Sources of Conflict There are challenges aplenty awaiting project managers when it comes to gathering a collection of individuals assigned to eventually become a team and produce the organization’s objective as defined by the project.  The business mantra of doing more with less – often less time and certainly less resources (and available talent) do […]

Survival of the fittest is not just a biological concern.  Our business must constantly adapt to external stimuli and find better, quicker ways of performing our work.  One way to accomplish this growth is through actions sometimes referred to as project post mortem, or an after action report.  We have a plethora of tools of […]

Check lists are a time honored way of keeping track of breaking down an objective and monitoring progress.  There are a number of benefits to using check lists.  Check lists should not be confused with a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS).  A WBS is a form of a check list of all of the tasks required […]

What are we trying to accomplish with a communications plan?  Effective project management is the efficient achieving of an organization’s objectives.  To do that, we have to keep our project team informed and working toward the target.  That includes our project sponsor and other stakeholders.  Ultimately our plan should be able to quickly answer the […]

We have a running discussion with some project managers and line managers on the topic of responsibility.  The organization structure is matrix (weak) with seeming aspirations to strong matrix.  The project managers attempting to drive the project are frequently confronted with the line management saying – “it is our responsibility”, or “trust us to deliver”. […]

I recently read a Scott Adams cartoon http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2013-06-09/ in the Greensboro News and Record Sunday paper and had flash backs to projects that prematurely move to the production phase.  Experience indicates that this mentality contributes to the recalls to which the consumers are subjected. Capitalism is based upon the willingness to take risks.  There is […]

After we have identified the objective and the preferred delivery mechanisms we will set about building the training.  We will consult subject matter experts, and put material together.  That material will include: Develop Training Material Course Objective and Description Rubric Lesson plan (including formative assessment questions) Presentation, application exercises and practice material Student material (perhaps […]

In our previous post we discussed training needs tied to the organization’s objectives. In that work, we uncovered the scope of the needed training to address specific areas for improvement with very specific metrics identified.  The discussion and subsequent research of the objectives also provided us with input to help ascertain the best delivery mechanism.  […]

Training development follows similar set of processes or activities as product development. First and foremost we must know what we are trying to achieve.  What is our scope? What is our ultimate objective? Those same steps we use to evoke the requirements or our product targets for our training requirements.  The objectives of our training […]