Season's Greetings

From all at Maven Training - Happy Christmas!

Holidays - a time to read

Christmas is always a time for taking things easy and reading a good book and I have kicked off my holiday with a look at "Social Media for Project Managers" by Elizabeth Harrin.

Obviously I am a user of social media (otherwise I wouldn't be writing this blog) but I don't regard myself as an expert. Elizabeth's book is an easy to use guide, really well indexed so it's easy to jump to the bits you need. The concept of the book is how social media can be used as the mechanism of project communication and how this can strengthen relationships within the project team and with other stakeholders. The book has lots of examples and explanations from a range of experts which brings the subject alive and they are nicely spaced throughout the content.

For the projects I am currently working on, the chapter on the benefits of Wikis and how to set them up is very relevant and I have picked up some good tips on what steps to take. There is also some really useful guidance on security issues, and guarding the content of project documentation. Elizabeth makes the very valid point that security controls can be used to guard access to information, but that can also provide the structure for controlling information flow throughout the project.

What books are you reading this holiday season, and what are the key actions that you are going to take as a result? Let me know

Planning for 2011

This week I am preparing to go on holiday - 2 weeks on a beach in Thailand, so plenty of time to think about the future and plan the next steps for Maven. Like many senior managers I need to ensure I know three key pieces of operational information:
• What are all the initiatives that we have completed this year and what has been their effect? I need to know what capability we have now, what areas of the business we have improved, what areas we have strengthened. Knowing this enables me to eliminate them to an extent from next years’ plans, which for a company as ambitious as Maven is really important as we always have more ideas than we have resources for.
• What initiatives do we still have underway, how near to completion are they and how many resources are they using? This helps me understand our capacity for new ideas and hopefully stops me falling into the trap of trying to launch all of the new initiatives in January, overloading the business with change in February and driving everyone crazy by March!
• Finally I review our strategic goals and use these as the basis for identifying the key areas for development and improvement, and then I break these down again into outcomes (programmes) and outputs (projects). This analysis is undertaken with my management team and we run our own portfolio management workshop to identify as many ideas for the next year as possible. Some of the techniques that we use to plan the portfolio of all our projects and programmes are the same as the techniques we use for project management I.e. Product based planning, activity based planning, scheduling and resource smoothing. I will run this workshop before I go away and then I can review our plans and finesse the for early January.

Wish me luck and let me know what you are doing to plan your work for 2011.

No email? Fantastic!

I have just spent a day without access to email and I loved it!
This weekend the utility company cut off our office power supply for emergency works which meant our email server was shut down. I worked from home on Sunday designing a planning workshop for a client (that must be delivered before Christmas so it's fairly urgent). Normally when I am working I will periodically check my emails (maybe once an hour) but inevitably I read things that need to be actioned and so I am effectively changing from subject to subject, with only short bursts of time on any one issue. Without email I was amazed how enjoyable it was to lose myself in one subject, and how much more relaxing it was to fully engage with the task in hand and not try to ignore other issues and problems. Now that power is restored of course things are back to normal but I am going to try and turn my email off, block out several hours in my diary and really concentrate next time I have a complex task to do, because I want to retain this feeling of relaxed accomplishment. As project managers we are frequently praised for our ability to multiple-task, but perhaps we don't need to manage every task simultaneously, and a little bit more linear progression will speed up our progress through our To Do lists.

Let the Countdown Begin

I hate to mention it but there are now less than 4 working weeks to Christmas.... For me this means I am reviewing schedules, balancing priorities and clarifying which activities really will get done before the holidays and which ones we will have to push out into January. It's always difficult to move items into a whole new year because the perception that the projects are slipping is so much greater, rather than the reality of simply moving things a week or two.

Going through this process also helps us decide when the New Year really begins: as the first working week of January 2011 starts with a Bank Holiday, many suppliers are telling me that they do not come back to work until January 10th. This leaves 3 whole weeks of holiday time and I for one am taking advantage of it as it means fewer meetings and plenty of time to get the things done that I am too busy to sort out the rest of the year. It will allow time for a well earned holiday and to write my next book! I also hope to get the time to spend on my own development and read Elisabeth Harrin's new book: Social Media for Project Managers (and so pleased by her recent award http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2010/11/19/243977/The-IT-Blog-Awards-2010-winners.htm )

We also know from past experience how many of you struggle to fit your personal development into your schedule, so this year we're open as usual over the holiday season and we are offering courses in the weeks leading up to Christmas Eve and just after New Years day - so you can fit in a spot of professional me time along with your mince pies.

Tomorrow the countdown begins .... http://www.noradsanta.org/

PRINCE2 in Top 20 of IT Training Skills Watch

As a barometer of what's hot and what's not in IT, the IT Training Skills Watch table is based on what's flying off the bookshelves as the IT industry bring themselves up to speed with new products and services. Interestingly then, the positioing of PRINCE2 2009 at #12 amongst a list of technical titles could be a reflection that the method for delivering new technology is as critical as knowing the new technology..... you can read the full IITT article here

Assurance.... next on the agenda?

Has sponsorship or assurance grown in importance in your organisation? I ask because we're seeing a significant demand for sponsorship training from senior managers as their perception of the importance of project management grows. Up until a few months ago, training for members of the project board was organized by those managing the projects who felt that they were not getting the support they needed. Concerns by project managers included senior managers failing to keep up to date with the progress of the projects they are responsible for or not prepared to take the tough decisions during the life of the project as issues and risks demand attention.

Now we are seeing demand from managers who recognise that they must give their projects serious attention. The financial environment means that all organisations are keen to control expenditure. Projects are a source of discretionary spend and it seems senior managers have decided to find out how to get control and start governing this work.

In predicting trends in PPM the next logical step would be an increased interest in project assurance. After all, effective sponsorship means knowing if the project team are doing the right things in the right way, but few organisations have the funding for internal assurance services so, as the pressure increases to ensure project delivery is timely and appropriate, focusing on assurance would seem likely.

BTW, thanks to all who attended the briefing on Friday 12th - it was a great session! If you missed it, check out our new schedule and join us.