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| October/November 2006, Issue 87, Judy Umlas and Frank P. Saladis, Co-Publishers |
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In this Issue:
*allPM Co-publisher's Letter, Judy Umlas
*From the Co-publisher's Desk, Frank Saladis, PMP
*allPM September Poll Results
*Theme of the Month: Virtual Teams —
Making Your Virtual Team Really Hum
By George Pitagorsky, PMP
*Successful Motivational Techniques for Virtual Teams By Ginger Levin, DPA, PMP and Parviz F. Rad, Ph.D., PMP
*Cleaning the Lamp Post
By Laura B. Moore, PMP
*Positive Leadership in Project Management — Leadership Lessons Learned
By Frank P. Saladis, PMP
*Positive Workplace: Enhancing Individual & Team Productivity By Jocelyn S. Davis and John H. Cable, RA, PMP
*It's Leaders That Make the Decisions In Projects By John C. Goodpasture PMP
*Encouraging Team Involvement by Dr David Hillson PMP FAPM
*Project Management Poetry Contest Winner - Samuel Udoka 
*PM Crossword Connections™: Virtually Connected — Of and About Virtual Teams
By Frank Saladis, PMP
Past Issues- Archives
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From the Co-publisher's Desk— Judy Umlas
Hello, my dear friends and colleagues. The big news this month (at least for me) is that I’m back in the Co-Publisher role! Bill Sand did a great job managing everything while I was finishing up a big project, and now that it is done, I’m able to pick up the reins again. And I resume my duties just after a very auspicious day – November 2, 2006, or International Project Management Day – a concept created by our own Co-Publisher, Frank P. Saladis, PMP. So following this day of recognition for all of you out there, let Frank and me add our personal acknowledgments to every one of you for the critically important role that you play in project management and through it, for the positive impact you have on businesses, on projects of every size and cost, on people. Frank and I both send you our best wishes and acknowledgment every day of the year, but we hope you got as well as gave some special recognition on November 2, 2006.
Interestingly, the “project” I have just completed is getting a book called The Power of Acknowledgment published. There are many personal and professional anecdotes in the book, that hopefully help make the point that if we all acknowledge the people around us, from a co-worker, to our son or daughter, to the kid that bags our groceries at hyper speed in the supermarket, the world will be a much better and happier place to inhabit. And this is a bit of a “tease,” but I have a story about the members of allPM.com on page 63! Anyway, our publicists are humbly saying that “this book is a 45-minute read that will change your life and the life of everyone around you.” So far, the feedback is leading me to think this isn’t too much of an exaggeration. Anyway, allPM.com members can get a 20% discount on the book by going to www.iil.com/publishing.
This edition of allPM Today has as its theme “Virtual Teams.” And we have two excellent articles on this growingly important topic, one by George Pitagorsky, PMP and another by Dr. Ginger Levin, PMP and Dr. Parviz Rad, PMP. Both will have an impact on the way you are either participating in or managing these kinds of teams. George’s article is entitled, Making Your Virtual Teams Really Hum, and I think you will come away from this piece singing! Ginger and Parviz’s article is called Successful Motivational Techniques for Virtual Teams. You won’t want to miss it! And John Sullivan, PMP has prepared tips of the day on this topic that will appear on the allPM.com home page on every business day starting tomorrow. Thanks, John!
In keeping with the team theme, Risk Doctor David Hillson writes about “Encouraging Team Involvement,” in this case in the critical field of project risk management. Also with an eye to teams, we are delighted to have the article Positive Workplace: Enhancing Individual & Team Productivity by Jocelyn Davis and John Cable, PMP. It is so rich in hard data as well as in people factors that it is a goldmine! In fact, if you like the material a lot, we would consider having a monthly column on the subject. Please let us know!
We also have a crossword puzzle on Virtual Teams – can you believe it – thanks to Frank Saladis! And he also provides us with another in his series, Positive Leadership in Project Management, this one on Leadership Lessons Learned, complete with a handy checklist. By the way, this series is being published as a book this Spring by IIL Publishing, New York, so look for it!
We have a lovely AND important article by Laura B. Moore, PMP in her Communications Toolbox series, this one called Cleaning the Lamp Post. It is a delightful yet hard-hitting “read” and I advise you to hang it on your refrigerator, next to your kids’ art work. It’s that beautiful and thoughtful.
A long-time contributor, John Goodpasture, PMP, provides us with a look at the challenging issue of decision-making and which styles of leadership encourage the best decisions as well as buy-in to them from team members. It’s Leaders that Make the Decisions in Projects is the name of the article, and it will probably stir up some good conversation among our readers.
This month we are announcing the winner of the PM Poetry™ contest. His name is Samuel Udoka, and he is the wonderful person from Nigeria who asked me to give him the contact information for an old school buddy he saw featured on our website, Imoh Usoro. Can you imagine? We made a match – I think we will soon be competing with classmates.com! Old friends reconnected because of our global project management community and the great communications we have among ourselves. Let’s all pat ourselves on the back, especially following International Project Management Day! You can’t get more international than connecting two old friends in Nigeria through an American based company. Pat, pat, pat to all of us!!! Let’s keep on connecting!
But seriously, his PM Poem called Project Road is so lyrical that it almost brought me to tears. I know you will all love it, so please give Samuel some pats on the back through allPM.com. Send them to me at judy.umlas@allPM.com and I will make sure he gets them. Samuel, you are a true poet and the WINNER of the allPM.com PM Poetry contest. You have guaranteed yourself a prominent place in the upcoming book, to be released by IIL Publishing, New York in Spring, 2007 (working title) Project Management Poetry, Puzzles and Pictorials. Frank Saladis and I are co-editing the book. Samuel, you also are the winner of a $100 gift certificate, courtesy of winelegend.com. If you don’t want this certificate sent to you, feel free to donate it to a PMI chapter for their holiday party this December and we will get it to the chapter of your choice. Plus you get all of the books published by IIL Publishing, New York to date!
We also want to recognize the runner up for the contest award: Charanya Girish, Director of the PMO for Michigan Education Special Services Association. (MESSA) in East Lansing, Michigan. Her lovely project management poem came close to being a winner, so we will publish it in our newsletter next month. Charanya’s PM Poem will also be in our book in the Spring, and she will get a bundle of IIL Publishing, New York books as well. Congratulations, Charanya. The rest of you, please try your PM Poetry skills – we still have a few pages left in our anthology! We would love your contributions.
So on this day in the week following International Project Management Day, let me once again tell you how special and wonderful all of you are, and how proud I am to be back to share the experience of being a community with you.
Until the next time,
Judy
From the Co-publisher's Desk - Frank P. Saladis, PMP
 Welcome to another edition of allPM Today. This month we turn our attention to a subject that is as familiar to project managers as e-mail and web pages and cell phones: The Virtual Team. A group of people working together on the same project where the distances between them can range from a just a few miles to distances that span oceans or continents. This is a team where the only contact between team members may be limited to e-mail memos and conference calls. It can certainly be a challenge for any project manager to lead a team that never actually meets face to face. In our feature article, author and practicing project manager George Pitagorsky, PMP, provides us with his observations about this subject along with some very useful and practical tips.
Today’s project manager is subjected to a challenging environment that includes telecommuting team members, outsourcing of resources, off-shoring, matrix organizations, and international teams who bring increased cultural diversity into the project setting. The virtual team, a concept that has been around for quite a while is very much a part of doing business and managing projects today. Virtual teams are now more the norm than the exception. Co-located teams, although not rare just yet, are far less common in the business environment and will probably become the exception in just a few years as technology evolves and organizations manage more projects that cross multiple borders and time zones. This evolving project management playing field requires the project manager to develop additional skills for managing teams and to obtain and utilize new tools and techniques to develop high performing teams that will deliver expected results.
Mr. Pitagorsky suggests that instead of treating a virtual team as a completely different type of team, the project manager should view the team basically from the same perspective as a physical team. The Pitagorsky model illustrates that the difference between the physical team and a virtual team is not as clearly defined as many would think. Upon examination the difference is much less pronounced and both types of teams have similarities. Of particular interest is the observation that the need for ice breaking activities and team building events to reach greater levels of performance is questionable. In his article Pitagorsky suggests that the actual mission of the project is the driving force that creates the high performing team. If the team is motivated though leadership and the goals of the project and the technology is available, the virtual environment actually becomes more “physical” in nature. Technology can create a feeling of being co-located when that technology is managed effectively. The “simulated” co-location comes in the form of technology such as web based meeting rooms where team members can talk to each other, share drawing boards, modify presentations and documents or even argue with each other on occasion. These web based meetings can also set up separate break out rooms for small team activities. The effective use of technology and a “touch” of inter-personal skills help to blur the line between the physical and virtual team. Mr. Pitagorsky’s article offers a fresh perspective to the perceived challenges of managing virtual teams and provides a foundation for innovation to assist project managers who wish to meet the expectations of their key stakeholders through well organized, motivated and “connected” project teams.
allPM.com is also a “virtual” source of information for project managers in all industries and provides a solid connection to the project management community. The information provided by the contributors to allPM.com establishes a tangible resource for project managers and creates a virtual forum for sharing ideas. Stay connected with today’s key issues and the global allPM.com team.
Frank P. Saladis, PMP
Frank.Saladis@allpm.com
September's Poll Results
Should critical thinking be considered a core project management competency?
a) Yes — mandatory and should be actively developed - 41.92 % (153)
b) No — important but not vital for success - 4.93 % (18)
c) Situational — depends on project complexity - 53.15 % (194)
Total votes: 365
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The November poll question is:
How often do your virtual team members meet in person?
a) Never
b) Monthly
c) Every other month
d) Twice during the duration of the project
e) Other
If you have not already done so, please stop by allPM.com and add your opinion today.
Theme of the Month: Virtual Teams
Making Your Virtual Team Really Hum
By George Pitagorsky, PMP
How to turn your virtual team into a high performing team? The theme of this article is to improve performance by applying best practices in team building to virtual teams. We want to make the virtual physical and the physical virtual by treating a team as a team no matter what kind of team it is.
Figure 1 represents this idea. The blurring of the differences between virtual and physical teams, while acknowledging and addressing those differences, frees us to be able to apply the principles of effective teamwork to meet the needs of each situation.
Figure 1: Virtual Physical
To address performance improvement through team best practices the article will define terms, explore a case study and look at the challenges of working in virtual teams to identify the essential elements of team performance and best practices for virtual teams based on those essentials
What is a Team?
What is a virtual team? Foremost, it is a team. So let’s begin with a definition of what a team is. A team is a group of people working together to achieve a common objective. To team is the act of coming together to form a team. We can categorize teams as virtual or physical and also as healthy or dysfunctional. The dysfunctional ones happen by themselves. It’s the healthy ones that we want to create.
Perhaps some of you are familiar with dysfunctional teams, the kind that drain energy and reduce the overall effectiveness of individual performance. A healthy team is just the opposite. It enhances energy and creates a synergy amongst the team players so that the results of their efforts are multiplied. There is a continuum from healthy to dysfunctional. It is rare to find a perfectly healthy or a perfectly dysfunctional specimen.
© 2006 allPM.com
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George Pitagorsky, PMP is Senior Enterprise Solutions Advisor for International Institute for Learning (IIL). George has written numerous articles on Project Management, organizational development, conflict resolution and personal development subjects. He is a meditation teacher with over thirty years of experience in Yoga and meditation practice and co-creator of both the Conscious Living and Working Wisely workshops.
Successful Motivational Techniques for Virtual Teams
By Ginger Levin, DPA, PMP and Parviz F. Rad, Ph.D., PMP
Introduction
Global projects with virtual teams have emerged as the vehicle by which the cost and duration of projects can be reduced while still maintaining a reasonable control on the quality and scope of projects. Through the use of virtual teams, managing organizations by projects has become the reality because teams and their associated projects are no longer limited by geographical and physical boundaries. The ability to work with people we rarely, if ever, see on a project is increasingly required to be successful since the virtual project organization is the model for the future.
Typically, in project management our success is measured by how effective we are in terms of meeting the triple constraints – complete the project on time, according to budget, and within the scope and quality requirements of our clients. On the surface, this approach concentrates on technical areas; however, projects are performed by people, and without a high-performing team dedicated to the project’s objectives and the organization’s strategic vision, it is difficult, if not impossible, to achieve the project’s scope, time, and cost objectives.
This paper describes the importance of focusing on people issues on projects and motivational challenges in project management. It also presents an overview of some critical motivational mistakes. The paper then describes work done by David McClelland tailored to project management that categorizes team member behaviour based on the need for achievement, affiliation, and power. Each of these motivational approaches is presented with examples of how each style is best suited to work on the virtual team. Challenges people with each dominant style will face are noted as well as the critical roles and responsibilities they can perform. The project professional then can use these approaches to maximize the success of both their projects and the overall organization.
The Importance of Focusing on People Issues on Projects
People issues often tend to be the most frustrating aspect of project work. They also are complicated as each person who is part of a project team may have a specific personal agenda to fulfill along with their assigned roles and responsibilities for work packages or project tasks. Often these private agendas do not coincide with the objectives of the project or with the strategic objectives and vision of the organization. Another concern is that at times, people are assigned to project teams when they would prefer to work on other initiatives or on other projects. Or, they may be asked to take on another project in addition to their existing workload. As a result, there can be resentment, and even anger, by many people when assigned to specific project work, and they may feel that they are powerless when they are assigned to work on the project. Such an attitude can be demonstrated through:
© 2006 allPM.com
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Parviz F. Rad, PhD, PMP, Project Management Consultant and Ginger Levin, DPA, Project Management Consultant are the co-authors of the book The Advanced Project Management Office: A Comprehensive Look at Function and Implementation. Dr. Levin can be reached at ginlevin@aol.com and Dr. Rad can be reached at project.management@comcast.net.
Cleaning the Lamp Post
By Laura B. Moore, PMP
I live and work in a very quaint Northern California town, with some tree lined streets, monthly craft festivals, nice folks at the market, and an overall sense of peacefulness. As I drove to work the other day, along one of the well manicured streets, my eyes were drawn to a rather large ladder next to a white, tall lamp post. As I looked closer, I noticed a gentleman on the ladder with a bucket and a sponge, cleaning the lamp post. This struck me as interesting, as I had never seen anyone cleaning lamp posts. It also resonated for me as a symbol of caring for the minutest details. Part of the overall reputation of the town was due to its caring for the little things along with the medium and big things. I then thought that this was quite a good analogy for project management.
As Project Managers, we must be able to see the big picture as well as the tiniest details to ensure the work is done, and is done correctly without error. An excellent example of this is the Work Breakdown Structure: We start with the big, general tasks, and break it down to each individual task, no matter how big or how small. A friend of mine who was learning project management asked why such detail was needed. Although I wanted to assume the question was because she was not familiar with project management, I have to admit that I’ve seen project managers try to by-pass the smaller details, only being interested in the larger milestones. This approach can be very detrimental to a project.
© 2006 allPM.com
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Laura Moore (PMP, M.A. Social Psychology) has an eclectic background that includes not only project management, but clinical research and social work as well. Currently, she works as a Senior Project Manager in the telecommunications industry and does, what her team calls "guerilla project management", that is, taking urgent, high impacting issues and resolving them within a matter of days. Laura lives in California with her husband Lorin, and their two amazing daughters Lily Faye and Layla Blue.
Positive Leadership in Project Management – Leadership Lessons Learned
By Frank P. Saladis, PMP
Anyone interested in the topic of Leadership can find an enormous selection of material about the subject in any bookstore. If you do a search on line using Google you will discover 19,700,000 items related to the subject of leadership. Documentation, ideas and opinions about leadership can be found in any type of media from cassettes to CD’s, to magazine articles, history books, and seminars featuring leadership experts from every industry. The “secret” to effective leadership is offered by author upon author. The fact is there are more “secrets” to effective leadership than there are effective leaders.
Why do we continue to see this unending stream of information about leadership? At least one major reason is the rapidly changing work environment. The work force today is much more diverse and the needs of customers both internal and external to an organization continue to change and evolve. The changing world business environment requires new and advanced interpersonal skills to manage work teams and employees. The demands of today’s projects result in longer work days and more complex technology integrations. “Down time” for systems must be minimized and schedule demands require project managers to become professional jugglers. Global projects require managers to learn about different cultures and overcome cultural boundaries. Technology is changing at such a rapid pace that before you can finish this article your laptop, cell phone or IPOD will probably be obsolete. The pace of change continues to accelerate with no break in sight. Customers are much more demanding when it comes to products and services and every organization continues to find ways to reduce cost while increasing productivity and improving the bottom line. Organizations are focusing more on program management and portfolio management to more effectively manage resources while trying to remain “lean” in their thinking and lean in the physical state of the organization.
The continuous changes in the business environment place heavy demands on today’s leaders. Author Thomas L. Friedman tells us “the world is flat” -- an observation about how technology is creating a much more even playing field in the international arena and the resulting gradual shift of work, especially in the service industry, from west to east. This technology based change is causing project managers and organizational leaders to rethink strategies and develop new skills for managing in a very different playing field.
© 2006 allPM.com
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Frank P. Saladis (PMP) is Senior Consultant with International Institute for Learning, Inc. He has been involved in the development of standardized Project Management Guidelines (PMGs) for the AT&T Corporate Information Technology Services (Corporate ITS) organization and is the author of the Project Evaluation Review Process (PERP). He is the President of the NYC PMI Chapter.
Positive Workplace: Enhancing Individual & Team Productivity
By Jocelyn S. Davis and John H. Cable, RA, PMP
Abstract
The global workforce is stressed: employees are disengaged; senior managers will be retiring in record numbers without obvious replacements available; morale is low; more than half of US workers are passive job seekers; turnover rates are high; turnover is expensive; managers are not effective; many projects represent significant risks of failure to their corporate sponsors. Improving the performance of individuals and project teams depends upon a new and coherent approach to the workplace of the present and the future.
This paper introduces key concepts and research results on the power of engagement, strengths-focus, optimism, resilience, hope, positive emotions, and the key characteristics of high performance teams to yield real change in the workplace – change that will result in sustainable competitive advantage.
It outlines empirically validated methods to improve productivity, sales, profitability, employee and customer satisfaction while reducing safety incidents, theft losses, absenteeism, stress-related illness, and attrition rates. Learn how and why the shift from a weakness-correction model to a strengths-focused model amplifies employee performance. Understand the impact of emotion on performance: how the right blend of positive and negative emotions yields high performance project teams and how optimism and resilience can be developed to strengthen individual and project team performance.
Introduction
PM’s work in the global workplace environment, a work environment which is increasingly complicated by the virtual nature of many teams.
We’ve reorganized, process-improved, downsized, and right-sized and outsourced - all to gain and maintain competitive advantage. Global and domestic economic pressures continue to intensify. Many key strategic projects fail – to meet expectations, to meet budget or to meet schedule.
The employer-employee contract has changed forever. In actuality, it’s a classic good news-bad news story. The workforce has become more dynamic and flexible, but is no longer a loyal workforce. Employers can select the best employees and increasingly, the employees can select the best employers.
Changes in the employment contract are combining with other workplace changes, too.
- Employee morale is low. (Energy for Performance, (WebsiteUndated)
- The staff turnover is real and very costly. Cost of attrition is estimated at 18 months’ wages for managers and 6 months’ wages for hourly employees.
- Senior employees are nearing retirement age in record numbers. Experts estimate that globally between 40 and 70% of senior executives will be eligible for retirement within five years. A 15% drop in the number of people of “key leader age” is expected. (Gandossy, 2006)
- Towers Perrin estimates that 1 in 7 employees globally is fully engaged leaving the other 6 disengaged in various degrees. (Energy for Performance, Undated)
- The Gallup Organization (Gallup) reports 28% of the U.S. workforce is engaged, 54% not engaged, and 17% actively disengaged. (Gallup, 2004)
Gallup estimates the cost of employee disengagement in the U.S. annually to be $375 billion in direct costs with total costs exceeding $1 trillion or 10% of Gross Domestic Product annually. (Gallup, 2004a, 1)
© 2006 Davis and Cable
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Jocelyn Davis is the president of Nelson Hart LLC and cofounder with Amanda C E Levy of the Positive Workplace Alliance. Jocelyn’s professional background includes finance; she was the chief financial officer for AARP. She is also trained as an executive coach and trained with and worked for Martin E P Seligman of the University of Pennsylvania through the Authentic Happiness Program. She has served on several boards and currently serves as a director and chairman of the executive committee for the GAVI Fund, the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunizations Fund. Jocelyn is an adjunct professor at the University of Maryland, College Park, in the Clark School of Engineering, Project Management Program where she teaches Managing Project Teams. Jocelyn’s work focuses on how to create workplaces where individuals flourish. Flourishing individuals yield flourishing teams and organizations.
JocelynSDavis@NelsonHartLLC.com Amanda@positiveworkplace.com
John Cable is an architect with over 35 years experience managing projects of various size and complexity. He is currently Executive Director of the Graduate Project Management Program at the Clark School of Engineering, University of Maryland. John initiated the graduate program in project management during the fall of 1999 and an undergraduate minor in Project Management in 2002. He teaches courses in Project Management Fundamentals, and Managing Projects in a Dynamic Environment. He is widely sought after for his seminars and workshops on Project Management. John is also chairman of the Project Management Institute’s Global Accreditation Center Board of Directors and a member of the science council of NASA’s Center for Project Management Research
jcable@umd.edu
It's Leaders That Make the Decisions In Projects
By John C. Goodpasture PMP
If Decision-Making Were Easy…
If decision-making were easy, we would all do it well; certainly, our leaders would. Naturally, we mean making “good” decisions, decisions of high quality that others will see as wise and thoughtful, and, therefore, decisions that project members can readily follow, if not agree with. Good decisions attract followers. Good decisions are rational. Those who decide rationally apply facts, judgments, and estimates to a decision making process, but rational decisions need not represent a consensus. Leaders who really understand leadership know that decisions made according to process have a natural appeal to those governed by the outcomes, even for those who would have decided another way. Governance, a practical and essential quality of leadership, is an outcome of good project decision-making.
By contrast, decision-makers who make or impose decisions that seem disconnected from the facts, seem at variance to established policy, or seem counter to the project strategy, risk not only not being irrational, they risk making decisions that are not easily enforceable.
Unenforceable decisions have the practical effect of being decisions without a following. Leadership is forfeited when there is no following.
© 2006 allPM.com
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John C. Goodpasture is Founder of Square Peg Consulting. He can be reached at www.sqpegconsulting.com.
Encouraging Team Involvement by Dr David Hillson PMP FAPM
Dear Risk Doctor,
I am convinced that a structured approach to risk management would help my project, but my team are resisting the idea. They say they are too busy to do risk management in addition to their normal project tasks. What do you advise?
Frustrated Project Manager
Dear Frustrated Project Manager,
Anyone who is too busy for risk management is too busy! People who have no time to think about potential problems in advance, always manage to make time to fix problems when they happen. Try a combination of the following eight steps to encourage your team to adopt risk management:
- Mandate it. If you can, it might help to insist that a structured risk management process must be implemented on your project. While it is not the whole answer, it sometimes helps to tell people what to do. If your company procedures include a risk process, then you can refer to this and explain that there is really no choice.
- Simplify it. Risk management need not be complicated. Make the process as simple as possible without compromising effectiveness. Minimise the overhead for the team, keep risk meetings short and focused, and only collect information which you intend to use.
© 2006 Risk Doctor Limited
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 Dr. David Hillson (PMP, FAPM, FIRM, MCMI) is an international risk management consultant, and Director of Risk Doctor & Partners ( www.risk-doctor.com ). His speciality is risk technology transfer, assisting organisations to develop in-house risk processes, and he is a popular conference speaker and author on risk, winning several awards for his papers. He is recognised internationally as a leading thinker and practitioner in risk management, and his recent emphasis has been the inclusion of proactive opportunity management within the risk process, which is the topic of his latest book "Effective Opportunity Management Exploiting Positive Risk", published in 2003 by Dekker of New York.
David is an active member of the global Project Management Institute (PMI) and was a founder member of its Risk Management Specific Interest Group. He received the 2002 PMI Distinguished Contribution Award for his work in developing risk management over many years. He is a Fellow of the UK Association for Project Management (APM) and a Fellow of the UK Institute of Risk Management (IRM), as well as being a member of the Chartered Management Institute.
To provide feedback on this Briefing Note, or for more details on how to develop effective risk management, contact the Risk Doctor (info@risk-doctor.com), or visit the Risk Doctor website (www.risk-doctor.com).
Project Management Poetry Contest Winner - Samuel Udoka
Title: Project Road
Like the tides undulating forth
From the belly of the mighty ocean
With copious flair and feisty froth
A project too has its low and high
Its brooding valley and mountain high
Its rigid gaze and momentous motion
Project's road is never straight.
There are no neat lines
In project overview map.
Early morning as its planning stage
The sky bangs heavy as proposals emanate Work breakdown structure completed Activities and project time estimation completed The horizon seems one giddy glance Beyond your PERT/CPM planning Look well and look again The dreaded network replanning might mother A maternity of mercies Project's road is never straight.
A scarecrow assaults your sight
As you step out on another day
Estimation pitfall, cost/time overrun dilemma Your mind full, your feet uncertain Don't throw away your eyes Check the trade-off analysis A happier spectacle may just Be waiting at end of a crowded street Project's road is never straight.
Best resource may disappoint
Risk and uncertainty alternates your path Like a stab on your back Bands your wounds with a strip of smiles Look beyond the hurt Select appropriate response mechanism In some dark, unexpected corner Solutions are waiting with open arms Project's road is never straight.
© 2006 allPM.com
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Samuel Udoka is a Project/Business Development Manager with AphaNik Consulting Limited, in Abuja, Nigeria. He specializes in project management advisory services. He manages all phases of Project/Business developments - identification, Qualification, capture and bid. Mr. Udoka implements and supervises these projects on a day-to-day basis.
PM Crossword Connections™: Virtually Connected — Of and About Virtual Teams
By Frank Saladis, PMP
(Click here or the image above for a larger, printable crossword in a new window. )
Across
1 Informal internet based communication
3 Current state ( ____ quo)
7 In essence but not in fact
9 Connection between people
10 Gathering for a purpose
12 Organize and manage teams of people
13 Electronic messages
14 First team meeting
19 What's in it for them (Abrev.)
22 Agreeable to change
23 Eager anticipation
24 Sum of the parts is greater than the whole
26 Working together
27 Worldly
31 Working at the same time
33 Wireless or land-based communications instrument
35 To rely on
36 Driving force
39 Pledge to do something
41 People working together
42 Record of a meeting
43 An area of expertise
44 Frame of mind
Down
2 Individuals with similarities
4 Provide assistance
5 Culture, industry standards
6 Everyone involved or impacted
8 Storage place
11 Meeting via the internet
15 Televised meeting
16 Attention or favorable notice
17 Exchange of information
18 Etiquette, correct conduct
20 Sticking together
21 Online journal
25 To be distributed across projects or columns and rows
28 Pay attention, heed
29 Between people
30 Bring all parts together
32 Response to the sender
34 Person with significant experience
37 Eastern standard
38 To honor, regard
40 Shared in common
© 2006 allPM.com
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Click here to view/print the crossword solution.
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