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March 7, 2014 by abevitts

Essential Project Manager: Practical Skills for Getting Things Done

Essential Project Manager Model

Essential Project Manager Model

Essential Project Manager: Practical Skills for Getting Things Done

Course Length: 1 or 2 day

PDUs: 7 or 14

Prerequisites: None

Advanced Preparation: None

Course Fee: TBD

Course Hours: 8:30AM – 4:15PM

Essential Project Manager: Practical Skills for Getting Things Done  simplifies complex concepts concerning projects.  People tend to complicate things.  Projects are no exception.  We will learn a straight forward philosophy of how to manage projects successfully, large and small.

This model of success is based on 3 essential qualities that all successful project managers embody: leadership, effective communications and implementation of appropriate structure to the project.

Leadership, Communications and Structure are the triad of success for project managers and Essential Project Manager: Practical Skills for Getting Things Done shows the student how to develop these qualities and how to use them in their professional lives.

Workshop Objectives:

  • Understand how to simplify the complexity of communications within a group
  • Understand how project managers are leaders
  • Identify leadership qualities and how to maintain them
  • Build leadership tactics that are useful in projects
  • Understand communication in projects
  • Develop interpersonal communications tactics
  • Build successful communications with virtual and cross-cultural teams
  • Understand deliverables in terms of communication of completed requirements
  • Embrace the concept of C3: Clear, Concise and Complete
  • Evaluate the structure inherent in an organization
  • Understand how specific project structure affects project success
  • Implement the appropriate structure for the project to meet the needs of the organization and drive the project to success
  • Learn to integrate your leadership and communication skills to drive a project to success.

 

Filed Under: Blogs, For Display Tagged With: communications, leadership, management, PMI, PMP, project, Project Management, project managers, skills

October 18, 2012 by AllenEvitts

Project Manager: bureaucrat or innovator?

3D People Team Concept

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Are you a bureaucrat, or an innovator?  Do you defend and maintain the status quo or lead groups into change?

Professional project management is in crisis.

I hear you what you’re thinking. “YOU’RE CRAZY!”  I know.  I know that the profession is growing and that standards are becoming the norm in companies. I know that project management has visibility if not respect across the world.  I know that major colleges are offering degrees in project management.  So what am I talking about?  What is this crisis?

Project managers are mainstreamed into companies now.  In most Fortune 500 companies “project manager” is a job title, not simply a description of a role.  Is this good?  You may say, “Heck yes.  We’ve been fighting for recognition and position for 30 years!”  Okay.  We have fought to be respected for the value we bring organizations.  But, what exactly do we have now?  Have we traded too much for respect?  For value?

Being a project manager is a step on the corporate ladder.  It’s not at the top.  It’s not at the bottom.   But, project managers are in the game.   Where is the project manager in corporate hierarchies? Project managers hold a middle position.  Project managers are now middle managers in companies.  And, they can rise only so far before these talented project managers hit a ceiling.

The profession of project manager is limited to the middle zone on the corporate structure.   Project managers contractors are brought in to fill a void in managing projects, because companies can’t keep talented people in the middle level management positions indefinitely.  In structuring this talent pool of middle managers and contractors, companies now structure the processes around project management more and more.  They use a model such as Project Management Institute’s (PMI) Book of Knowledge (PMBoK).  This model is a valid set of processes, tools and techniques that add structure to projects, but instituted into corporate structure that are already tend to bulge with middle management, this model breeds bureaucracies.

Project managers are becoming bureaucrats. We (because I am one) serve the corporate governance board more than our project teams.  This is not why I became a project manager.

When I started managing projects I was someone who could “get things done”.  I used a natural gift and experiences in life to lead successful projects.  I studied “classic” project management methodology as I worked and used what fit, discarded what didn’t.  I had a fairly typical experience for a 50 year old in this profession.

Getting projects delivered on time, on budget and with high quality was all that mattered.  Documentation mattered, but there was less CYA and more PTM (Product to Market).

By the way, aren’t projects about creating something that hasn’t been done before?  A new product?  A new application?  A new release?  A new building?  Right?  We aren’t managing the re-creation of a past innovative act.  We are leading a team of innovators;  This is what project management is all about.   The changes may be small, but the projects produce something unique, something new.

I went to my local PMI chapter meeting and the presentation was advocating getting leadership into project management.  My question is,  “where did it go?”  I think leadership is essential to project management, not an optional feature.  Leadership to innovation…by definition.

Project management is in crisis.  What will drive?  Who will we be?  In the next 20 years, will project managers be the agents of change?  Or will they represent the status quo?   The first step is to answer this question…Are you a bureaucrat?  or an innovator?

Filed Under: Blogs, For Display Tagged With: communications, leadership, management, PMI, PMP, project, Project Management, project managers, skills

April 18, 2012 by AllenEvitts

Projects as Instruments of Change

“People hate change . . .And that’s because people hate change. . . .I want to be sure that you get my point.  People really hate change.  They really, really do.”

—Steve McMenamin, The Atlantic Systems Guild, London (1996)

So, do you agree?  Do people hate change?  Change is all around us.  Here in the spring, we literally see it every day.  And we hear and read the sermons on change every time we look at a Social Media article or Blog or Tweet.

We have saying like, “The only sure thing is death and taxes.”  We look in the mirror and then at an old picture; we regrettably know for sure that change exists.

But, we indeed hate change.  We rely on sameness and predictability of our environment and the people we work with to keep us productive and sane.  And then…things change.  We hate it.

So, what is a project manager to do?  Projects are vehicles of change and project manager the skippers of these ships.  What are we to do?

Embrace change as a reality and deal with the issue of change aversion in everyone.  Do you agree?  I think this is a profound realization.

Your thought and ideas are welcome.  Am I wrong?

Filed Under: Blogs Tagged With: change management, Communicate, communications, leadership, management, PMI, PMP, project, Project Management, project managers, skills

T & D

Training and Development Professionals

Project Management

  • Do you need all your project managers certified?
  • Is your company seeing one failed project after another?
  • Are you building a Project Management Office (PMO)?
  • Need specialized training in project managment?  Communications?
  • Do you need a mentor for the PMO?
  • Do you need better initiation of projects so the project teams have clear marching order?

Professional Development

  • Are your employees using their available allowance for personal and professional development?
  • Do you need your current training curriculum converted into ELearning courses?
  • Are your presentations dull and boring?
  • Do your executives need public speaking coaching?
  • Are you meeting too much, wasting valuable time and not getting results?
  • Are you procurement efforts helping the company?
  • Do you need better decision making?

We can help.

Introducing AB Evitts and Associates: Educational Services.  We are branded as Essential Project Manager for our work with Project Managers and project organizations.

Our company is a new option for building skills and developing success with individuals and projects.  We can show a return on investment (ROI) for training and development efforts.

Contact us and let us be a resource for your success.

 

One Page Project Plan

Course Length: 1 or 2 day

PDUs: 7 or 14

Prerequisites: None

Advanced Preparation: None

Course Fee:

Course Hours: 8:30AM – 4:15PM

In One Page Project Plan we learn that putting the entire project into one page focuses the project management process and your energy.  Project management identifies the who, what, when, where, how, how much and why for each project.  In One Page Project Plan we customize a view of your project.  This serves to making the project successful.  You can see schedule, milestones, issues, risks, key resources, stakeholder, budget status and more on one page.  This is more than simply a dashboard; One Page Project Plan shows you how to successfully manage the project with a dynamic one page view.

Workshop Objectives:

  • Build a project plan from a blank sheet of paper
  • Review the major components of project planning
  • Discover 10 reasons that projects fail
  • Learn the 5 critical pieces of information to include in all project plans
  • Discover what isn’t needed to manage a project
  • Develop the steps needed to create a One Page Project Plan
  • Develop a format that works for you to display the planning components clearly and concisely
  • Learn to communicate information to stakeholders and project teams with a single sheet of paper
  • Learn how to champion the concept of the One Page Project Plan and gain acceptance
  • Develop a process for building a successful project plan, no template needed.

 

Skills Archives

  • 3 Rules for the Work Breakdown Structure
  • Allen Evitts Response to Key Requirements for Training Position
  • Essential Project Manager: Practical Skills for Getting Things Done
  • Project Manager: bureaucrat or innovator?
  • What is a Project?

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