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Showing posts with the label stakeholder management

Under Promise and Over Deliver vs Over Promise and Under Deliver

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Which one is best?  As Harry Hill would say "There is only one way to find out......Fight!"  Under Promise and Over Deliver My initial reaction when I write this is the first, it feels like expectation management 101, by setting a position to stakeholders that you will complete a project on day X knowing that you have some time in the bag or at budget Y with again some financial room to maneuver you are able to delight the sponsor. Right? On the face of it, it seems that this is logical, but there is a little niggle in the back of my mind saying caution.  Whilst done with the right intentions in mind could this backfire?   What if the organisation has limited funds to complete projects?  Your additional budget wriggle room you have created that you think you won't need means that another critical project is not initiated, or worse cancelled partway through with already sunk costs.  Or your safe date means that another project dependent on your

Project Managers - What do you do all day?

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How often do you get a question like that from a friend or a family member, "What is it you do again?" or " What do you do when you go to work daddy?".  If you say "I am a project manager" these days it will fill their heads with visions of The Apprentice TV Show candidates shouting "I am the PM do as I say!", or a man in a hard hat talking to Kevin McCloud on Grand Designs about something is late. I do not have a solution to this dilemma and there are probably a hundred blog posts talks about how to talk to people about being a Project Manager. A quick google for " explaining what a project manager does" presents details of roles and responsibilities not what happens. What I have got is something, whilst dramatised is a little insight into a possible day of a project manager. Last night I watch the film called Locke starring Tom Hardy, now I don't want to give away the plot as you may want to watch it, and I do recommend watch