Learn how to engage people on projects and manage stakeholder relationships at work. Get things done, even when your colleagues have different priorities!
Politics. Every project has politics. Today I’m interviewing Dr Nita Martin, Managing Director of Pure Indigo. Nita’s book, Project Politics: A Systematic Approach to Managing Complex Relationships, deals with that difficult subject of how things get done on projects. Nita, ‘politics’ means different things to different people. How do you define project politics? ‘Project politics’…
Today I’m interviewing Dr Lynda Bourne, author of Advising Upwards: A Framework for Understanding and Engaging Senior Management Stakeholders (Gower, 2011). Lynda is CEO of Stakeholder Management Pty Ltd, a training and consultancy firm based in Australia. Lynda, your book is about helping project managers communicate better with executive stakeholders. Let’s start at the beginning….
PM Network last month reported that 65% of people feel that there is a generation gap in project management. We are living in the first period where five generations are working together in the workplace. Experienced (i.e. older) project managers now have Generation X and Generation Y people on their teams. The age differences at…
Elyse Nielson from Ascension Health and the blog Anticlue gave a presentation at the PMI Global Congress North America in Dallas in 2011 about sponsors and their interaction with the project. She talked about the importance of getting the right sponsor for the project and shared some myths about project sponsorship. Elyse pointed out that…
Students coming to study in London for the new university term will quickly realize that in the capital you generally do not assume positive intent. In fact, Not Assuming Positive Intent is the default. You assume that other commuters will fight you for the last tube seat. You assume that your pockets will get picked…
The best thing about going to the hairdressers is having someone wash my hair. The second best thing is being able to sit there for an hour and be lost in my thoughts while someone makes me beautiful. I don’t talk to my hairdresser about holidays or work, and we have fallen into companionable silence….
This is a guest post by Conrado Morlan, the Smart PM. Dear Smart PM… I am a new hire at the project management office of a large corporation. I had been working in project management for several years as a freelancer. Although I consider myself to be a good networker, I found difficulties networking within…
In this final instalment of the ‘working together’ series, I’ll be looking at how to improve the working relationships between project managers and business analysts. Changing working relationships is often more about culture than concrete tasks, but there are some things you can do to smooth any blips in the way that project managers and…
Last week I wrote about what project managers value when working with business analysts. This week I want to focus on what we don’t. Don’t worry: it’s not that bad! The differences in the ways that project managers work and the ways that business analysts work means that it’s not always easy to work together….
Last week I wrote about the way that project managers work, and how this relates to OTOBOS. This week I want to explain what project managers value in our working relationships with business analysts. Project managers see BAs as architects. They are detailed, they decide on and build solutions, they work in a methodical way….
About a month ago I spoke at the IRM UK Business Analysis Conference 2009 about how project managers work, and how business analysts and project managers can work together more successfully. As you can imagine, telling a room full of BAs that project managers don’t want to hear all that detail and analysis paralysis was…
On my mission to turn you all into Office Goddesses, I spoke to Heather White, CEO of The Magic of Networking Ltd, a coaching, training and consultancy firm packed with experts in corporate and career networking. Networking is often something women find especially hard to do. I mean, what’s the point? It’s all chewing the…