Over the last few months I have been dealing with issues on how to motivate staff and found this really interesting talk from TED by Dan Pink (who happens to be Al Gore’s speech writer). He touches on practices such as Result only Work Environments definitely food for thought.
Starting with a fact that social scientists know but most managers don’t: Traditional rewards aren’t always as effective as we think
Tim Brown is the current CEO of IDEO and the author of the book Change By Design which has helped deepen my understanding of the process of innovation. My Introduction to his thinking came from this presentation from MIT-World.
The three basic principles of Theory of Constraints (as outlined by Goldratt in The Goal), like may axioms they are really self evident although they are not backed up by reference-able evidence, this being said they are widely accepted.
Why would I use Critical Chain Project Management?
If you are currently experiencing projects having problems with schedule, budget and scope along with the common event of people over committing through their own acceptance or by the plans of the project manager. If so then it is definitely worth looking at adopting Critical Chain Project Management (CCPM) as a way to speed up the projects and the assure their success.
Having read “The Goal” by Eliyahu M. Goldratt some time ago after an introduction to the book by Andrew Byers. I have used the theory to look at process, projects and companies with results that have shown the validity of the theory.
The system also has parallels with the concept of flow expressed by the likes of Roger Hamilton and many other current business thinkers. TOC has a simple five step process for application.
Basic Risk Management is about understanding and managing the risks which exist in the project or operations you are monitoring and is outlined well in the quotation below.
“Risk management is the identification, assessment, and prioritization of risks followed by coordinated and economical application of resources to minimize, monitor, and control the probability and/or impact of unfortunate events. Risks can come from uncertainty in financial markets, project failures, legal liabilities, credit risk, accidents, natural causes and disasters as well as deliberate attacks from an adversary”
Risk Management is the focus on things that will change the outcome of the project (I will discuss this in the setting of Project Management). From a purist viewpoint these results can have a positive or negative outcome on the project, in most cases it is only the negative elements that people focus on.
I have used user stories for some time to develop products and am currently using this process in developing several products it is good to be able to outline the process quickly. To do this I use a simple construct and process to help to in-bed this practice. I will quickly go through this process.
One of the most discussed presentations at the IPMA World Congress 2008, this looks at the role of leadership in project management and the effect of the project manager on the morale of the project team. this video is courtesy of YoungCrew.de.
The Feasibility Study will help in the company understanding the projects viability by looking at several factors to gain a full picture of the project in the current environment. With this information an informed decision can be made on whether the project will go ahead or change in scope and time frame or be left until the situation changes.
Many Feasibility studies are based on TELOS which will cover most of the areas that are required to fully understand the projects viability.
Something I have been working on with people over the last few months is to begin to explain systems during software demos from the perspective of users, as opposed to just demonstrating functionality.
The problem with most software demos is that it shows functionality without showing the user the relevance of the system. The user often cannot attach or see the relevance of the functionality to their job or requirements.
In some way this is why I like the agile practice of user stores which create obvious ways to demo the software to the end user and the project team. In some environments where other forms of development or project management are used the user story is not available to help as a guide line for shaping the demonstration.
So let’s look at what we can do to solve this problem.
RT @ianburgess Facebook as a Collaborative Knowledge Management System http://bit.ly/c748hE #UOKM
@DiscoverTheKey love the new brand, good to see its all working for you coffee soon? Working on "Makeup of Consultancy Industry" for Edinburgh Uni MBA consultancy panel tomorrow.
