Posts Tagged ‘Give’

It’s been several years (not to mention a few extra inches around my waist) since I last strapped on a harness and did any rock climbing. I think it must have been Raechel’s post (First Steps and Conquering Daunting Tasks) that made me think about some of those experiences over the weekend. Whenever we would face a new wall, it seemed that there were two types of climbers: those who wanted all the "beta" (information) about the particular climb, and those who wanted to face the challenge cold.

It probably says something about me that I always wanted as much "beta" as I could get. I watched everyone that went up the wall before me, I asked lots of questions once they came down off the wall, and I asked even more questions as I went up the wall. Needless to say, although rock climbing was challenging and fun, I was never a real "hard-core" climber. I always liked knowing what I was in for before I started the climb and although I was never opposed to trying something new, where life or limb was concerned, I was never interested in climbing something that appeared too difficult for me to safely finish.

Over the years I have found that I am always willing to tackle new experiences and learn new things, however I still want as much "beta" as I can get. I read, study, watch, and try to learn as much as I can about any new challenge—whether it’s a personal challenge or a new professional project. Sir Francis Bacon said, "Knowledge is power." I tend to agree.

As more and more organizations turn to project-based work to increase efficiency and reduce costs, work management methodologies that make it easy for information to flow throughout the organization contribute to greater project success. Processes or tools that inhibit the free flow of project information up and down the org chart add another level of difficulty to project communication, collaboration, and ultimately project success.

What do you do to ensure that "beta" flows freely in your project environments?

Strategic Project Management

Project Management – You Give Me The Feature Creeps

The caliber of the project management you have incorporated into your job or department can mean the difference between making it and roaring in a very no holds barred industry that you serve. It’s very crucial to understand the evolution of a project management lifecycle and avoid skirting or skipping important upfront issues from the outset.

It’s also very important to understand the concept of not over analysing a problem or being paralysed to a point where further action is not being fulfilled. A dreadful opponent to you in this case would be “Feature Creep” where individuals from the department keep changing their minds on requirements or have new ideas on better ones.

Beware of feature creep as it will rear it’s ugly head at every step of every stage you come across of your project. Things such as that, as well as losing focus on the core objectives will typically result in project failure because a core part or stage of the project is not able to move forward.

Leadership in this examples is utterly critical in order to prevent mischances, and total project disasters from happening. These usually are not only a waste of time, resources, but a major drain on employee morale and faith in the leadership of the business.

It’s vitally important to formulate a communication strategy before the project begins. Make sure to sit down with the clients and constituencies during a set schedule and with set goals as well as a decided upon methodology to capture and organize requirements from everyone who has a stake in the project you are working on. Otherwise they will call you up every five minutes and give you new requirements or ask you to change existing ones.

Needless to say, this is not a very productive use of your time nor is it of theirs. A solid big picture perspective of all the project needs has to be looked at before moving forward with the actual implementation. This due diligence will take up a bit more time in the beginning but will save lots of time, money, headaches, and potentially broken relationships down the line.

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