Agile Project Management – Leading Answers

April 26, 2025September 30, 2025Agile Project Management, Planning, Tailoring Approaches, Warning Signs

Hold Your Horses: PREPARE for Responsible AI Use in Project Management

Artificial intelligence promises to revolutionize project management; it can assist with data analysis, automate routine tasks, and predict project trends. However, as a veteran project manager (read “slightly skeptical older person”), I am concerned AI will cause a tsunami of project failures before improving the state of the practice. People tend to be lazy, and a fool with a tool is still a fool. Worse yet, a fool with a tool that produces well-written, convincing project deliverables is a very dangerous fool. Attempting to Solve the Wrong ProblemProducing project charters faster (or communications plans, risk management plans, etc.) is not the right goal. Project management does not have a typing speed problem. Unfortunately, AI vendors and people looking to implement […]

September 11, 2024October 3, 2026Agile Project Management, Books, Events, Travel

Learn to Surf: Riding the Waves of Change Impacting Project Management

As a kid, I grew up in Cornwall, UK surfing the cold Atlantic coast beaches of Newquay and Porthtowan. Next week I am excited to be in Los Angeles presenting on waves of change and hybrid approaches. This talk is particularly poignant since it will be 20 years since I gave my first PMI Global presentation on hybrid techniques, which was also in Los Angeles (Link). It’s like coming full circle from talking about something new to returning to see it mainstream. Of course, it was not really new in 2004. People have been combining agile concepts with more plan-driven approaches for much longer. Tom Gilb was doing this in the 1980s. In 2000, I helped co-author what I think […]

March 28, 2024October 3, 2026Agile Project Management, Emotional Intelligence, Leadership, Teams, Warning Signs

People Problems: Dealing with Dark Triad Traits

Most of us will experience challenging and downright toxic people at some point in our careers. If you ever have, then you can probably see, in retrospect, how much those individuals differed from ordinary people. Yet, at the time, their impacts may have seemed so upsetting and jarring that it is quite common to question whether we had it wrong or contributed in some way toward the situation. So, having some strategies for dealing with these people can save your sanity and provide pathways through the issues while also protecting others. Fortunately, truly toxic people are few and far between. Most people we deal with are generally helpful or at least neutral. Occasionally, we encounter people with challenging personalities: people […]

December 15, 2023October 3, 2026Agile Project Management, Events, Travel

3 Themes Shaping Tomorrow’s Project Environment

PMI had a reputation for being conservative and slow to adopt new ideas or technology (it was slow to embrace agility, for instance). So, I was pleased to see three progressive themes dominating the sessions at the recent PMI Global Summit in Atlanta, Georgia. Theme 1: Putting Artificial Intelligence to WorkGoing into the conference, I knew artificial intelligence would be a pervasive topic. There were great AI presentations and AI-powered tools being demoed in the exhibit area, and some impressive announcements from PMI: The "Generative AI Overview for Project Managers" course had more than 66,000 signups in the first few weeks of being offered—and saw an impressive 2,850 additional ones at the conference alone. PMI launched its own "Project Infinity" […]

October 13, 2023October 3, 2026Agile Project Management, Events, Tailoring Approaches, Travel

Is the Agile Movement at an Inflection Point?

Inflection Point – a critical change in direction. Yesterday, a couple of data points crossed my desk that got me wondering if the Agile movement has succeeded and will now be absorbed into the mainstream. First, Jurgen Appelo posted about how the Agile Movement is Shrinking, but the Agile Mindset is Growing. He explained that some Agile conference attendance numbers are shrinking while business change is accelerating, and the most sought-after skills are collaboration and agility. An alternative explanation is that people do not go to in-person conferences as much anymore. COVID taught us that remote is possible. Anyone who tried to get Taylor Swift tickets knows in-person can be expensive, and maybe on video is the next best thing. […]

August 9, 2023October 3, 2026Agile Project Management, Books, Planning, Tailoring Approaches, Teams, Visual Learning

Suitability Filters – Team Discussion Tools

Suitability filters are models that offer simplified views of a decision-making process. They help people identify and discuss the variables at play and make a recommendation. The British statistician George Box said it best “All models are wrong, but some models are useful.” A good model provides insights, usually a basic view of how something works or the interactions between variables. From this perspective, models are interesting and can speed up our comprehension of something. However, the greatest benefit of models is as a group alignment tool. Visual Models Create Group Consensus Much of today’s work is knowledge work. Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) contribute their expertise and collaborate to solve problems or build new products and services. This work […]

April 14, 2023September 27, 2025Agile Project Management, Books, Exceptions, Leadership, Planning, Risk Management, Tailoring Approaches, Theory of Constraints, Warning Signs

Definition of Broken (DoB): A Tool for Improving Communications and Outcomes

Communicating project issues is challenging. Exactly when should we escalate? Who to, and how much of a chance to correct things should be given first? This is why some projects create control limits around critical parameters and develop escalation plans to communicate exceptions and agree on the next steps. However, on most small to medium size projects, these escalation plans are often missing or left to the project manager's discretion. This creates further problems if the response is too late, not far-reaching enough, or not aligned with sponsor expectations. Also, what are the expectations for communicating delays, risks and issues at the team level? Do we want to hear when something takes a couple of hours longer than planned (probably […]

January 26, 2023September 27, 2025Agile Project Management, Books

PM Illustrated Audio/Video Book Now Available

I'm excited to announce that the new PM Illustrated Audio/Video Book is now available! It's an excellent resource for visual learners studying for the PMP exam who would rather watch and listen to content rather than read it. It was a pleasure to partner with Barb Waters on this initiative. Her narration is excellent, and she brings the PM Illustrated book content to life. If you are a visual learner preparing for your PMP exam or know someone who might benefit from this different learning mode, please head to PMillustrated.com to check it out. There is also a free sample with three videos and >30 minutes of content to get a feel for the format and content before buying. Project […]

September 27, 2022October 3, 2026Agile Project Management, Books, Events, Leadership, Tailoring Approaches

Beyond Agile presentation this Friday

On Friday, September 30, I will be presenting a session on Beyond Agile at the HTEC Project Management Virtual Conference. The session is free to attend and is part of a program that also features Scott Ambler, Sanjiv Augustine, Nader Rad, and Frank Turley. You can register here. “Yes, And, And” A colleague recently described Beyond Agile as a “Yes, And, And” toolkit, and I thought it was a great way to summarize the two elements of combining hybrid agile with the Theory of Constraints, and value stream view. “Yes, And” “Yes, And” is a term from improv comedy that refers to the idea of not undermining what has come before and adding valuable new elements. For example, we can […]

June 22, 2022October 3, 2026Agile Project Management, Books, Emotional Intelligence, Leadership, Tailoring Approaches, Teams

From Servant Leadership to Shared Leadership

This is part one in a series on leading agile teams from the Beyond Agile book. We will examine what leadership entails and how it applies to agile teams. Then discuss the transition from servant leadership to shared leadership. EQ as a Foundation for Leadership As we saw in the previous articles about Emotional Intelligence (EQ), leadership is built on top of EQ. We need good EQ to be able to recognize and manage our own emotions. This is a prerequisite for others to consider us credible and worth listening to. So, a firm grasp of EQ, either gained intuitively or improved through study/training, brings us to the starting line with engaged stakeholders. Then leadership involves bringing this collective […]