"Your theory contradicts the facts!" Roughly half a year ago I've written a blog post about "success". Not any particular success, but the success in general - my point was that sometimes the knowledge we gain in the process, empowerment or ownership we build up is more important than flawless execution itself. However, that is still not the full picture yet ... Sometimes enterprise / unit / manager needs a success so badly, that reality stands no chance - success is inevitable & just has to happen, this way or another (even if it means "creative interpretation of…
All posts in project management
"Errare humanum est, sed in errare perseverare diabolicum." (eng. To err is human, but to persist in error (out of pride) is diabolical.) Seneca Now & then I re-visit my own idea / statement / opinion to find out that I totally disagree with it today. Actually I don't find it a problem, quite the contrary - only fools keep upholding stubbornly once formulated statement, regardless of subsequent experience and learnings. One of such past opinions goes as follows: Project Manager doesn't have to be an expert in the industry project is about. Actually, Project Management is an industry-agnostic discipline…
A lot has change since I've gone pro in software development, one could say at least one era has passed since then, but some things never change - one of them is Enterprises loving Fuckin' Big Projects (FBP), dinosaurs of XX/XXI century. In defiance to the common sense ... Enterprises love FBPs because: big things tend to grab attention of big stakeholders, so yeah - politics in Enterprise, it's freaking hard to get valuable experts on-board due to their day-to-day duties - big project has got much higher chances as it may spawn some sort of new unit / entity within…
Quite the contrary to the common belief, team's productivity is NOT just a simple sum of team member's potentials. Many want to believe that because it so easily translates into mandays & fits the capacity VS estimates matching game. Though it never really works this way. Morale, team's inner "chemistry", synergy between different team members, overall team's confidence, sharing the same vision, empowerment level, ownership & responsibility, the level of understanding of status quo, sense of work's purpose, sense of fair, respectful & honest treatment, confidence in leadership, ability to place team (& its work) within a big…
I've just passed PMI-ACP exam - which is the main requirement to obtain the PMI-ACP certification. For those who didn't check the link: ACP stands for Agile Certified Practicioner. What?! Certifications like PMP, PRINCE2, ITIL are by definition quite formal - the knowledge domain is precise, the terminology is set, the exam scope is given - methodology / framework / library has its clear boundaries that serve this purpose. What about Agile? Agile is more a mindset than a fixed methodology - doesn't it say that individuals & interactions go above processes & tools? Isn't it about adapting to the situation instead…
During last few days I was exposed to few issues that have raised between people of two different roles (profiles?): managers & their subordinates. How unlikely, right? :) Although these were very different cases, that happened between very different people (in different organizations, even in different industries - but all of them somehow related to IT or other, close knowledge-based work), there were few common characteristics between them: managers had a ... ekhm ... "very traditional" understanding of the role they are playing workers were passive - either because they were bewildered / intimidated / resigned or just they didn't give an f-word…
And so little time to write about it… I’ll try to focus on what was most interesting. Microsoft announced some toys again …You’ve most likely already seen both tablets ("Surface") and Windows Phone 8. Plenty have been written on the web about them, so I’m not going to repeat all that. I just want to indicate two reasons why I’m a bit disappointed: Win8 tablets were supposed to remain at the cost level of Androids ones. Now it seems more like iPad level… WTF MSFT?! Denying upgrades from WP7.5 to WP8 without hardware change seems…