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Showing posts with the label projects

Dr David Hillson, The Risk Doctor

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In this episode, I have a chat with Dr David Hillson, The Risk Doctor. David is an international thought-leader in risk management, with a global reputation as an excellent speaker and award-winning author. Countless individuals, teams and organisations have benefited from his blend of innovative insights with practical application, presented in an accessible style that combines clarity with humour.  He also shares his insights regularly through books, papers and articles, as well as the regular series of Risk Doctor Briefings. David’s speaking and writing is guided by the Risk Doctor motto: “Understand profoundly so you can explain simply. To listen to the podcast click below (or one of the links at the bottom of this post) For more information about David take a look at the following links: Website: www.risk-doctor.com Email: contact@risk-doctor.com YouTube: www.youtube.com/user/RiskDoctorVideo Thanks to David for a brilliant interview, until next time r

How to be the worst project manager on the planet

I have done all of these in one form or another. Not proud but understand why I have done.How many have you done. How to Be the Worst Project Manager on the Planet: 11 Habits to Stop Now!

Email Tip 3: Do not use the reply all option

Here's the logic,  We all get too many emails! We all send too many emails! We all speak of email as we do about traffic when we are stuck in it! What do I mean? Well when we are in a traffic jam we refer to the traffic being bad as if we are not part of it , but actually we are part of that collective term of traffic, if we were not there ourselves there would be less traffic.  The same can be said for email, if we sent one less email there would be less "traffic" for the recipient. So what's the suggestion? If every email we receive, that we need to reply on, we look at the recipients and the people copied on it and assess whether they need to be copied on our reply. Sometimes people are included by the originator to show that they are doing something, so once copied the goal is accomplished and the copied recipient does not need to see the rest of the conversation because they know the conversation is going on. There is a feeling sometimes that we h

Project Management Resources

I have created a new page on the blog which will list resources for all project managers, be they new to it or experienced. The links are to things that I have benefited from and hope you do too.  If by doing so I help one PM find something that will make the next stakeholder meeting a little less tense or the words for the next project update simpler then I am happy. I will add to this list over time but if you have a recommendation just add a comment to this post or drop me a mail. Here is the link http://thesundaylunchproject.blogspot.com/p/other-project-management-sitesblogs.html All the best and I hope you find it useful.

Post Project Blues

This year I have been embarking on a new project which involved a vegetable garden including varying attempts, some successful, some not so.  A couple of weeks ago I looked over my garden and realised a that it was all coming to an end, tomatoes plants wilting, last or the runner beans and no more peas, boo hoo! As I looked at what was a fairly pathetic vision I felt a real pang of sadness and this reminded me that this feeling was similar to that which you get at the end of a project following the weeks, and sometimes months of furore leading up to the big release date or grand opening, the daily prayers, amazingly innovative solutioneering, the cry of "We did not know we needed that!", patiently explaining to your sponsor that more scope means more cost and delay and of course more pizza that you shake a stick at. Then you sit there at your PC at 5pm, your inbox is empty except for a couple of group HR emails, you have the minutes from the post project evaluation report

This email is important........but to whom

I had a long day yesterday and little access to my email, so while watching Jamie does...... I checked my mail and I found a number of emails which were marked as important so naturally had a look at those first.  To my surprise one of the mails was a list of training courses available for the coming month and my first reaction was "Why has this person marked this as important, it's not important to me." and following on from this I have been thinking about relative importance of emails. I do not, as a matter of course, use the important button unless I am sending something to my team that I want them look at quickly.  As I do not do it often the impact appears to be OK because they check the mails I send them pretty quickly anyway but this extra emphasis gets the results. When sending an email to someone who is not in my team I very, very, rarely use the important button because important is a subjective assessment.  Things that I consider important in my role may be

Wow Someone is reading this

Just got an email from a company in the states saying they are liking my work on the blog and want to contribute and give me some of their products for free to use or offer as a prize. Got no idea whether I think this is a good idea or not, on the one hand it means I will get some more content for the site, but in the other hand I need to be to sure that the content is aligned with values of the Sunday Lunch Project. I will have a chat with the guy who runs the firm but I am quite shocked considering I have little content on the site for the the past few weeks. I have tweaked the first paragraph of the book and developed a few more of the plot ideas, characters and twists. It's gonna take time but I am determined to finish this one.