Is the world ready for earthpm.com ?

Are you ready?

Are you - and your project - green?

Today, my colleague Dave Shirley, PMP, and I are proud to launch a new website, EarthPM, which is focused on all things you might find at the intersection of all things 'green' and all things Project Management.

We're just getting started, but the site already has some interesting articles and is about to be supplemented with interviews and other resources related to how your project can be more earth-friendly.

You may just be curious. You may just be an expert. Either way, we would like your feedback and opinions and input. It's your earth. It's your project. Here's where they come together.

Relax, have a seat in your comfy chair, and enjoy 'The Lazy Project Manager'

Now, here is a book that is in harmony with the postings on this page and also written in a style that accommodates my sense of humor and philosophy of project management.

The Lazy Project Manager, a brand-new book by Peter Taylor, is, by his own admission, not a methodology nor a replacement for a PM book, nor a preparation for the PMP Exam. It is, however, written by a gentleman who is a PMP and who has a great deal of real-world PM experience. So you should pay attention regardless of what the book isn't.

What the book is, instead, is a collection of wisdom and coaching about how to manage projects in such a way that you are active and assertive as a PM when you need to be and only when you need to be. The author, a fan (like me) of Monty Python (see the Comfy Chair sketch by clicking here), and silliness in general, adapts one of Python's gimmicks as the common thread throughout the book: "a project is thick at one end, much, much thinner in the middle and then thick again at the far end". This is the opposite of a dinosaur, as theorized by Anne Elk (brackets, Miss, brackets) who stated, in her very own theory, which was hers, "all brontosauruses are thin at one end, much, much thicker in the middle, and then thin again at the far end".

Brontosauruses aside, the concept is that projects have the most need for attention and assertiveness by the PM at the starting and ending stages and in the middle need communication and management, yes, but in a much 'lazier', more monitoring and controlling fashion.

In his coaching and advice, the author tackles the usual suspects, feature and scope creep, the evils of email, reporting not being the same as communicating, dealing with a wide variety of project sponsors, and all cleverly illustrated not only with illustrations (the author is fond of two-by-two grids) but also illustrated with stories from his own experience and with jokes or brain teasers thrown in here and there.


Taylor does something that I have done on my blog and in my own writing - he gives you a chance to cheat. By cheating, I mean that he levels with you, the reader, the busy reader, the lazy reader, and says something like, "look, if you want to get to the bottom line, skip over to the last chapter now. You will miss some stuff but ... you'll get the idea". In fact, he even uses this principle of cheating itself to help explain the Pareto principle - a tactic I thought was particularly ingenious.

Another interesting thing about this book is the author's use of footnotes. Where many authors rely on footnotes only to reference their sources, Taylor instead takes the opportunity to provide a variety of other things in the footnotes. Don't skip them - or you will find yourself missing a recipe for a virgin bloody Mary.

So don't be lazy - get a hold of this book and read it, perhaps on a lazy summer afternoon.

Poignantly perpetuate your project's purpose

This is a not a book review.

I tend to review PM books, but also read some general management books and note their applicability to project management. That's the case with Nikos Mourkogiannis' Purpose. I heard about the book on several podcasts and decided it would be a good read - and it was.

What I would like to do in this brief post is to share a couple of takeaways from the book for project managers.

The book is about how organizations can "purpose" themselves for success, and one of my assertions about project management has always been that it is a microcosm for organizations in the larger sense. But, as we all know, there are also differences - significant ones - between projects and operations. So one must look carefully for the gems in books like this that can be adopted and molded a bit to fit into the context of a project.

One such gem is Mourkogiannis' determination of the sources of energy for the company - or in our case, sources of energy for the project.

The four purposes which I think you can apply to a project (just as the author applies to great organizations) are:
Discovery, Excellence, Altruism, and Heroism

Mourkogiannis' point is that although no two companies are alike, successful ones have excelled by drawing on one of these philosophies and "applying it with integrity". There is an undercurrent in the book about morality, one which makes even more sense in light of the recent embarrassing and shameful stories from financial and "insurance" companies such as AIG and the Madoff schemes*. This seems to make the book and its ideas even more relevant now. But I digress, I want to tie this to PM.

Below is what is in effect the heart and soul of the book. I still recommend that you read it but this captures the main idea.

I suggest that PMs could do best by focusing on the chapter, "The Real Value of Purpose", in which the author gives examples of how each of these moral purposes were "put to work" to build the culture for success at the companies he uses as examples. I think that PMs could model some of these purposes to infuse their projects with the same kind of culture and focus, paying attention to which one suits their project most aptly.

Check it out for yourself by going to the author's web-based purpose profiler.

And you can order the book from that same page. On purpose.

*AIG (as are other companies who were mired in greed and a lack of Purpose) is so embarrassed, in fact, that they are removing their own name from their own employees' badges and corporate buildings. I'm not kidding: see this article from today's news:
AIG Said to Remove Logo From Employees Badges.

Go Banana Slugs!

I never would have believed it unless I looked it up. And I did.

The official mascot for the University of California Santa Cruz is the ... Banana Slug. You can see one in action here.

What does this possibly have to do with project management? Not too much, but a little. I was asked to guest blog on the UCSC Silicon Valley Extension project management page, and I happily accepted. And this is before I knew about the Banana Slug logo.

So if you want to have a look at some posts - they may look familiar because some of them were re-treaded versions of ScopeCrepe postings, then you should slither over immediately (or whenever your sluggish activity gets you there) to:

http://svprojectmanagement.com

...and have a look at my three postings. But don't stop there, you will also find (or perhaps instead find) excellent material from other PM personalities. Give it a shot, ya big slug!

Let's Go Banana Slugs!!!