Overview The aim of this book is to provide a stakeholder-centred analysis of projects, and to explain which stakeholder identification, analysis, communication and engagement models are most relevant to different types of projects. Using case studies from around the world, it illustrates what goes wrong when stakeholders are not engaged successfully, and what lessons we can learn from these examples. The book is aimed at project professionals who find themselves involved in managing projects with stakeholders (so that’s just about all of them then!). What’s inside This book is based on ev ..read more

Having operated independently for over a decade, I found myself collaborating with Nicole Reilly increasingly often, to the point where we recognised that we are stronger together. So we decided to join forces and created The PMO Professionals – an independent PMO consultancy, made up of seasoned PMO professionals, which enables us to combine our PMO expertise into one, clear offering for clients. We look forward to servicing you at thePMOprofessionals.com The post Pragmatic PMO is now closed to new business appeared first on Pragmatic PMO ..read more

Overview The aim of the book is to introduce a structure for retrospectives and to walk the reader through planning, designing and leading a retrospective, with activities and guidance on how to use them The book appears to be aimed at people who want to use retrospectives in their organizations, whether these organisations are currently using Agile techniques or not. What’s inside This book sets out a simple framework for conducting retrospectives built around 5 stages (Set the scene; Gather data; Generate insights; Decide what to do; Close), and provides a wide range of example activitie ..read more

Overview This very popular book looks at the relationships between success, failure, and improvement. Drawing from approaches used by aviation and sport, it suggests ways to improve how we think about our experience to learn how to do things better. Unusually for a book review on this blog, this book is not aimed at project management professionals particularly, but falls more into the category of “general self help”. I reviewed it because so many of my project management professional friends told me that I should read it (including the PMO Flashmob Book Club night)! What’s inside The bo ..read more

Overview This book encourages project management professionals to reflect on and interpret their experiences, using (more or less familiar) bedtime stories as inspiration. What’s inside Each chapter of the book relates a reasonably well-known fable or fairy story, and interprets it through the lens of project management to extract some learning that may be of benefit to project management professionals in their work. The premise of extracting lessons from familiar children’s stories rather than from dry accounts of “genericised”, fictionalised projects is an interesting and entertaining appro ..read more

If you’ve been following me for a while, you will probably know that I recently published a series of videos aimed at helping people who are looking for work in the wake of the impact that COVID19 has had on the world economy, and that I have a bit of a bee in my bonnet about learning lessons from experience. So I thought I’d walk the talk and share with you the lessons I learned from the experience of producing my #OpenToWork video series using the steps in the lessons learned process framework that I describe in my book (Experience, Reflection, Capture, Storage, Retrieval, Application) so th ..read more

Recently I undertook a series of business planning sessions with business leadership coach Bekka Prideaux, which were aimed at helping me to work out what I want to achieve with my business and how to get it there. During the sessions, Bekka asked many questions – most of them were pretty simple, but required a lot of thought to answer. What I wasn’t expecting were the insights and challenges that she came up with, along the lines of “have you ever considered doing x?”, or “so why aren’t you doing y yet?”, or “do you think if might be time to do some z?” I consider myself an expert in my busi ..read more

A bit about PMO Flashmob If you work in a PMO in or around London and you haven’t yet heard about PMO Flashmob, then you’re missing out. No really, you are. PMO Flashmob is a networking group for PMO people run by Lindsay Scott that has been around for long enough now that it has started forgetting how old it is. Some evenings are seminars where someone stands up and speaks on a topic. Others are far less formal occasions held in the function room or a corner of a pub, where people get together and discuss PMO topics in small groups. Those are my favourites, and the evening I am writing about ..read more

Overview The aim of this book is “to pick over the sadly inadequate body of knowledge that is project management today, and generally challenge just about everything, eliminating that which you don’t need to bother to learn about, or should already know, leaving you only with the parts that will give you the results you want.” The book is targeted at “…those ‘projects as usual project managers’ who will drive most of the change inside organisations tomorrow and beyond, and who really need help to do that” What’s inside What you think of this book is likely to be significantly shaped by wha ..read more

Overview The book aims to illustrate how knowledge management (KM) contributes to successful project work. The authors present KM as an integral part of project work and explain it using KM principles and fundamentals that apply anywhere. Hidden KM is exposed, myths are debunked and practical guidance explains how to build KM into projects and portfolios. The aim is to help project professionals, sponsors, PMO members and others who can make a difference manage knowledge more effectively in project environments. Managing Knowledge in Project Environments offers everyone involved in project wo ..read more