Fritzerland

Sharing my excursion through life

No Silver Bullet: building and managing virtual teams

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I constantly get the same question, “How do you manage a virtual team and actually get stuff done.” In my current assignment each of the team members work from home or a coworking environment. We’re spread out across 35 countries and many time zones. With such separation, we still manage to get a lot done and enjoy our work! Before writing this article, I had not given much thought to exactly how we work in a virtual environment. My first answer was simply practice and many mistakes. Although, the knowledge gained from those mistakes can be narrowed down to three main ingredients: The people on the team, the process that drives the team, and clear communication. People "My model for business is the Beatles. They were four guys who kept each other's kind of negative tendencies in check. They balanced each other, and the total was greater than the sum of the parts. That's how I see business: Great things in business are never done by one person. They're done by a team of Continue Reading

R-E-S-P-E-C-T, find out what it means to me…

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Do you really appreciate your Project Manager? There is not a child alive who dreams of being a project manager. Maybe a firefighter, a rock star or a pilot, but not a project manager? Nope. There’s something inherently dull about the words “project” and “manager”, the notions they generate make the flames of even the brightest imagination flicker and fade. And it follows that in the professional world saying you are a project manager won’t get you much respect either. To many being a Project Manager means you fit this unfortunate stereotype: you were not good enough in your field to be an engineer or a programmer, and through politics and self-inflation, you find ways to take credit for the hard work done by others. It stings, but that’s the stereotype (ask at your next happy hour with non Project Managers friends). Many Project Managers unintentionally reinforce this view by trying to get everyone to pay attention to the work they do produce: the meta work of spreadsheets, Continue Reading

What chaos theory taught me about life transitions

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For as long as I can remember, I’ve had a fascination with the unknown. As a kid, I can remember hours spent listening to a tape my aunt had given me for my birthday that told about adventures in space. I was endlessly curious about the cosmos, and dreamed of being an astronaut. While I never ended up becoming an astronaut (it looked way too hard) or launching into space (yet), I still feel something light up inside of me every time I face, or even think, of a journey into the unknown. It’s an addictive combination of dopamine and adrenaline-fueled curiosity that has driven most of my adult decisions. As a result, I’ve gone through my fair share of transitions in life. I’ve switched careers, and often entire industries, every few years. I’ve sought a life rich in experience, high in expectations, and driven by a pursuit of understanding, not necessarily a singular outcome. I never wanted to be the best at anything; I simply wanted to do things differently. I gravitated away Continue Reading

What did you learn from your last Project?

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Project managers are consistently learning and evolving as they move from project to project but how often do you actively log the details or ask yourself what did you learn from your last Project?The knowledge and experience they gain from previous projects can prove highly valuable to the success of future projects. However no matter how much experience they have there will be times when they make the wrong the decision and their project gets delayed or even fails. Instead of focusing on the negatives the project manager needs to take some positives from it. One way to do this is by taking the opportunity to learn from these mistakes and bad decisions. A popular action taken by project managers is conducting a lessons learned review at the end of every project. When this is done correctly it can contribute to the success of future projects as it will encourage the recycling of good ideas and highlight the avenues that previously didn’t work well. By having a controlled Continue Reading

Next: Project Management fun?

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Ok, “fun” may be a stretch…but not really. When do we dislike our jobs the most? When they are dead ends. When we’re micro-managed. When we don’t feel leadership is leading us. When we feel that we aren’t given the tools or authority to succeed. I’ve had one or more positions where all of this happened….maybe not all in one job (though I can think of one specific job that encompassed most of these). I’m sure we all can think of a job where we were pushed down and we were unhappy. We tend to not be at our most productive selves in these types of jobs and under these types of conditions. I’ve always found that I am at my most productive when the work is fun and when I have a great deal of control over that work. The same goes for the projects that I lead. If I have executive management that has a great deal of confidence in my skills and basically lets me run the show with the understanding I’ll shout out when there are needs as well as keeping them up-to-date on status, then I Continue Reading

Is there any way to deal with the unknowns In Project Management? Well there are…

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We all live in an imperfect world. We can never expect to have complete information. Colin Powel, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Secretary of State, uses the 40/70 rule.  He explains that he never takes any action unless he feels he has at least 40 percent of the necessary information. He never expects to have more than 70 percent. To wait and try for more causes too many missed opportunities "Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is a gift, that is why they call it the present. " Kung Fu Panda Reflecting on the last ten years of my own experience working on projects, early on, I saw mostly “traditional project management.” That is, project management that places greater emphasis on planning upfront, and as a whole, a greater proportion of the total project planning is done very early in the project, and seeks to provide predictability of activities over longer planning horizons. Other terms I’ve heard for this project management style are Continue Reading