Author Archives: greg

#305 – WAITING TO RUSH IN PROJECT MANAGEMENT – MALCOLM PEART

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How often do we rush something only to wait for somebody else to finish their work, or make a decision, or even turn up to a meeting?  The military have a humoristic expression for this; ‘’hurry up and wait’’ which was spawned during WW2.  This is not only frustrating but an all too true sign of failing to plan and not preparing properly.  When we fail to plan we have, either deliberately or naively, planned to fail.  But why do some endeavors fail even when a ‘plan’ exists and we end up ‘’waiting to rush’’. Continue reading →

#305 – GO HARD AND GO EARLY! – ALLEN TAYLOR

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By any measure, the United States has not done well in the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic. Some of this is due to willful ignorance, the rejection of sound scientific evidence. Some is due to the independence-minded nature of American culture. Some is due to the lack of a coordinated national policy on how to deal with the situation. Each state, and even individual cities and towns are on their own in terms of what actions people should take. Voluntary compliance with policies such as mask-wearing and social distancing has been spotty to put it mildly. Continue reading →

#304 – GOLDILOCKS MANAGEMENT: GETTING THINGS ‘JUST RIGHT’ – MALCOLM PEART

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I was once taught that good project management and mitigating the risk of failure was a combination of Fayol’s three pillars of planning, organising and controlling glued together by effective communication and enclosed in a bubble of morale.  I was later to learn that that if one overindulges or ignores any one pillar, or fails to communicate effectively rather than just efficiently, the oftentimes thin bubble of morale may rupture.  The unfortunate result is the loss of management coherence and the real possibility of project failure. Continue reading →

#304 – CHANGE DRIVERS THAT WILL IMPACT WORK AND PROFESSIONS – HOWARD WIENER

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In my previous post, What’s Driving the Future of Work and Professions?, I mentioned PESTLE as a helpful framework for classifying external forces that act on all of us and the companies for which we work.  In this article, I present a list of them for you to consider.  It’s not encyclopedic, but it’s a good start.

As you do, ask yourself:

  • What was the old norm?
  • What is the new norm?
  • What does a person need to thrive in the new norm?

Continue reading →

#304 – PROJECT CHANGE CONTROL – JOHN AYERS

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How changes are controlled can be a risk to a project.  Changes can be non-disruptive or disruptive to a project.

An authorized change is not disruptive to a project. It is initiated by the customer and does not represent a risk because the contractor prepares and submits a proposal to incorporate the change into the baseline plan.  It is a contract change that comes with budget and schedule for the change.  Unauthorized changes constitute a risk to a project because they do not include a budget or schedule. They are disruptive to a project. The key to change control management risk reduction is to minimize the number of unauthorized changes. Continue reading →