6 Posts to help you become a better Project Manager

Your weekly mix of soft skills, challenges to existing processes to make you think differently, and new ideas to make you a better Project Manager.

I decided this week to ditch the standard company status report and do something different. It took more effort. And it created a conversation that the status report has never created for me. I’ll talk more about that in a post next week, but there are two posts this week that were the genesis of the idea.

Why its important to go above and beyond

Think about a time when someone went above and beyond your expectation. It might have been at work, or at a restaurant, or in a local shop. Each and everyone of you already has a time playing back in your head.

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If you want to be better than the rest, you have to be different from the rest

Think about your organisation and what they require of you as you deliver your projects. Do they have pro formas for how you do things? Do they have pre formatted templates for status reports and governance packs? Do they have standards for how to run particular ceremonies?

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I also had a query from a friend who has been asked to set up a PMO. Knowing that many other people try the same (and often fail), knowing that the lifespan of a PMO is short and cyclical and since I’ve won the PMO of the Year award a couple of times, I thought I’d add my thoughts into how to set up a PMO.

How to set up a PMO

If you read the literature, you can see that there are tons of benefits for setting up a PMO. Ranging from better project execution to better strategic alignment, from better financial control to more certainty over benefit delivery. But delve a little deeper and you'll read about the dark side and the problems.

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I also penned some thoughts about difficult projects. I deliberately seek out difficult projects and my organisation deals almost exclusively with an organisations most difficult projects. There’s actually a different rhythm to a difficult project. It’s not about clearer thinking, or more experience, it’s a different process altogether.

Can you out-puzzle a difficult project?

Have you seen those puzzles that are small irregular shaped metal tubes all intertwined. The premise is that by putting them into the right positions, through the right sequence of carefully planned movements, all the pieces will separate. But until you know those movements, the pieces seem impossible to separate. You start using brute force but it does…

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My final selection focused on success, a common theme in my thinking and writing. I thought about why I still see so many bad project managers running projects and how we can sabotage our own success. Both made it into a post.

Why do bad Project Managers end up running projects?

It starts at the start

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Are you sabotaging your own project success?

One of the basic human needs, which everyone needs to satisfy, is the need for significance. This is about feeling valued, feeling like you are worthy, feeling like you make a difference. Everyone needs to feel this. We can get this feeling in a number of ways. But one of the ways we can get it, can sabotage our projects.

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