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Project Management Concepts

Rethinking the (Work) Breakdown Structure – Part 2.4: Summarising the pivot points

This post wasn’t planned. The last post wrapped up the 3-part series that unpacked our pivot points in more detail, after the headline post. I realised that the 4 posts contain a lot of material and had evolved a bit in the writing of them. So, I thought it would be...

Rethinking the Work Breakdown Structure Part 2.3: Leveraging a broader range of tools

In the last post, I looked at the "Structure of Breakdown". In this post, we look at the third pivot point that I raised in the headline post. We're looking to answer the question: How do we leverage a broader range of knowledge and tools to help us go about doing the...

Rethinking the Work Breakdown Structure – Part 2.2: The Structure of Breakdown

In the last post, I looked at the narrative of Breakdown Structures and how confused it is. In this post, expand on the second pivot point towards improving Breakdown Structures in general, and the Work Breakdown Structure in particular. This point is to create a...

Rethinking the (Work) Breakdown Structure – Part 2.1: Cleaning up the narrative

In the last post, we summarised three pivot points central to our mission to rethink and reframe the Breakdown Structure. In this post, we look at the first pivot point in more detail: To have better WBS's, we need to pivot towards a unified, precise and repeatable...

Rethinking the WBS – Part 2: Pivot Points towards better WBS

This post looks at the points around which we will pivot in our new approach to the WBS to make it more useful and easier to create. I don't want to be too negative or picky, but if we're going to improve things, we need to understand what's wrong. In my last post, I...

The Gradient of Terror – Project management and non-linear forces

Non-linear dynamics and project management is a recurring topic for me, e.g. Project management uses linear tools for non-linear situations and Linear and Non-Linear Thinking in Project Management. But the Covid-19 pandemic underscored the inability of many people to...

Project Management Skills

Managing Projects Across Multiple Time-zones – Part 2

This post is Part 2 of a three-part series. Part 1 covered the essential information needed to understand the remote team environment. Part 2 covers more nuanced aspects of social and cultural relationships, including: Building relationships with the Lo-Fi version of...

Managing Projects Across Multiple Time-zones – Part 1

Recently I was asked a question about managing projects across multiple timezones. I think I know a bit about that, so I jotted down a few notes; then some more. The list kept getting longer and longer. Eventually, I realised I needed to publish them in two parts....

Dysfunctional CV-19 Patterns Resonate in Project Management

This is an abstract of a Medium yarn I published a couple days ago.  if you're interested in the full read, go check out "3 scary behaviours seen during Covid-19 to improve on in life and avoid in projects" Over the months of the CV-19 pandemic, I've noticed...

Four genes driving your software vendor behaviour

As I move around from one project management assignment to another, I repeatedly find myself involved with a new software vendor. What stands out each time is how obvious and visible their underlying values and principles are underneath their day-to-day behaviour. It...

Ten types of Project Plans – Which type is yours?

Plans Project plans and planning are inevitably a part of any project initiative. In almost all enterprise environments projects are next to impossible to initiate and to execute without a plan. By "plan" I mean any artefact that attempts to define the current and...

You know the team is too large when…

If you're a startup, then your organisation is the team.  If you're in a larger enterprise, your team can start small: maybe even just with you! Either way, no matter how small you start, if you are even modestly successful, you're going to have to grow the team.  In...

The Gradient of Terror – Project management and non-linear forces

Non-linear dynamics and project management is a recurring topic for me, e.g. Project management uses linear tools for non-linear situations and Linear and Non-Linear Thinking in Project Management. But the Covid-19 pandemic underscored the inability of many people to...