Astrophysicist, Dr. Neil DeGrasse Tyson, shares insights on understanding and leading teams of highly creative professionals such as scientists, artists, and technology experts. Innovation today is becoming more technologically complex, multidisciplinary, and occurring at an increasingly fast pace. The quest for innovation requires project leaders to bring together teams of highly creative individuals with diverse…
Project and Portfolio Management at Adidas
Marc van der Heijden, Vice President of Global IT at Adidas, shares his insights on how Adidas, the global leader in the sporting goods industry, manages its IT project portfolio. Marc van der Heijden, Vice President of Global IT at Adidas, shares his insights on the challenges that organizations like Adidas face in managing their…
The Orange Revolution: How the best project managers build high performance teams
New York Times bestselling author and renowned leadership consultant Chester Elton shares insights from his book “The Orange Revolution” on how to build high-performance teams. In his book “the Orange Revolution”, New York Times bestselling author and renowned leadership consultant Chester Elton, and his co-author Adrian Gostick, provide a groundbreaking research that reveals that true…
Tailoring Agile Practices for Enterprise System Integration Projects – Part 3
In my previous post Agile Practices in Large System Integration Projects and in Part 1 & Part 2 of “Tailoring Agile Practices for Enterprise System Integration Projects” series, I identify a set of key Agile practices that offer the greatest value and recommend ways to tailor them for large enterprise system integration projects. Examples of…
Essential Leadership Skills for Global Project Managers – Part 1
Most training programs on leading global teams tend to emphasize unique aspects of each culture. By this I mean they train on what you can do and can’t do or how you can act within the boundaries of proper behaviors in a particular culture. This is useful to understand a culture but not sufficient to…
Do you love Excel and hate MS Project?
A reader on Linkedin asked: Is planning a project easier through Excel or through Project? I’m getting ready to take a class in Project 2010 and generally I’m more comfortable in Excel. Here is my response: (1) Is planning a project easier through Excel or through Project? When the schedule become too big (lots of…
The Mythical Project Manager: Part 2
In Part 1 of the “Mythical Project Manager” series, we discussed how today we find ourselves at a crossroad. Our organizations are demanding agility yet our traditional project management education is deeply rooted in the doctrine of “control”. Today, we already see a backlash against this traditional project management in areas such as software development….
The Mythical Project Manager: Part 1
Our project management “Education System” has created and still perpetuates the “Mythical Project Manager”. You know the one with the superpowers to control every aspect of the project and deliver every project successfully on budget, on scope, and on time every time. He (or she) is creative yet risk-averse, visionary yet operational, flexible yet structured….
Book Recommendation: Stepping into Project Management by Soma Bhattacharya
Transitioning to project management can be a challenging journey. Most of us begin our career as “Accidental Project Managers” with no formal experience, training, or guidance. However, the new job comes with a new set of challenging responsibilities, it requires a whole range of people skills, and presents us with a new type of complex…
The Care and Feeding of Business Analysts – A conversation with Vicki James
Vicki James, PMP, CBAP shares insights on how Project Managers can build stronger relationship with their business Analysts to more effectively leverage their talent and expertise for project success. Business Analysts play a critical role in the success of projects, especially in Information Technology. However, the stress of timelines and budget constraints coupled with a…
