Tuesday, January 8, 2008

Putting things in perspective

One of the things that will make this blog important to you - I hope - will be frequent references and resources that you can use as a project manager. I'd like to start that trend right here on Day One by highlighting a website which is fun, informative, and interesting. I suggest you pay it a visit during a spare moment. You'll find yourself intrigued, entertained, and educated, all at the same time.

At least - that was my perspective.

The site is http://www.quirkology.com and it is the brainchild of Dr. Richard Wiseman, a professor at the University of Hertfordshire, in the UK.

As a project manager we need to understand our stakeholders (assuming that we have first done a fantastic job of identifying them). To understand and facilitate communications with those stakeholders, we have to understand their perspective - walk a bit in their shoes, as they say.

Dr. Wiseman's videos are indeed far-removed from project management. Or are they? Using the ideas he gives, not only about perspective, but about understanding visual and verbal cues, can help truly understand whether that estimate for test soak time is really 6 weeks, or rather could it be done in 1? See his experiment with Leslie Nielsen in which Leslie identifies his favorite food in two video segments (one food identified in each, that is). Dr. Wiseman challenges you to determine in which of the two Neilsen is lying.

I won't give the whole thing away, folks. Just check the site and have a look at the 5 videos.

And do me a favor....share your perspective after you come back here, okay? Thanks.

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