Month: January 2010

Agile Project Management, Events, Leadership, Metrics, Teams

Are Your Metrics Dumb or Smart?

On February the 16th I will be presenting at the Calgary Software Quality Discussion Group. This was the first group I presented for when I moved to Calgary nearly 10 years ago and I am very happy to go back and talk about a topic I really care about: Project Metrics. I care not in the sense that I think they are fantastic, instead I care because I think the majority of common metrics are counter productive and misguided. Here’s the outline: Lessons Learned in Project Metrics – Are Your Metrics Dumb or Smart? Collecting and reporting effective metrics can be a tricky business. Einstein captured it well when he noted "Not everything that can be counted counts, and not […]

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Agile Project Management, Events, Leadership, Teams

Building Trust and Respect

I have just started my second season of mentoring for our local PMI chapter. This week’s launch workshop was facilitated by Right Management and they introduced a great model for building (and rebuilding) Trust and Respect that I would like to share. It was used to help explain how to build trust and respect with those we are mentoring, but it is a useful model that has much wider applications. Establishing trust and respect can build tremendous support for goals, and likewise losing trust and respect puts us back at the beginning in a relationship or even further behind and the process has to start again. I am sure we have all experienced it, I know I have. Trust is […]

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Uncategorized

PMI Agile Survey

It is time to tell the PMI what Agile project management resources they should be developing. Please take a moment to answer this 7 question survey and help direct the PMI in 2010. In 2009, the PMI Agile Community of Practice was launched to “equip PMI members with agile skills and knowledge”. To accomplish that goal, several services were offered to project managers of all walks interested in agile project management. All responses are anonymous, and all results will be publicly distributed. PMI Agile Survey

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Agile Project Management, Books, Estimating, Events, Games, Leadership, Metrics, Planning, Risk Management, Teams

Six Project Trends Every PM Should be Aware Of

As we start 2010, the second decade of the 21st century, project managers really should be embracing 21st century technologies and approaches. While developers and other project members have been benefiting from improved communication and collaboration via new technology in the last 10 years, project managers have been slower to adopt them. The plus side of being a late adopter is that most of the kinks get ironed out before you experience them and all the features you may need have probably already been developed. So, time to get with it. Perhaps it can be a New Year’s resolution to at least examine these tools and approaches if you are not already using them on your projects. The World Has […]

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