Making Programs Successful
We have been discussing factors that are critical to success in delivery. In my first blog in this series, “Project without a Deadline does not complete”; we looked at the importance of starting a project with a deadline in mind. The second blog, “Making Deadlines Effective” described how leaders need to navigate to ensure that […]
CHOW # 105 – Uncertainty to Certainty
You are a program manager with an IT Service Provider handling a project for a U.S. based client. The client uses three different telecom service providers and pays large bills every month – for a few hundred thousand calls that cost them millions of dollars. Your client negotiates customized tariff plans with each of the […]
Facing uncertainty
In one of my earlier blogs, I had written about some of the thoughts that plague a manager’s mind (refer https://pm-powerconsulting.com/blog/thoughts-plague-managers-mind/). Top of the list was about the ability to make commitments and deliver on them in the face of uncertainty. I thought I will delve into that challenge a bit more and see how […]
Handling Risk in the Digital Era
All of us work on projects of different types, size and shape. So, when someone says there’s a risk that we cannot complete this story in the current sprint – we look for alternatives. Can we break that story into two smaller slices? We then include the slice that is more important and we can […]
CHOW #65– Collaboration across teams – making SoS effective
Sunita looked anxious when she met me a couple of months ago. She has been a successful Scrum Master and enjoyed her work. Her team respected her and held her in high regard. She also had a good working relationship with the Product Management team and the functional managers of team members. Team members were […]
Being Mindful or being concerned- Part II
In Part I of this blog – I had looked at a possible way of construing the tango of being mindful and being concerned about risk. So, it seems like that the cocktail of being mindful and also being concerned about risk, appears explosive. So, is there a possibly different approach to being mindful and still […]
Risk Management: Good to Great – Part III Measures of effectiveness & project outcomes
Sometime in March 2016, we started with the first part (“Great Practices”) in the series Risk Management: Good to Great. In May 2016, we followed up with Part II of the series on Enablers for Great Practices. To refresh your memory, here is the context diagram from the earlier parts: In this post, we will […]
Being Mindful or being concerned about Risk
When we notice the literature and trends in management, there’s a huge shift towards mindful leadership. When you reach out to the millennial workforce, they more than the earlier generation, are looking for the leadership to be mindful. So what impact could it have on some areas like risk management? Is it going to be […]
The “Mirage of mitigation” in project management
As Project Managers, we sooner or later learn the significance of managing risks in a project. We get good at identifying risks that impact project goals and figuring out mitigation/contingency actions. We plan these mitigation actions diligently and make sure that those are done. However, sometimes, we fall into a trap that I call the […]
Common areas of Development for Project Managers
When we started on the journey of PM Competency Development using our ProMentor Framework, one of the inputs was the assessment of the individual. This was done based on formal inputs from their managers, using custom in-house instruments; as well as a self assessment. The self assessment would include a one-on-one interaction where we could […]
