‘Why is project management important?’ is an interesting question that clients sometimes pose. They’ll ask: “Can’t we just brief the team doing the work and manage them ourselves? It’ll be loads cheaper.” They wonder if they really need project management because on paper it looks like an...
Although there have been huge advances in project management in the last 20 years, the issue of Project Failure is still the elephant in the room. Success rates are not improving and the metrics surrounding project failure have been disturbing for decades — at least...
Projects Won’t Always Succeed – Here Are 6 Reasons Why In 1990, I worked for the Coca-Cola Company in Atlanta as a sales equipment engineer. During this time, we were running a campaign known as “Magic Summer ’90.” Part of this campaign involved Coca-Cola cans that...
When it comes to today’s workplace, agility is a nice attribute to have. Being agile means you move quickly, change course easily, and you’re always ready to spring into action. But what about the term agile, as it pertains to project management? What does “Agile” mean in...
A good time was had by all at Scrum Day India 2020. My talk on “Why 47% of Agile Transformations Fail!” was well received. After many requests for the slides I am posting them here. I recently read that 47% of Agile Transformations fail and since 77%...
What does all modern knowledge workers have in common? Projects. The amount of existing research about projects and project management is huge in the academic world. However, even though these studies are useful guidelines, contributing to expanding the knowledge of managers and project managers, sometimes research...
Want to increase Project Success? Coach your Executive to be an effective Project Sponsor. Some years ago I was managing a global transformation project for a large bank. The entire project team was afraid of the project sponsor, a guy called Matthias. He occasionally participated in our regular...
The Four Phases of Project Management Whether you’re in charge of developing a website, designing a car, moving a department to a new facility, updating an information system, or just about any other project (large or small), you’ll go through the same four phases of project...
Project Management in Silicon Valley A while back, a group of us were trying to figure out what separates fast-rising Staff Engineers from Senior Engineers. We thought it counterintuitive that the answer wasn’t always tied to technical skills. Instead, all the Staff Engineers demonstrated crucial leadership through...
Understanding Fake Agile I was recently asked by a major corporation to give a talk on “fake agile.” They wanted me to explain what it is, how to identify it and how to deal with it. The request led me to give some thought to the...