Free Management training

Opus Communications is providing free management training online. They call it as 'Training people like to take'. They also have custom training for corporates.

I very found of their "coaching for performance" training, simple; yet effective. If you are interested visit them at Opus Communications

Success? Failure!

Deciding whether a project is a success or failure is a tricky business. Because, this goes inline with the definition of project stakeholders quote PMBOK ' who is positively or negatively affected by the outcome of the project'. Delivering the project under budget, on schedule covering the agreed scope will be the success criteria for a project manager. The project achieving the business objective will be the success to the project sponsor.

But for project team member, the success will be the completion of the task assigned to him or the incentive he will receive after completing the task well ahead.

If you are working for an external client, from the senior management perspective, the success will be building a working relationship and getting more contracts.

Now, let us see the other side, for another group of stakeholders, your competitors, for them the failure of your project will mean success to them. You fail to market a product; you lost a deal with a Fortune 500 client.

OK, what is the best way to do now? ‘Define project success criteria’. Defining success in your project will help you to understand stakeholder expectations. Moreover this will help to avoid multiple interpretations of the projects results.

Scrum and daily scrum meetings

After my investigations on the methodologies, one particular one attracted me due to its compatibility with my organizational culture - SCURM.

The word ‘scrum’ is taken from the game of rugby where the word means, team members come together in a compact formation to move the ball down the field. The same principles of teamwork of scrum can be used for great success in our project meetings.

So this post I want to talk about the daily scrum meetings. The short, daily scrum meeting is to keep the teams on track and to help the team members get their work done. Often managers are invited to the scrum meetings but they listen rather than speak.

Rules for Scrum meetings.

• Choose a scrum leader to enforce the rules during the sprint

• Hold scrums every day in the same location and at the same time - preferably first thing in the morning
• Each scrum should last only 15 to 30 minutes
• Ask all participants the same three questions: What did you do since the last scrum? What are you going to do between now and the next scrum? Is anything in the way of you doing your work?
• Address issues other than the three questions outside the scrum – this includes suggestions for a team member who's hit a roadblock
• Managers are not allowed to speak
• If a manager or colleague assigns unplanned work to a team member that will throw the team's schedule off track, the scrum leader has the power to excuse the person of the additional work. The work must either be fit into the next sprint or be assigned to someone who's not on the team.
• Your team must have a concrete deliverable for management after the sprint
• Start the process again after each sprint

Meeting Management

PMI says, 90% of a project manager's time is spend for communication. Meetings are an integral part of project communications. Are you worried about improving your meeting management skills?

A few tips are listed below:

• Make every meeting matter - or don't meet at all. Because time is important and if the communication is only one-way no need to meet at all. A status report or an email will be enough.

• Meetings are not good for 1. Updates 2. Getting slackers on track 3. Getting everyone in your page 4. Whipping up enthusiasm.

• Define goals and distribute an agenda.
  

• Job for Meeting attendees. Good way to engage co-workers who otherwise stare out of the window or start snoring ! to name a few. E.g. Meeting Time keeper, Note taker

• Own your meeting. Good meeting shows your leadership skills, so make sure that you want to make the discussion timely, useful and relevant.

• Make it a meeting of the minds. Make sure every one is heard and get the constructive input you need from everyone present.

• Close with a plan of action. Everyone should leave knowing what's expected out of them and when.

I found this useful information from the BNet article on 'How to run effective meetings'