Leading Answers – Page 2 – Leadership and Agility Blog

November 26, 2025November 26, 2025Uncategorized

Confidently Wrong – Post 2

Confidently Wrong – Post 2 In the first post about my Global Summit session “Confidently Wrong: Avoiding GenAI Pitfalls with SME-First Thinking” we summarized how GenAI works and how its training influences the results returned. It focused on how Large Language Models (LLMs) are pattern matchers that return likely and plausible results, but do not truly understand project management. LLMs have been trained on vast datasets which make them great for suggesting project artifact templates, but usually poor at filling in the details for your unique project. Also, due to their training materials, they tend to suggest summarized content of popular ideas, unless specifically forced to think deeper and broader. Finally, while their outputs look plausible, we always need a […]

November 20, 2025November 20, 2025Uncategorized

PMI Global Summit 2025

Global Summit 2025 – Post 1 I had a great time last week at Global Summit. I did a presentation on using AI to augment team and SME knowledge rather than replace it. I co-presented on the evolution of the PMBOK Guide and agile integration from the 3rd to the 8th edition with Jonathan Lee and a guest appearance by Jesse Fewell. I also got to attend some great sessions and hang out with Agile Alliance board members (Bob Hartman, CP Richardson, Songbac Toh) at the Agile Arcade booth during breaks and lunches. This year, the sessions were not recorded, so I will highlight some of my points in a series of posts here. My talk was called “Confidently Wrong: […]

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 18, 2023September 27, 2025Events, Personal Agility, Teams, Travel

Agile Open Canada

I am excited to be attending Agile Open Canada in Banff this May. If you are free May 29 and 30, please come and join us! It is a great Open Space unconference that brings people together to share their latest ideas, challenges, lessons learned, and experiments around agile approaches. Hosted at the Banff Park Lodge and only $130 CDN for two days of events with food, drinks and optional activities. Why not stay a day or two longer? Late May / early June is a great time to visit Banff National Park. I hope to see you there. Full details here.

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 […]