Journyx Project Management Blog

Carl Pritchard at ProjectConnections wrote a new article, “Falling in Love with GREAT Communications,” that addresses our everyday methods of communication and offers suggestions on how to improve them. E-mail, voicemail, conference calls and face-to-face meetings all have certain types of protocol that we would all do well to remember. Here are some of Pritchard’s suggestions for each.

E-mail:

Be consistent about the use of the To:, CC:, and BCC: lines. To: people are those who have to take direct action related to the e-mail. CC: folks? They’re the ones who are being informed, but we want others to know who they are and that they have visibility on the information. Still, if you’re on the CC:, there’s no need to make a direct response. And BCC: folks should be those who have a need to be informed, but should not be included on the inevitable parade of responses that may follow.

Voicemail:

As the person leaving the message, keep it succinct. If you hit voicemail and don’t know what you’re going to say, hang up. Think it through. Come back. Then leave the message.

Conference calls:

If there are any handouts or materials that were sent out in advance, have them on a website as well, so that latecomers can pick them up

Face-to-face:

Schedule interactions. Give the person you just bumped into the opportunity to walk away. If they don’t have the time to spend with you, they won’t be focused on your message. Give them an “out” in case they aren’t ready for the face-to-face experience.

PM World Today published an article by James Brown about the obsession some companies have with speed. On the one hand, he approves of this attitude, saying, “Your organization should be obsessed with speed. Speed is necessary for success in today’s market.” Yet he also tempers this by noting that organizations also need to have insight, planning and a ‘braking system’ so that projects do not get out of control. He writes:

• Does your organization have processes in place to detect when projects are out of control?
• Does your organization terminate projects gone bad before they become a money pit or embarrassment?
• Does your leadership or customer(s) get advanced notice of the problems that exist in projects before there are only one or two options left to resolve them?
• Are you more in control of the circumstances than the circumstances are in control of you?

To read more, you can download the entire PDF at PM World Today.

If there’s anything I’ve learned in the past seven years that I’ve been in the personal development industry, it’s that there is one characteristic that, above all, creates success among the most extraordinary people. That one characteristic is persistence.

If we look throughout the world in every industry and culture, there’s one consistent trend among every single successful individual, and that trend is the ability to persevere beyond a shadow of a doubt. It’s the ability to stand up beyond everyone else and take a step forward when everyone else sits down.

Before we get started, I’d like to take a moment to acknowledge you, because it’s not just anyone who would read an article called “The Power of Persistence.” It isn’t every day that people decide to do what they need to in order to be successful. Only the most extraordinary individuals, the top minute fragment of a percent, who actually step up and take action towards creating success in their lives. Simply by picking up this book, you’ve chosen to step up and I acknowledge you for taking on that feat.

If we look throughout history at some of the greatest leaders — Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr., Colonel Sanders, Mark Victor Hansen, Steve Jobs — we see that the most extraordinarily successful people are those who have persisted beyond the norm. Everywhere we look we see signs of persistence in those that are creating the most challenging and rewarding results. It is not always natural; it’s a learned trait. What this means, though, is that success is simply a choice.

There was once a politician who failed at business at the age of 21. He was defeated in a legislative race at age 22, he failed again at business at age 24, overcame the death of his lover at age 26, had a nervous breakdown at age 27, lost a congressional race at 34 and 36, lost a senatorial race at 45, failed to become vice president at 47, lost a senatorial race at 49 and then was finally elected to President of the United States of America at age 52.

Now imagine if he had considered any of these past experiences as failures and had allowed that to stop him from moving forward. He would never have become one of the most extraordinary presidents of the United States, Mr. Abraham Lincoln.

There’s a famous story about Thomas Edison: he tried 9,999 times to perfect the light bulb and he couldn’t do it. Someone said, “Are you going to have 10,000 failures?” And he responded, “I didn’t fail, I just discovered another way not to invent the electric light bulb.” He got to choose whether or not he perceived his past experiences as failures.

Mark Victor Hansen, a close friend of mine and an extraordinary mentor and businessman, is the co-author of Chicken Soup for the Soul Series that has now sold over 144 million copies in over 20 languages worldwide. Yet did you know that he and Jack Canfield, his co-author, were turned down by over 110 publishers in their pursuit to be published? Iit wasn’t until a publisher’s wife got a hold of the manuscript and all night long she was waking her husband, saying, “Look at this, look at this!” Finally, the publisher agreed to publish it.

Now here’s a story about another individual: Colonel Sanders, the founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken. He was a military retiree and had nothing to his name except his mother’s chicken recipe. So what did he do? He took his old sports wagon out and began driving to restaurant after restaurant after restaurant. His intention was to sell the chicken recipe, but he was turned down time and time again. He was actually turned down 1,007 times before he received his first yes, and that one yes is what made possible Kentucky Fried Chicken possible.

The last individual I want to tell you about is Steve Jobs, the president and founder of Apple Computer. Members of his board of directors kicked him out of his own company. He could have allowed this to stop him, but instead he stood up. It was only because he persisted that he was voted back in as Chairman of Apple. He created the iPod, the iPhone and a new line of Mac Computers. Had he not, we probably would never have experienced an iPod or an iPhone.

As you can see, the stories go on and on of the most extraordinary individuals creating powerful results as a direct result of their persistence. Time and time again, individuals are stopped along their journey, but that doesn’t mean that they are failures or that their project will never work. It simply means that they’re one step closer to achieving the result that they desire.

Justin Sachs is the best-selling author of The Power of Persistence and a leading success coach for entrepreneurs, corporate executives, and business owners.

A Project Management Institute (PMI) and CIO study found that of 750 organisations researched worldwide, over 75% of organisations that had set up a PMO shut it down because it did not demonstrate any added value. PMOs should be a way to increase efficiency, cut costs, and improve programme and project delivery in terms of time and budget. So why are so many failing to deliver?

Challenge yourself. Go on, really challenge yourself. As a programme and project management practitioner, how well are your PPM practices working? Do you believe that you are performing optimally across the spectrum of functionality; are you concerned that there may be deficiencies in your individual and organisational capabilities; do you know where the gaps lie and do you have an approach to address these areas?

Download the PDF at PM World Today.

How do we measure project success? Do we measure budget and schedule or do we measure net value delivered to the organization? Today, we tend to measure the former. But it is the latter, delivered value, which is the truer measure. This is the way projects will be evaluated in the future. The current Triple Constraint focuses on the delivery portion of a project, rather than its business value. It focuses on a single project, and is primarily based on a cost view.

The Value Triple Constraint is an evolution of the Triple Constraint. It is a framework for measuring the on-going value delivered through projects and for bringing to light the “value left behind”

Read on at Project Times.

How do we measure project success? Do we measure budget and schedule or do we measure net value delivered to the organization? Today, we tend to measure the former. But it is the latter, delivered value, which is the truer measure. This is the way projects will be evaluated in the future. The current Triple Constraint focuses on the delivery portion of a project, rather than its business value. It focuses on a single project, and is primarily based on a cost view.

The Value Triple Constraint is an evolution of the Triple Constraint. It is a framework for measuring the on-going value delivered through projects and for bringing to light the “value left behind”. It is pictured below… read more

In case the unpredictability, camaraderie and showmanship weren’t enough reasons to spend a day watching football, there’s also plenty you can learn about managing a business. Fans know the game’s much more complex than it’s often given credit for. After all, sports analysts have no problem spending hours every week discussing the previous weekend’s games and potential strategies for those upcoming.

So when you find yourself scrambling for new clients or having to deal with a notoriously difficult employee, recall these seven management lessons that come directly from the field… read more

Although freelancers and corporate employees both have stages of moving on in their careers, it tends to happen more often in freelancing. Clients sometimes lose funding or focus. Other times we’re called in for short-term projects and aren’t hired again. But there are other times when you initiate the change yourself.

Here are some common reasons why we sometimes feel the need to move on:

Rates. This is especially true for new freelancers who started out with low rates and eventually had to raise them. While clients are mostly understanding of you raising your rates over time, you might encounter the rare few who’ll insist on paying you low rates even after working with them consistently for several years. If the money is no longer worth your time, it’s understandable to want to move on.

Culture. Sometimes, our attitude towards business changes and becomes different from what our client’s attitudes are. We “grow apart”, so to speak.

Read the entire post at Web Worker Daily.

There is much more to planning a project than the mechanics of defining the work and how long it will take to get it done. The project manager’s most important tasks are the coordination and management of the people assigned to the project, and leading that collective group to achieve the project objectives. Tasks on a page provide a great roadmap, but a written plan can never embody everything it will take to get the project done. New project managers can get tripped up if they’ve been introduced to the role with a big focus on the mechanics of project planning and scheduling, without adequate attention to dealing with people, risk, and other real world effects.

Here’s some advice and guidance on what’s most important in planning a project—what we think matters most, and what you need to know how to do in leading the team to project success… read more

If ever you were entitled to start breathing easier, now would seem to be the moment. So why am I telling you not to?

The end of the recession seems so close that you can almost smell it. The stock market is surging, China and India are firing on all cylinders again, and no one would be surprised if in the next quarter the U.S. economy shows signs of growth too.

Yet this is exactly the wrong moment to let up on the mean and lean strategies you’ve adopted over the past year and a half. In fact, it’s time to go further and develop a new, even tougher mindset: managing for — yes — the next recession… read more