Tagged: Project Management

Recently, I have become hooked on the latest season of Donald Trump’s popular show on NBC, “The Celebrity Apprentice.” It paints project management in a whole new way, bringing laughs through an interesting form of entertainment. Many of these celebrities have no idea what it takes to be a project manager, and to be a good one at that. Watching Tom Green and Dennis Rodman operate as Project Managers is certainly interesting.

Tackling a challenge, brainstorming with your team members, creating project plans, and tasking jobs according to team players’ skills and strengths is an art. Some celebrities on the show have learned this and have a new appreciation for the hard work and effort that is required in the project management field. Thinking fast on your feet and prioritizing issues are pertinent skills for turning out success.

The level of success is dictated by team cooperation and perseverance. Without this kind of coordination, it would be difficult for any team to succeed or accomplish their goal.

Although this reality show is fun to watch as you wait to see who will be fired next, it brings to light items of project management which many people may not typically recognize.

Below is a list of my Top 6 skills that I think a PM must embody:

1. Be organized: A PM can never be too organized and prepared.

2. Be personable: A PM who is enjoyable to work with allows the team to cooperate and band together to accomplish goals and create the best work possible.

3. Be dependable: Dependability and project management go hand in hand.

4. Be a team player: A PM must appropriately cooperate and coordinate with each team member.

5. Be focused: A PM can never lose sight of the project’s objectives. Direct and coordinate the activities to achieve these goals and quickly pull activities back on track as interruptions or unforeseen events arise.

6. Be passionate: You must be zealous and excited about the work you do. When you get down to it, you must enjoy going to work every day and doing what you do.

Getting back to “The Celebrity Apprentice,” we see that Dennis Rodman finally gets the boot. Besides from other behavioral tendencies which caused Trump to point his finger, Dennis is fired because he doesn’t take on the real PM role to appropriately delegate and work cooperatively with his team.

It’s really quite sad to see these ‘accomplished’ people fall apart, especially Rodman’s escaping into drink, because they fail to lead effectively. Recognizing whether people have ‘the right stuff’ to do the job is another trait of a good manager.

By watching this show and observing how team members fare each week, I have realized how much project managers must coordinate every day and in all types of industries. I strongly suggest that you check out this entertaining spin on project management sometime.

Pavel’s recent blog entry inspired me to think about my typical work day. So recently I counted the number of times someone stopped by my desk, an instant message (IM) appeared on my screen, my work phone rang, my mobile rang or a text message appeared on my mobile.  17. And I’m not including the 100s of emails and the meeting intensive culture that most of us work in. I like to refer to this as “the interrupted work day.”

Interruptions can be Productive or Unproductive
Interruptions can be good and often are a necessary way to accomplish assignments. I find that short discussions (IM or an ad hoc visit) can easily resolve an issue or clarify a question. Also if the interruption is related to a current task, it can be beneficial and may inspire positive outcomes for the task or surface uncovered concerns (which is a good thing).

However, I found that if I’m working on a task that will take hours or days to complete, the interruptions often disrupt my path to completion and sometimes the task can take twice as long or I’ll end up working on them on my own time - not a good thing.

Suggestions to stay Productive
1. Block time on your calendar: Blocking time on your schedule will allow you the time to do work and it will prevent meetings from being scheduled.

2. Change your work hours: Arrive to work before everyone else arrives or stay after everyone else has gone home. Another suggestion is to work a Sunday through Thursday schedule. Where Sunday is a day to complete those those time demanding tasks.

3. One and done: With high expectations on response time, it’s difficult to keep up with the barrage of emails, IMs, meetings etc. Scanning emails and then returning to them later can be an inefficient way to work. I believe subscribing to a “read the item once and then take action (or not)” philosophy will help you stay productive. Of course everything can’t be managed with this suggestion but returning to and rehashing issues that can be resolved quickly can be time consuming.

4. Change your work environment: Find a conference room to do your work, close your office door or work from home. These recommendations will allow you to avoid some of the typical interruptions.

5. Turn it off: Turn off those applications (IM, email etc), ringers, or those application alerts/reminders that distract or disrupt your workflow.

So in writing this blog entry I counted 2 IM conversations, 2 unplanned meetings and 1 call to my wife. 5.

As a project manager I don’t have a lot of time. That’s not to say that our designers or developers are brimming with free time, but we “PMs” like to get as much to fit into one day as possible. We crave efficiency. We bow to to the goddess Process (from the Latin processus “process, advance, progress” and procedere “go forward”). So if you want to make your PM, or otherwise details-at-a-glance type friend, a happy camper, here are some quick tips and tricks I picked up in my previous world of public relations:

Email Optimization

1. In Outlook, turn on color rules (eg. Blue for “sent only to me”). It makes choosing which email to read first a lot easier.
2. Proceed to send email “To” the person who should respond and Cc: all others. (more…)