You’ve reached the final stretch! Congratulations is in order – but before the podium, comes the declaration! Everything has an end. Project closure is a time to take stock, assess the successes and failures, and take lessons and learnings that you can transfer to future projects. But so often, this stage of the project is neglected – project managers are already moving onto the next assignment and want to get things wrapped up.  In order to achieve a clean project completion, a lot of activities are necessary, which do not happen by themselves, but have to be planned and controlled just like everything else. Project closure is as much a part of the project as any other project phase. As with project start, closing activities must be planned and controlled. In the best case, they are firmly integrated into the project planning. In this phase, the project manager has the last chance to actively influence his project. Anything that comes after this is beyond his power. It can be Continue Reading

When did the term “conflict” get such a bad name? In my work with teams over the last 25 years all around the world, I have never found a high performing team that did not have moments when team members disagreed, debated, or argued. These teams all had a healthy respect for the value of not only having differences of opinions or perspectives, but for having learned how to manage themselves as they worked through the discord or tensions precipitated by their disputes. High performing teams have a high degree of emotional intelligence and recognize that they must go through a process of learning how to first listen to and understand diverging points of view before they can evaluate them and arrive at a converging consensus. I strongly believe that, conflict, rather than being an enemy of collaboration, is, in fact, a necessary requirement for productive and successful collaboration! When conflict is managed well creativity can be enhanced because ideas are more vigorously debated. One Continue Reading

When projects don't work out, it's easy to just blame the failure on others, but it's ultimately counterproductive. Here's how to focus on resolving issues. Whether it's work "politics" or anger at the current political administration, there's an overabundance of blame, angst, and even visceral anger directed at various entities, both real and imagined. Whole industries have sprung up around this phenomenon. On the professional side, decades after IT became a staple of companies large and small, we're still hearing about the antics of "the business," and what seems like a constant campaign of sabotaging our purest intentions in IT. If you've ever been on the other side of that equation, you've probably sat in similar meetings where voices were raised in anger over IT sabotaging every noble action. Software and services companies have jumped on the bandwagon, using the stereotype of diametrically opposed IT and business entities to sell reporting tools, software, and consulting Continue Reading

Projects can be a hotbed of conflict. From the difficult stakeholder who wants to undermine the project’s success to a disagreement about a feature of a deliverable, project work lends itself to workplace conflict situations. And project managers contribute hugely to that because we go out and look for it. We challenge leaders, we talk about risk and what might go wrong and we call people out on poor performance through project monitoring and control.You could say, part of the job is in fact looking for trouble Conflict should be a healthy part of any team’s development, and it’s a good way to challenge requirements and ensure that your business case and plans stand up to scrutiny. So while you shouldn’t shy away from conflict, it does help to be prepared for it. Conflict can be good – both for the project and the team – if it’s handled correctly. When conflict is constructive it means that we examine our different points of views with an open mind and learn from each other. The real Continue Reading