Comments for Fear No Project - A Project Management Blog

Comment on How to Help Management Make a Better IT Decision by Rosemary Wycherley

Rosemary Wycherley — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 04:26:54 +0000

In most organisations these days the Business Case is the principal decision making vehicle so this advice to IT professionals who are called upon to contribute their knowledge is excellent. More and more organisations call upon their Enterprise Architects to develop the business led IT strategy – but I’ve never met one yet who can sit quietly and listen!! However, I wouldn’t swap their expertise for anything.

Comment on When Facts Are Not Enough – 10 Tips for Communicating to a Non-Technical Audience by How to Help Management Make a Better IT Decision « Fear No Project – A Project Management Blog

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 21:13:00 +0000

[...] Do NOT talk down to the decision makers because they are less knowledgeable about technology. It is your job to explain options, costs and risks in layman’s terms. Consider using analogies and metaphors that will resonate with the shared experience of decision makers.(See the post on Communicating to a non-technical Audience) [...]

Comment on Project Management: Keys to managing a Virtual or remote project team by Terry B.

Terry B. — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 08:21:42 +0000

Great post Bruce, you have a very good insight about managing virtual teams. Managing virtual team is a great way to cut cost and go green. In order to manage virtual team you will need the right online tools and resources that will help you run your business to progress. Communications is also one of the key to virtual team. There are also different communication tools that can be use like Skype. Google Docs is also a tool that is very useful to virtual teams which allows you to share and manage documents, presentations, surveys, and spread sheets easily. I also found this article that discusses more information about managing remote teams and some alternative tools. Using these tools it can help you improve productivity, collaboration, project management and team communication.

Comment on Asking for Help by Bruce Fieggen

Bruce Fieggen — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 19:36:45 +0000

I condition my team members to bring up problems early so that they can be solved. Then we, as a team, focus on what impact this problem has on the schedule, the cost, the scope and the quality of the project. Then we brainstorm at least 3 alternatives to each problem. We analyze the impact each of these alternatives has on the above project constraints. Finally, we come up with a recommendation.
So now our managers ask us, “Don’t come to us with problems, come to us with alternatives and a recommendation.”
We even have a graphic tool we use to make the alternative analysis easier.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/39399245/09_problemsolving-tool.doc

Comment on Project Manager Travel Guidance by Maikel Andelbeek

Maikel Andelbeek — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 18:11:52 +0000

NIce! In the past, I have seen that when the PM leaves, they tend to try and be in direct control (even though they are not even in the same time-zone). This often creates situations where something goes wrong and nobody knows what to, thus creating the need for the proposed addition by TBoehm30: “Tell your team not to panic!”

This is going in my collection as a resource

Comment on Asking for Help by TBoehm30

TBoehm30 — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 20:11:43 +0000

Sometimes I feel like explaining the problem would take longer than actually solving the problem. My knowledge of the project is specific, but senior management has general knowledge. After a 3 hour meeting to explain the problem, I could have just documented the issue and directed the team toward a solution. If it worked then senior management would never have known and the project would still look good.

Comment on Project Manager Travel Guidance by TBoehm30

TBoehm30 — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 19:47:10 +0000

Great list, thanks for posting.
I would add – Tell your team not to panic!

Comment on How to create and use predictive project scheduling by Dean Hiller

Dean Hiller — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 21:17:20 +0000

and so that is why we created alvazan.com’s predictive project management tool . Just google “Predictive Project Management”. It adjusts those initial estimates for you .

Comment on Project Management Buzz words and Clichés by Andy

Andy — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 15:08:26 +0000

Be careful of using these cliches especially with virtual team coming from all over the world because people from different part of the world may not understand them or worse may understand them differently.

Comment on Project Management: Keys to managing a Virtual or remote project team by Andy

Andy — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 14:43:51 +0000

I totally agree with Bruce that communication is one of the key if not the most important factor to a project management success. As a project manager, I constantly communicate with all my virtual team members through Skype. As for documents or files sharing, I use Dropbox because it is so convenient and it can be accessed across different platform such as PC, Mac, iPad and iPhone.