Was haben ein Flug und ein Projekt gemeinsam? Eine ganze Menge! Etwa 50 Jahre nach Beginn des Projektmanagements scheitern immer noch mehr als 50% der IT-Projekte daran, dass ihnen Zeit, Ressourcen, Mittel usw. ausgehen. Wenn Piloten Flugzeuge fliegen würden, wie wir Projekte durchführen, würde niemand jemals fliegen. Jeden Tag fliegen jedoch Millionen von Menschen wegen ihrer Arbeit oder zum Vergnügen, und Flüge kommen fast 90 Prozent der Zeit pünktlich an. Verzögerungen entstehen hauptsächlich durch das Wetter. Flugreisen sind mit einer tödlichen Unfallrate von 0,022 pro 100.000 geflogenen Stunden die sicherste Form des Fernverkehrs. Wir fliegen seit etwas mehr als 100 Jahren, Projektmanagement gibt es jedoch seit dem Bau der Pyramiden und der Großen Mauer. Gibt es irgendwelche Erkenntnisse, die wir aus dem Fliegen ziehen können? Ich denke ja. Die Luftfahrt hat mich immer fasziniert. Als Vielflieger und zudem selbst privater Pilot bin fast jede Woche in einem Flugzeug und es Continue Reading
What does formation flying have to do with Agile teams?
Flying just a few feet off of the wings of the pilot in front and to the right of him, this skilled pilot was determined to keep a tight formation. And he was not alone in his efforts and highly honed flying abilities, as every single pilot in his entire squadron was similarly adept at maintaining this tight formation no matter the direction, the weather, or even the specific order in which these aviators organized. The formation would have looked impressive to anyone observing from the ground, but it wasn’t a formation used to impress observers, it was utilized because it worked. By maintaining this flying organization, each member of this flying contingent was able to benefit from the lift created by the pilot off of his wing, to the tune of a 71% improvement in fuel consumption. The exception to this economy of course was for the sole lead pilot, which did not benefit from having a lead aircraft providing a boost of lift. So to account for this, each member of the flying team would Continue Reading
Simplify your project plan with a pre-flight checklist
A national project management survey released this month reports that most projects are not meeting goals, and team members are often not trained properly. While most projects are eventually completed, only one-third of them come in on time and on budget. If pilots flew aircraft like we run projects, no one would ever fly. Even now, millions of people fly for work or pleasure and flights arrive on time almost 80 percent of the time, delayed mainly by weather. Airline travel is also the safest form of long-distance travel with a fatal accident rate of .022 per 100,000 hours flown. If you flew every day of your life, you have less than a 1 percent chance of being in a fatal accident. We have been flying for just over 100 years, but project management has been around since the building of the pyramids and the Great Wall. As an instrument-rated pilot, project manager, and Agile Coach, I believe some hard-won lessons from thousands of pilots can be applied to project management as Continue Reading
Pilot, Projectmanager, Agile
To land a plane you need to line up with the runway, figure out the right rate of descent and airspeed, then monitor and manage those, all the way down to the ground. Your goal is to touch down on the runway, rather than before or after it, while traveling fast enough that the plane doesn’t stall and fall out of the sky, but slow enough that the wheels stay attached when they hit the ground, and you can stop within the amount of runway you have at your disposal. Simple? Well, not so much. How not to land a plane If you drop the average person with no experience of flying into the captain’s seat and ask them to land a plane, they will almost certainly get into trouble very quickly. Even if you line them up with the runway and tell them the rate of descent and airspeed they need to maintain, they will probably still lose control of the aircraft. What inevitably goes wrong is that the pilot-to-be assumes that you should use the throttle to control airspeed, and you should use Continue Reading
What I learned about project failure – some lessons.
The phrase "armed and dangerous" is an idiom I apply to a pilot (aviator) with hazardous attitudes such as anti-authority ("Don't tell me "), invulnerability ("it won't happen to me") and macho ("I can do it"). These individuals fly by their rules in unpredictable and potentially dangerous ways, disregard established flight-safety practices, seem unconcerned for their own safety and others and appear a step away from an incident. "Attitude" of a Project Manager (PM) will most definitely have a negative impact a project or program. And there are many other lessons I learned. When you run a project, there are a lot of components that need to be managed together: information, people, time, as well as specific challenges and threats. Speaking of threats – even if you’re a seasoned professional with extensive experience, you’re never immune to the smaller or bigger dangers of project failure. If you browse blogs and online communities, as well as glance at the agenda of offline Continue Reading
Happy New Year + Life lessons I learned as a pilot
Becoming a pilot changes who you are, even if you don’t realize it at first. Sure, there are the practical lessons about math, physics, and engineering you don’t encounter in everyday life. But as a recent trip through my logbook proved, aviation offers courses in the humanities as well as the hard sciences. I remember my first solo like it was yesterday. I looked at all of my gauges, flipped a few switches, and stared down the long runway ahead of me. I pushed the throttle and as I slowly lifted off the ground in a small single-engine Cessna, it suddenly hit me that I was the sole operator of an airplane. Though terrified at first, I ultimately welcomed the challenge and the freedom liberated me. After being a passenger in a general aviation aircraft a few times as a child, I was always fascinated by flight. Pilot training has been unlike any other endeavor I have ever experienced. Student pilots learn so much beyond the complex rules of airspace or thought-provoking Continue Reading