Gero Lomnitz has an oft-copied saying, “show me how your project starts and I can tell you how it will finish”. Usually, the painful projects start out badly and never really recover, despite our best efforts. We seem to be playing catch-up. Here are five things to sort out before you start your next project… Continue Reading
Category Archives: project management
Building the team that built “Watson”
When I was an undergraduate, artificial intelligence seemed to be a discipline long on promise and short on results. (Everthing was about “10 years away”, even 20 years later, it was still “10 years away”.) Therefore, I was pleasantly impressed when IBM’s Watson machine won an episode of the US quiz show Jeopardy in early… Continue Reading
Projects between a Rock and a Hard Place
Project Managers face dilemmas every day; it comes with the job. Project management has developed as a discipline to help managers deal with their dilemmas. The basic one is how to reconcile the sponsor’s demands for efficiency with the end-users’ quality needs. This has always been so, probably ever since the pyramids were built. However,… Continue Reading
Projects as Cultural Experiences: interPM 2009 video
Link: Projects have their own rhythm. The classical instruments of project management only take you so far. Last year, the interPM conference focused on the role that culture plays in shaping a project’s rhythm. The GPM (German Project Management Association) has just released a video of the conference, Projekte als Kulturerlebnis (Projects as Cultural Experiences).… Continue Reading
InterPM 2009 – Still time to register!
The InterPM conference on the future of project management will be held on 19-20 June 2009 in Glashütten, near Frankfurt, with the them “Projects as a Cultural Experience”. The event is a nice mix of key note addresses, some talks and workshops and a large portion of Open Space where participants get to explore whatever… Continue Reading
InterPM 2009
The InterPM conference on the future of project management will be held on 19-20 June 2009 in Glashütten, near Frankfurt, with the them “Projects as a Cultural Experience”. The event is a nice mix of key note addresses, some talks and workshops and a large portion of Open Space where participants get to explore whatever… Continue Reading
InterPM 2008
The dust has settled on this year’s InterPM conference on Innovation through Project Management, where Klaus Wagenhals and I (representing metisLeadership) held the Open Space at the conference. We also facilitated an interdisciplinary warm-up workshop in which participants experienced the different perspectives on innovation that different professions hold. Of 80 participants, only four had a… Continue Reading
Business Forum
I attended the 3rd Business Forum for small and medium-sized enterprises on Thursday in Baden-Baden. (Nice to have a short trip for a change!) I applaud the organisers for developing this conference in what has been a pretty dull economic climate in Germany over the past few years. The conference ran under the motto “A… Continue Reading