A Better Project Management Method

Everyday I work to collect activities, durations and a host of other items that can be considered part of the project management principle. I do this for 8-10 projects. Constantly refining predecessors, successors, resources, load and the like. No matter how much time I spend researching the topic and asking the team to give me all of the activities they need, they invariably miss something. Therefore a schedule that had one date for completion is now destroyed, because somebody missed one item. The team then freezes thinking that the schedule needs to be updated with this new item before they can move on. We update the schedule, redistribute the tasks, due dates and hope we did not miss anything the second time. I would think a better way exists. My problem with many project teams exists in a simple matter of office geography. Teams need to sit together on a project, invariably they sit in cubes down the hall from each other. When working on a project if the piece they need is not present, then they E-mail the project manager to go fix the piece they need. Then the resource is off to another project. Offices need to foster a collaborative approach where the teams can come together and disband. If I could design an office around project management, it would have the following characteristcs: *modular carts where people can show up together, plug in their laptops and work on the project *Projects would be divided into days they are worked on. For example, in a company with a full portfolio of projects, Monday would be database projects whereby the entire team would just work on database related projects. Tuesday could be application specific projects. The goal here is to put all team members in the same mind shift whereby when another team calls out for help, all parties are engaged. Too often we have the same resources working on different projects. This would allow the resources to become lock step on a project for a finite period of time in an attempt to show more progress with a shorter duration. JJD - projects by people...

Project Management Activities

Up until 2009, I was the "Systems Administrator, Windows, Cisco network, EMC storage and a host of other roles" for a variety of companies. Executing the technical task for an organization got to be a challenging adventure and in 2009 I decided to shift my track toward the Project Management role. Understanding the technology has been a great way to morph to the Project Management role. I feel that my background helps to effectively lead a discussion around a topic and to ask the questions of the current engineers. In this role I do not get to "experiment" with the technology like I used to and I am left at the mercy of the engineer to help fill in the activities for the latest and greatest. That is where our problem lies, engineers forget stuff or just plain don't think it is important to add it to the task list.
I learned that lesson the hard way today. After months of working on a project, we got the install done. Upon appearance of the web page, I exclaimed..WooHoo! To which I was met with, "Yea, but...." Which translated into a discussion about all the tasks that need to happen now that the web site is up and running. My fault. When I asked at the onset about the tasks that need to take place and produced the artifact that was agreed to, nobody ever said "Boo" about missing a whole bunch of stuff.
Wanting to learn from this lesson, I pondered how to resolve it. Option 1 could have included me installing it a home so I would know to cry foul early and often. Option 2 could have been to ask for more in person demonstration activities to which I would have seen all the steps they were going through. Option 3 includes accepting the new tasks and adding to the schedule. Looking back, Option 2 would have been the most effective for me.
What are your thoughts for gathering all the activities before embarking on a project?

Writing More

Today I am prompted to think back to my days at Stonehill College as Dr. Katie Conboy will be visiting the Washington D.C. area this weekend. While I do not want to remember the "less than" stellar works of art I handed in for the literacy class, her visit combined with the inspiring message from Fred Wilson at www.avc.com has prompted me to dust off my blog and enhance my blogging skills.

My problem with blogging is not "what should I say?" but rather is "when do I have time to write it?" That's really the amazing part for me is to understand when do people have time to sit down and bang out 4-5 paragraphs of anything? I am at work 0630 - 1800 M-F. Arriving home after 1900 does not really lead to my best thought time for blogging. Tonight, I committed to it and here I am at 2324.

My goal with blogging includes the following: 1. Improve my writing skills. Dr. Conboy would probably have some "suggestions" on my writing style if she were to review this post. Even at my advanced age, I think I can improve my skills in this area.

2. Become relevant by writing about topics that I see every day in the hopes that others can learn from my mistakes or they can help suggest an enhanced resolution. In my day I experience management topics that I do not believe are covered in any text book or case study. Let me just say, I can never find an answer to the topics. The central part of my day is collaboration. I struggle every day with: a. How do I find the relevant audience that cares about the emails I am crafting. Who really needs to know and who cares and who will help? b. How do we expedite our collaboration efforts to resolve issues and make decisions c. How do we help people find the issues they should be collaborating on and let them discard the one's' they should not be dealing with?

3. Focus the blog around technology and management

4. Try to blog using my mobile device.

I will start with the four goals for now. It is now 2326 and this took an entire 7 minutes to write. Maybe I do have time to blog after all?