My view of other projects happening around the world.
In 2012, Helen Mason stood outside her home and looked at the road. Every day there were more frogs and toads that hadn’t made it to the other side. The increasing numbers of dead amphibians made her feel that the local population of frogs and toads needed a helping hand to cross the road. So…
The UK Government has done a lot to improve the perception and delivery of major public sector projects. Find out how their improvements to governance structures have had a tangible effect on making sure projects hit their targets – and calling out those project leaders who haven’t managed to achieve what they set out to do.
Change is hard, and project managers aren’t particularly good at doing it to themselves – in my experience we prefer to implement change for others. Kevin Baker, Head of Project & Programme Management Operations at Airbus, took on the challenge of changing the way they manage projects. I spoke to him about how he implemented…
If you’ve been around projects for any length of time you have probably come across the Project Management Institute. You might even have heard of PMIEF: the PMI Educational Foundation. But what does it actually do? I thought it mainly sponsored research, but it turns out I was wrong. PMIEF’s Chair, John Rickards, gave a…
In case you’ve been living under a rock, today’s the day that Prince William of Wales marries Catherine Middleton, and it feels like London has been turned into one big Union Jack. I planned my wedding in Microsoft Project, and I’m not the only project manager who considered their big day worthy of proper planning….
“I left school with minimal qualifications,” said Roger Clutton, Programme Director at Lloyd’s Register Group Services Ltd. “I was probably programmed to feel not good at things.” Clutton is the self-confessed project manager for “horrible projects” at the risk management organisation which provides risk assessment and risk mitigation solutions across the UK. Lloyd’s started out…
Today, Andrew Filev, who writes the fab Project Management 2.0 blog, and I are swapping posts. We agreed on the loose topic of social media and project management. Andrew has a great deal of knowledge on enterprise 2.0 and social media, so I’m glad to have him as a guest author today. You can read…
“Everyone thinks they are the big boss,” says Laura Aziz. “Everyone thinks they are managing the others.” It’s one of the complexities that Laura is managing as part of putting the IT systems into a massive 7-star hospital in the Middle East: complete with wifi, electronic mediccal records and video conferencing. It’s a multi-year, multi-phase…
I’ve just come back from Jukkasjärvi in Sweden, a place I’ve wanted to visit for ever because it’s where they build the magnificent Ice Hotel every year. It was on the list of things to do before I hit 30, but I didn’t make it. It struck me as a coincidence that just as I…
“Most books on branding,” Adam says, “focus on what it takes for a brand to be great: follow these steps, tick the boxes on a flow chart.” “PRINCE2® training is just like that,” I reply. “If you complete these documents your project will be a success. That’s not how things work in the real world.”…
Last Thursday I had dinner in Café Royle – Google’s staff canteen. Google were hosting a birthday event for Girl Geek Dinners (strapline: definitely does compute) to celebrate their third anniversary. Girl Geek Dinners is a bit of a phenomenon. Sarah Blow set up the non-profit community in London over three years ago and now…
I was at the International Congress for Project, Programme and Risk Management last Wednesday and Thursday and listened to some really interesting speakers. Liz Underhill, Programme Manager for the London Olympics Programme, spoke early on the first day about the progress so far on planning for the Games. What struck me about her role is…