Help for the Newly Minted Project Manager

Congratulations! Due to the recent [acquisition / divestiture, market expansion / contraction, organizational realignments, other] you have been identified as a Critical Resource for this particular bit of business process change. And, to help us implement these changes, you have been named the Project Manager for this effort. So now you are a Project Manager (PM, for short); what does that mean? You may be vaguely aware that people get certifications for this sort of thing, or that Microsoft sells…

Estimating Bird-Dogging Time for Project Tasks

9 January, 2011
Project Management
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New year, new projects, and new adventures in getting folks to think in project management terms. I've written before about Calendar time vs. Effort time, but this past week we came up with a new distinction that is worthwhile to call out. When working with the business and getting folks to estimate how much time it will take to complete a task, there are actually three different things that most people will talk about - and folks need to be…

Challenges when demoing / training / pitching complex systems

Over the last few days, I've been in a few vendor demos, trading partner reviews, product pitches, and project discussions, all reviewing complex systems or processes, and tools / software / services to help out. Some important, common, and somewhat random issues kept popping into my mind, all about trying to have a discussion about complex systems / interactions ... Always be mindful that if something was easy, we probably would have done it already. Be alert for things that…