Int. PM Day is November 7th. this year

As usual you get for free 4 hours seminar as a Webinar with live feed from International Experts in PM:

Register here (you can even earn 12 PDU or your PMI certification)

Enjoy!

Change Management - A Practical Guide

In a limited period you can get this Little Guide from PMI here.

News from the Risk Doctor - do we forget something important?

David Hillson points out that with Risk Management we are really only looking at the project's explicit risks while implicit risks concerning the decision-making BEHIND the project are completely overlooked. In other words, we look only at whether the project "is screwed firmly together" and not on whether it is "the right project" (in relation to strategy, needs, ideas or problems, etc.).

Read his newsletter here.

From where and to where?

Projects are temporary occurrences in systems with a past and a future. Therefore one of the best 'trick' I've learned in the understanding of an organization or an individual or in general any organic always asking about: "What's happened over the past 5-10 years?" And "Where are you in 5-10 years? ". It provides 100 times as good understanding that even the best analysis of the present situation.

Moreover it is also one of the techniques you need to learn if you want to become a better networker!

New category added: Networking Competences

Concentrate on the important stuff

As a rule of thumb expect that between 10% and 20% of the problems in a project are of technical / professional nature that requires technical / professional knowledge to be resolved.

Yet,9 out of 10 companies see it as important that their project managers have a technical / professional background! So they grab the best technical / professional to solve the 80% to 90% of the problems, which is about something completely different! Is that stupid or what?

More of the same issue here

You make your own fortune

"Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it." -Charles Swindoll

plus:

“If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.”

So maybe you should do something new in this week-end

It might be the most important week-end in the rest of your life...

Have an interesting week-end

You're still a clown at estimation....

... But it's not necessarily your fault. The main reason is surely that you work in an environment or a culture where expectations are that you are presenting low costs and potentially high income (or savings or whatever benefits might be). If (and I mean really if ..) you presented the truth, people would look at you like you were crazy and the proposed project would be immediately binned - or given to "a rmore easonable person".

That's the truth in the construction industry according to Prof. Bent Flybjerg that you can hear talk about the subject here on a visit to Harvard.

But you do not have to go to construction in order to find this pattern of deliberately manipulating the figures. It is found in all industries and also in yours and in your workplace. You will find managers who dare not show the director the real costs. Sales persons who will have orders for almost any price. HR people who dream wishful thinking on employees' potentials. Economy People who believe that SAP can save a decaying business etc.

They are all around you and you are never in doubt about the "right figures".

We should have a Whistleblower mailbox where we could drop our sincere estimates.