Do you know what the biggest pain in project management is? I’ll tell you what it is. Building something nobody wants. I’ve learned the hard way over the years that it’s easy to forget the basics when you start getting immersed in all the flashy concepts, funky language, and fancy tools out there for planningRead… Read more »
On Monday Dec 3rd I attended the Lean Startup Conference. And get this – the first two speakers at the conference – were from the Government! Todd Park on Lean/Agile Government Todd is the CTO of the Federal Government. A lot of what he covered in his talk can be found at http://www.whitehouse.gov/innovationfellows Key points:Read… Read more »
One of my teams is transitioning from using Kanban to Scrum for discrete development. We’ll probably continue using both because some of what we do is specific to a particular release of a product, and some of the work is support work. I’m excited because we are taking another step in the right direction towardsRead… Read more »
Is an inspiration. In 1975, Viet Nguyen was a young Vietnamese refugee. Now he is the USACE Project Manager of the Year for 2012. As reported by Jasmine Chopra-Delgadillo, it’s an amazing American story. Please read Jasmine’s excellent write-up. Right now, Viet is serving in Afghanistan managing several major construction projects. One of several projectsRead… Read more »
This is a response to a great summary of the recent survey posted here: https://www.govloop.com/profiles/blogs/project-managers-top-5-challenges 1. Time constraints Get Agile. Release in iterative cycles instead of a monolithic delivery. It allows for better evaluation of progress, forecasting, and customer feedback. 2. Setting a goal and sticking to it Get Agile. Use cases and user storiesRead… Read more »
7 years. $213 million spent. “Until the problems appeared this month, the security upgrade appeared, based on public reports, to be a rare example of a project being completed on time and within its budget in an agency plagued with project management problems. It was not until Oct. 17, according to the NNSA memo, thatRead… Read more »
Agile CAN work in Government, and here’s a great resource to get you started. The National Audit Office across the pond just published what I think is an excellent review called “Governance for Agile Delivery.” The stars must be aligned, because this is something we are discussing at my workplace and I posted a questionRead… Read more »
I recently answered a question that goes like this: In an IT organization that is structured to align with business modes and functions by silos; each silo with its own set of IT roles (PM’s, BA’s, Dev’s, and QA’s) how would Agile work on projects that span these siloed teams? When it comes to sprintsRead… Read more »
A classic post for me is titled“Silence — One of the Two Great Wastes™”. The article cites a few sources that conclude: “…that project deterioration was a function of not listening and not speaking. We named those behaviors the Two Great Wastes.” I love the term quoted in the post, “organizational silence” to describe whenRead… Read more »
I’m sure this isn’t scientific, but I came across this leadership style quiz and had a go: http://psychology.about.com/library/quiz/bl-leadershipquiz.htm My results: Your results indicate that your leadership style is predominately: Delegative Delegative Leadership Delegative leaders allow group members to make decisions. This style is best used in situations where the leader needs to rely on qualifiedRead… Read more »