I'm in the middle of preparing for my PMP certification. It's amazing how much litterature there is out there. Currently I'm reading the "A guide to the PMBOK third edition" which is quite enough for a normal person. I've only made it to the planning part of a project (chapter 1), and I'm full :-).
What occurs to me is the risk of being to focused on producing documents. There should be a WBS (Work Breakdown Structure), an Activity Definition, Risk Management, Costs, Quality Plan, Communication Plan, etc. It all results in a plan with several documents beneath it. My feeling is that this a bit to much since it prevents you from doing what you should do as project manager, walk around in your team and make shure everything goes as planned and that there are no one comming to a halt. I talked to a friend of mine yesterday, Ulf Santesson, a very seasoned project manager. He told me about his current project in which he only maintains a high level plan for PowerPoint presentations where he lists the milestones and that´s it. He keeps the activity list (or WBS) in an Excel spreadsheet in which he can sort and search for almost everything. Using the spreadsheet he does project status followup each week and is thus able to track the progress.
From a management point of view it seems more 'agile' and frees him to handle the daily problems arising all the time. And the plan never gets obsolete ...
I think it makes more sense since it allows me as a project manager to focus on what really matters, the project and the people in the project.
The only thing he said he misses is the ability to say how much of the project is finished and how much that is left, but that's is a topic for another entry.
Research: When Employees Identify with Their Company, They’re Less Likely
to Recognize Gender Discrimination
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Beware the “not here” bias.
2 days ago
