their sphere of influence.

... full article

Book Review: Emotional Intelligence for Project Managers
By Elizabeth Harrin

Firstly, a big SORRY to Anthony Mersino. Anthony sent me his book at the end of last year and it has taken me forever to get around to posting a review.

That’s not because I haven’t read it. On the contrary, as soon as it arrived I picked it up and then couldn’t put it down. And there aren’t that many business books that I can sit and read cover to cover without being bored.

It’s the book I wished I’d written. If you don’t own a copy, go out and get one.

That’s the short review. If you want to know a bit more about what you’d be investing in if you buy a copy, then read on…

... [Read full article]

How good is your PMO?
By Elizabeth Harrin

A new study has shown that nearly half of Project, Programme and Portfolio Management Offices (PMOs) rate themselves as Fair or Poor in terms of effectiveness. I think that’s terrible, especially as it was the PMO team or those close to them who responded to the survey. As the purpose of having a PMO is to make an organisation more effective there can’t be much job satisfaction for those people.

The study identifies the main objective of a PMO as: ...

... Read the full article