Tag Archives: Engagement

Engaging the team as project owners

“We’re Engaged!”

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I heard those two enchanting words a few weeks ago from my nephew and his wonderful girlfriend.  Immediately, I could imagine all the eventful things that would happen between then and the August wedding.  Weddings are pretty big projects, after all.  Dozens, maybe hundreds, of people make changes in their lives to come together in celebration of a new life for two people they love.  Those making the plans set objectives, constraints, and timelines.  They identify stakeholders and strategies, find people they can assign work to, and then they make commitments and get things done. And they do it with the sort of zeal, creativity, and commitment that is part of the most successful non-wedding projects.  All this comes from the power of those first two words – “We’re engaged!”

Who really becomes engaged when an engagement happens?  Is it just the future bride and groom?  I think it’s everyone who will be at the wedding or who will help the couple celebrate in some way.  Their collective engagement makes the whole event special Continue reading →

Finding Balance

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So far my blog is going slower than I imagined.  I started with an idea of what I wanted to write about – balancing the frequent project management focus on preventing failure through risk and process management with attention to techniques that bring out opportunities and engage people in making the project a success.  I wanted to organize my approach to the blog so that each piece fit into a well defined framework.  Anyone looking at it would say “Oh my, that’s brilliant!”  Well, it’s not happening like that.

I think that projects are always about achieving a balance between this and that.  This and that are many factors like the needs to balance quantity with quality, retaining ownership with transferring risk to vendors, inspiration and perspiration, Continue reading →

The Missing Question

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How often do you ask this question: “What can go right on my project?”  My experience is that most people ask other questions in dutifully performing good project management:

  • What are we trying to accomplish to help our organization?
  • What work do we have to do?
  • How much can we spend?
  • When does it have to be completed?
  • How do we acquire what we need to do the work?
  • How will we manage our team?
  • Who needs to know what we are doing?
  • How do we make sure we conform to specifications?

and

  • What can go wrong and how do we mitigate these risks?

If you are an experienced project manager, you will note that these questions reflect the Project Management Institute’s 9 project management knowledge areas from the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK).  The PMBOK, which I became intimately familiar with when I prepared for my Project Management Professional (PMP) certification, is a great framework to understand the practices, tools, and techniques that support a well run project.  Not paying attention to the 9 questions will undermine your chances of success.  But, project managers can apply all the tools and techniques and still fail.  In my 30+ years as a project manager and project management consultant, I’ve tried to see what makes a project manager successful.  If I had to narrow it down to one thing, I think it’s the ability to see what can go right with a project.  And, it’s knowing which of the things that can go right must go right for you to be successful.

If you are still reading and think I might be on to something, let me tell you a story that illustrates what I mean. Continue reading →