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What ‘Monty Python and the Holy Grail’ teaches us about project management

11/8/2019

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​The classic 1975 British comedy film concerning the Arthurian legend, written and performed by the Monty Python comedy group is a cult classic, one of my favourite movies to quote from and funny if you get the sense of humour. Not a high budget movie, but somehow it works. And as I was showing clips of its funniest scenes to my kids the other day, I realised that the movie also could teach us some important concepts about project management. It may be a stretch, but let's consider...
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Overconfidence may cut you off at the knees. Well that or leave you legless and armless in the case of the Black Knight. The Black Knight responds with “tis but a scratch” as his first extremity is removed by King Arthur's sword. Eventually his stubbornness, and failure to admit defeat or work with his issue at hand, causes him to lose all four extremities. If we are too stubborn on our projects, stick to bad decisions in the face of better judgement and information, or refuse to work with our adversaries (sometimes the client?) in a productive manner to accomplish goals, we may fail miserably and lose our limbs in the process. Best practices and logical choices = success. Communication and collaboration = success. Stubbornly holding our ground in the worst scenario and stating “none shall pass” may result in much blood loss...
Read the full article...
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The Jabra Talk 55 - Unmatched Quality and Clarity for the Busy Professional

11/6/2019

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A few years ago, the good people at Jabra sent me their newest model Bluetooth earpiece - the Eclipse - to test out and review. As an independent tech consultant, writer, and busy father of 11 (yes, 11), hands and cord free calling and music appreciation while I work is important and extremely helpful. I found it to be perfect for my needs, providing unmatched clarity and the best battery life I had found to date.

Fast forward to now. Recently I've been testing Jabra's Talk 55 which is almost identical in appearance... I have yet to find a difference. And while the Eclipse had excellent performance, the Talk 55 is even better. Highlights include:

  • Crystal Clear calls (w/ HD voice)… and 2 microphones
  • Noise Cancelling (adv. Tech for clear/noise free calls)
  • Up to 3 hours of battery life (10 hours w/ charging case)
  • Stream from your phone… (music, podcasts, and GPS direction)
  • Voice Control… (1 tap access to Siri and Google Assist.)
  • Lightweight design… (Stylish, supreme comfort, weighs 5.5g)

Is it worth the upgrade. I think so. As clear and rich the sound quality was on the Jabra Eclipse, I would estimate the Jabra Talk 55 to be even 50% better - and better both ways. Plus, the ability to recharge the headset off the base without plugging back into the wall is my favorite new feature,  and I've found the 1 tap Siri recall to be extremely helpful.

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5 Ways to Be a Better Project Manager

11/6/2019

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Good, better, best. If we are dedicated to our profession, we usually always want to be improving. Granted, there are those days and weeks when we are just trying to keep our heads above water and we can't think about improving...just maintaining. I get that. I've been there. In fact, I feel like I'm there right now...at least this week. But I do want to improve, become more organized, serve my clients better and increase my chances at being more successful on each project I manage and on each consulting engagement I take on. I'm guessing you feel the same.

That said, let's consider some ways - beyond just great PM and PPM tools - we can improve as project manager right away. There are things we can do in the long term – like take a class or attend a conference. But those usually cost hundreds or thousands of dollars and have to be scheduled well in advance. What I want to discuss are things we can do now...today...tomorrow...this week, in order to improve ourselves as managers of projects for customers and teams we are working with right now.

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Scout out online content. There is a multitude of online content designed to help you get through any situation that you could probably think of or have ever experienced as a project manager – including how to be a better project manager today! Seriously, though...project managers out there – including myself – have gone to some great lengths to share their opinions, successes and failures and there is lots of online content to sift through...most of it is helpful and good...and fairly short, so give it a try. There are videos, too. Need help capturing requirements? It's out there. Need help resolving team conflict? It's out there. And so on.

Network with your immediate colleagues. You likely work in an organization surrounded by other project managers. It's not a competition, it's a team. Go to them for help and advice. Give help and advice. Network with your own colleagues. It will bring you all closer together, make everyone better project managers together, and open up lines of communication that may help you solve a project issue quickly tomorrow instead of running into a huge mess down the road on the project. You are surrounded by PM talent...use it.

Go to your project clients today. Don't be afraid to talk to each of your project clients about what they think is going well and what isn't going so well. Learn now what you can change for the good with their helpful insight before they get upset about something and take it up the ladder a notch. Believe me, it will also help strengthen your project team-customer relations at the same time and that is a good thing. And be sure to have quick access not only to your project clients but also to all your projects in the PPM / project portfolio management solution.

Start a daily project newsletter to the team and client. This may be too time consuming to add to your daily tasks, but if you have the time and if it will serve to improve project communications and information dissemination, consider starting off each day with a project newsletter email containing some project info and important task information for the projects. It can serve as a reminder to all what is going on and help keep everyone on track. And it will work well to keep the communication flowing daily. Win-win.

Stop multi-tasking and start prioritizing tasks daily. In my opinion, multi-tasking is definitely overrated. The better path is to prioritize the project tasks that lie ahead and go after them one at a time. Yes, you will always have to multi-task from time to time, but I don't believe it should be your life-plan as a project manager. If you do, too often you find yourself at the end of the day with twelve unfinished tasks and at least three of them are probably at the emergency level by now. Not a good plan. A great PPM tool can help you prioritize the projects. And a hybrid PPM tool can cover both waterfall and agile environments. Win-win.

Summary / call for input

I think most of us want to always get better at our chosen profession. I know I do. I suppose there are those out there that think they've already peaked...but that is never a good attitude. So, this list is a personal list of a few things you can add today to make yourself a better PM or communicator or leader, etc.

What would you add to this list? What are your suggestions for bettering yourself as a project manager when you show up for work tomorrow?
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My BA Can Beat Up Your BA

11/6/2019

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How tough is your business analyst? Well, mine was pretty tough and this actually happened on a project I was leading for a Chicago client. Probably not my best moment as a project lead, but you can read more about it and what happened next in my upcoming article on BA Times - the article goes live later this month on 11/24/2019. Stay tuned!

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6 Tips for Keeping Your Team Motivated

11/4/2019

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The motivated team is the more productive team. That's a fairly well established fact. As the project manager or PMO director how do you get there? How do you make sure your project teams are as motivated and engaged as possible every time out on every project?
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As usual, I have some thoughts and opinions - coming from experience, logic and observation – that result in my personal list of six key tips to keep your project teams focused on the end goal...
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1. Pay them well and timely

This may apply more to consulting situations but consultants are people, too. Your project management staff and supporting team members – pay them well. Trust me, keeping the good ones around – and you know who they are and they know who they are – is very important to the success of your projects, the satisfaction of your project clients and the financial viability of your company. Don't let or force the good ones to leave. It's expensive to acquire and onboard good new talent and your projects and customers are important...
Read the full article...
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A Guide to Sprint Planning 101

11/4/2019

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Planning. Necessary, but not usually the most exciting part of any project, software development effort or process. And for agile development processes, it's the same thing. Sprint planning, or iteration planning, is an event that is embedded within the Scrum framework. It identifies the which items from the product backlog that will be delivered in the upcoming sprint, and how that work will be delivered so that the increment will be achieved.

Who is involved in Sprint Planning?

All members of the team are involved in Sprint Planning. For details of Agile roles visit Overview of Agile Project Management Roles.
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Product Owner

The product owner establishes a sprint goal, which is used to identify which product backlog items will be worked on during the sprint.

Scrum Master

The Scrum Master acts as the facilitator, ensuring that effective discussion takes place. They gain agreement on the sprint goal and identify which product backlog items will be included in the sprint backlog.

The Scrum Master is also responsible for keeping the event within it’s time-box; as a guide, a maximum of eight hours is allocated per one-month sprint.

The Project Team

The wider project team members estimate how many product backlog items they will be able to complete, and detail how they will deliver those items.

Sprint Planning Structure

Typically, sprint planning is divided into two parts, scope and plan.

Scope

A prioritized list of product backlog items is offered, from which the team identify which items they will be able to complete during the sprint. The team must ask themselves various questions during this part of the planning process.
  • What is the sprint goal?
  • Which items from the product backlog are ready and will contribute towards the success of the sprint goal?
  • What is the availability of the project team during this sprint?
  • Based on this availability, what is the team’s capacity?
  • Which items will be included on the sprint backlog based on this capacity?
  • Do the team feel confident that they will be able to meet the sprint goal?

Plan

During part two, detailed discussions will take place between the project team about how the product backlog items selected will be delivered. Tasks for the product backlog items will be identified, any dependencies between items will be highlighted and team members will be allocated to product backlog items.

Benefits of Sprint Planning

Sprint planning gives the project team a shared understanding of the sprint’s end goal and the work that they will complete to reach that goal. It also provides an initial plan as to how the team will approach the work.

Downfalls of Sprint Planning

The strength of sprint planning depends upon having a refined product backlog list from which the team can draw items. Where there isn’t a refined list, sprint planning will be ineffective as planning time will be spent trying to gain a better understanding of the items on the product backlog.

Failing to establish a specific sprint goal is also a common downfall of sprint planning, which results in the team working on unrelated items. As a result, the team perform a full sprint without making a lot of progress.

When should sprint planning be used?

Sprint planning should be used if the sprint framework is being used, or if the chosen methodology involves time boxed iterations. Following a similar event is also useful for teams following a more flow-based methodology to create a shared understanding of queued items.

Sprint planning is a staple of the scrum methodology, allowing the whole project team to understand the sprint goal, which items from the product backlog list will be delivered, and how they will deliver them.
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Divided into two parts, sprint planning can be useful across methodologies, but only if a refined product backlog exists.

Originally posted on PM Majik.

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Don't Make These Common Business Card Mistakes

11/3/2019

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Your business card is your calling card. It should be a tool that will get people to remember you and contact you for business. But if your business card is poorly designed, has important contact information in unreadable fonts, or looks unprofessional it will be useless. Be sure your card works hard for you by avoiding these 12 common business card mistakes.

A business card is one of the most important and cost-effective marketing tools a business has. It helps people remember you after they return from a meeting, and it gives them a way to contact you in the future. Scanning applications for smart phones let your customers scan your card and transfer your contact information to their phone, too. Yet too often, small businesses make mistakes on their business cards that prevent the card from making a great impression. For instance, there's a good chance that if the look and quality of your card is shoddy or unprofessional, it may be thrown into the trash...
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Read the full article...
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Is a PPM Solution the Right Fit for Your Organization?

11/3/2019

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Is your organization at that point where you are looking for more control over your expanding project portfolio? Are you looking for a full featured project portfolio management (PPM) solution because your organization and project portfolio have both grown and you now are seeking to take the next big step in the process? Do you have budget in place? How big is your project portfolio now? What are you expecting as annual project growth? Project revenue growth? Project resource growth? Overall PM infrastructure change and growth?

All these things are considerations on whether a project portfolio management tool is necessary for your organization. If your project portfolio is more than 10 projects and over $1 million, you likely need a PPM tool. There are several things you'll want to consider along with that. Are you traditional waterfall or agile in your project management and software development environment. If you're both, consider a hybrid PPM solution that works well for both. Your project successes are too vital to almost any size organization so be sure to cover all areas. But how standard can you go or how progressive and scalable should you go?

How Standard Can You Go?

So the next thing to decide is how far do you go with PPM? Can you go with a standard PPM solution or do you need one that can be highly customized to meet your current needs as well as likely future project growth needs.

A few ways in which the portfolio management process helps support the fundamentals of project management:

  • Avoids project management disasters by pointing out good projects versus bad projects, the ROI and the projected value the project might have to the organization
  • Offers a clear path to prioritization that allows project managers to create flexible timetables
  • Lists what team members and project managers are available
  • Helps assign monetary value to a project, making project budgets firm
  • Integrates easily with other key PM related tools. Bidirectional Jira integration and others may be a consideration.
  • Integrated resource management to help keep resource allocation in check across all projects

Project portfolio management sets out a methodology used to predict potential problems, review progress towards operational goals, manage budgets, and address stakeholder concerns, allowing project managers to then follow up with precision execution.

The Right High Level View

Project portfolio management gives companies a bird’s eye view of upcoming, current and past projects. By seeing the big picture of how a proposed project will fit into the goals and objectives of the organization, companies can make better decisions on what projects to choose and what initiatives will create the most return.

Given that most complex organizations need this type of solution and these various features and are also experiencing growth to some degree and and some relative pace, it is likely that most would benefit from a more customizable PPM solution. Is that you? Likely.

Enterprise portfolio tools decrease the reliance on multiple applications that can increase overhead and confuse workflows. Because project portfolio management is inherently complex due to how much is being managed at once, it's important to select an enterprise project management tool that is simple and easy to use for everyone in the organization – not just the early adopters. And one that is customizable for the company's specific project and resource related needs. Be sure to look for tools that minimize overhead, manual effort, and excessive documentation, opting instead for a tool that features intuitive design, simple functionality, and a mobile application that allows everyone in your organization to access the tool, wherever they are.

Summary / call for input

The right enterprise PPM solution can help move your organization forward in terms of PM successes, resource management and customer responsiveness and retention. Making the right decision can be critical – understand your organizational needs well before researching and selection.

What about our readers – what are your thoughts and experiences with your own PPM needs and choices? Please share and discuss.
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Hybrid PPM with Bidirectional Jira Integration

11/2/2019

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Imagine a hybrid project portfolio management (PPM) tool that works well in both agile and traditional waterfall scenarios with bidirectional Jira integration and only in mind: to make you more successful.

ONEPOINT Projects
is used across industries to solve different challenges. From introducing project management using lean PM, over developing new products or establishing an enterprise project office onto connecting Jira to your strategic project portfolio using hybrid PPM - ONEPOINT is helping people to deliver sustainable project success.


ONEPOINT Projects is the first 100% web-based, fully-integrated project and portfolio management solution that does not force you to compromise between usability and deploying a "real" PPM solution. 

Hybrid PPM for Jira

Although Jira was born as an issue tracker, today it is the most widely used agile project management tool for IT and software projects. But what if you need more? ONEPOINT Projects extends Jira beyond the team-level mastering portfolio, resource, and strategic management in a unique and natural way.


Imagine you could have more control of your schedule, dependencies, or resource planning if you wanted to! What if you could combine Jira projects into programs and portfolios? What if you could easily do cost planning, “real” risk management and traffic-light based status reporting on your Jira projects? Say you could even report on stakeholders and all this compliant to common project management standards - with KPIs that actually make sense to your board and shareholders? Experience ONEPOINT Projects, the hybrid PPM solution bidirectional Jira integration with only one goal: to make you more successful.
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5 Things to Look for in a PPM Solution

11/1/2019

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An organization's need for a project portfolio management (PPM) tool is usually dependent on the their size, client base, types of projects they undertake and sizes of projects they are engaging on over the course of time. Ideally, any PPM could serve the organization and provide for all the real world needs it requires of the portfolio management tool in order to best align project executions with the goals and missions – however evolving they may be – of the organization for best project performance, prioritization and delivery?

With that in mind, let's consider the big picture wish list – what a PPM should be. Below I've listed five of those concepts and why most PPM offers fail to deliver what an organization really needs from a PPM solution in order to truly be effective...
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  • Ability to breakdown business strategies. A solid PPM requires that you be able to break any business strategy down into multiple portfolios and organizations. Flexibility and user-friendliness are key and most offerings fail miserably in this area. These two concepts should be at the forefront of a PPMs software design and that's where most fall short. A solid PPM should also be able to work well with existing tools in the organization – for example be able to support bidirectional Jira integration. Many cannot so consider that before purchasing.
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  • Not be tied down to waterfall or Agile. The right PPM should allow you to plan work and schedule your resources in a standard or agile mode without being locked into either. Ideally, PPM offering should fit flexibility your organization will obviously need over your entire project portfolio. Here we might consider more of a hybrid PPM that serves both traditional waterfall and agile well.

  • Dynamic Prioritization. It's a key functionality of most wish lists Users should also be able to fund and staff initiatives and actions according to strategic targets, as well as available budgets and resources. This functionality should be expected out of the box in order to make PPM everything you need it to be, but in general it just isn't there.

  • Provide high level and wide angle views of the project landscape. A full featured PM should also be able to dynamically control execution and progress on several axes and identify the potential gaps with the original targets. High level views and wide angle views of your projects at a glance means you have access to better decision making for the full portfolio of projects you're handling at any given moment – including integrated resource management - and this is what the right PPM solution is all about. Sadly, this again another key failing point for most leading PPM offerings.

  • Realignment with changing organizational directions. Back to flexibility – the PPM needs to be able to re-align... periodically... with the changing direction and needs of the organization. It's how it handles these changes with the growing and changing portfolio quickly and efficiently without lots of redesign, re-configuration, or re-work that is a sign of “will it really work for your needs?”. In most cases, the answer turns out to be “no” with 95% of the PPM offerings on the table now.

Summary / call for input

Keep in mind, what I've pointed out here are some high end wish and best case scenarios for PPMs. For true effectiveness and functionality, I feel that we need to set our goals high in what we expect our PPM to do if we really want full adaptation and something that will manage our project portfolio in a way that will help, not hinder, project prioritization and strategy. It's what we need and where our important funding dollars should be spent. Find a PPM that offers these things and the senior management funding approval will be much easier.

Readers – what are your thoughts on PPM functionality and organizational needs? Do you have a PPM solution and does it really fit your needs well? Please share and discuss.
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    Brad Egeland


    Named the "#1 Provider of Project Management Content in the World," Brad Egeland has over 25 years of professional IT experience as a developer, manager, project manager, consultant and author.  He has written more than 7,000 expert online articles, eBooks, white papers and video articles for clients worldwide.  If you want Brad to write for your site, contact him.

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