PMI’s New Agile Certification: Good or Evil?
There are some who consider PMI „evil“, others strongly believe in PMI. Now comes PMI’s new Agile certification. As much as skepticism about PMI’s past philosophy of linear, traditional project management is justified, the new certification is a huge milestone for PMI, for the Agile…
Effective teams don’t need collaboration tools. Really? [includes podcast and presentation]
Last February I had a chance to attend (and speak at) the NASA Project Management Challenge in Long Beach, CA. In a session about collaboration tools one of the attendants claimed that „effective project teams don’t need collaboration tools“. I admit that this statement made…
Refreshment for weary agile teams
In a recent article on the website of the Scrum Alliance Bob Martin addresses the problem of Scrum teams which after a period of hyper-productivity faces declining productivity and team morale. His article aims to lay out a possible path back to high-performance and great…
Go and find your „Wow“ project
One can find endless examples of projects. Tom Peters (2007) goes as far as claiming that all white collar work these days is and actually has to be project work. “And not just any project, no matter how droning, boring, and dull, but rather what…
Creating high-performance contexts for teams
According to Charles J. Pellerin high-performance contexts for teams have the following characteristics: Mutual respect, people feel valued Reality-based optimism, commitment People feel included, trustworthy Clear organization, accountability In his book How NASA Builds Teams: Mission Critical Soft Skills for Scientists, Engineers, and Project Teams….
Dogmatic Scrum: an end to Agile?
I consider myself a proponent of agile methologies (such as Scrum) and agile project management. I support and live Agile not because it is a fad but because I believe it is the right approach to running projects and develop products, especially when we are…
The „Top 3“ of status reports
As managers or project managers we regularly prepare so-called status reports. It is supposed to be a summary of the events, accomplishments, issues and upcoming milestones. In my experience in project management I have seen numerous formats of status reports. In many, too many cases…
Photo impressions from Conference in Athens
Yesterday I received photos from last week’s project management conference in Athens. A project management conference and I am talking about mountains? True. The reason is simple: I am comparing a project to a mountain tour where the mission of the team is to reach…
Ignore your environment – or how to set up your project for failure
We all know that we live in an interdependent world. This is common sense. And yet again the proverb that common sense is not common practice holds true. Recently I observed a project which was headed by an expert in his field. He knew the…
„A Fool with a Tool is Still a Fool“ – Presentation
The presentation (PPT-file) is now available online at http://congresses.pmi.org/NorthAmerica2010/documents/PMT10-ppt.pdf. Feedback is highly welcome! If you are attending the PMI Global Congress in DC next week, please stop by. Reading a ppt-file is still different from attending an actual session. Besides some slides will be different…