“Acknowledgment is a heartfelt and authentic communication that lets a person know their value to the organization and the importance of the contribution that they make.” From ‘The Power of Acknowledgment’ by Judith W. Umlas.
By Fredy Rhoehrs Plenty of risk, slow growth and unpredictable forecasting is what I hear when I am speaking with project managers today. Large organizations are facing big challenges in today’s economy. The most obvious of these is the euro zone’s debt crisis, which will limit growth for companies across the entire world.
More preoccupied with risks than opportunities, companies will remain cautious in their spending and project management investments.
“When a risk occurs, with some ingenuity, this may open up an opportunity, and conversely when pursuing an opportunity there will be associated risks. Risks are generally deemed acceptable if the possible gains exceed the possible losses.” – Rory Burke
What’s the view?
I believe project managers today will need to have an objective view of required contingency to account for cost and schedule uncertainty as well as analyzing the cost effectiveness of risk response plans. All project managers should be able to run applications and technology in order to:
Identify common scheduling pitfalls that may result in misleading schedule or risk analysis results
Integrate pre-developed risk registers and define new risk registers
Address full lifecycle risk management through advanced Monte Carlo-based cost and schedule analytics
Report confidence levels with regards to finish dates, costs, float, internal rate of return and net present value
What’s the solution?
The solution lies in following a systematic process of identifying, analysing and responding to project risk over the full life-cycle of a project and being able to report accurately on risks and risk management plans.
One such solution is provided by Oracle’s Primavera software. Risk Analysisis a full lifecyclerisk analytics solution integrating cost and schedule risk management. Primavera Risk Analysis provides a comprehensive means of determining confidence levels for project success together with quick and easy techniques for determining contingency and risk response plans.
You are invited to watch this educational video from the Primavera Youtube Channel related to how to reduce risk and complexity in large organizations:
Let me know what your thoughts are and please enter your comments below in order to understand if your business challenges today could be resolved using Oracle Primavera.
About the author:
Fredy Roehrs is an experienced business development consultant for project management solutions in Oracle Primavera. With proven business relationships in Middle East, Latin America and Spain; he can provide real solutions to all the project management challenges your company face today.
A novel approach to preserving memories before it is too late
By Lisa Chait
Picture the scene: It’s 2054 and a 15 year old somewhere in the world is putting the final touches on his family tree for a school project. He goes online using the latest version of the iPad (can you imagine it?) and types in his mother’s maiden name. Google throws up a few bits and pieces but one particular find catches his eye. It’s a YouTube clip of an interview with a woman who somehow looks familiar.
He has already used Geni.com to get a broad layout of who is who in his ancestry. With the amazing reach of the Internet and input from others around the globe – each contributing data and photos – the grid is rich and full.
The woman whose interview Google has found is, according to the tree, his great, great, great, great grandmother. It is the very first time he has come across her. Excited, he clicks the link … and watches her come alive.
‘Dear family’, I am your ancestor and I know most of you watching this will never meet me because I will be long gone.
But I want to tell you my Life Story because it is who I am. And more importantly, it is who you are and where you come from.‘
Memorable Project
The clip is part of the Life Stories Project that was started in 2010. Essentially what this memorable project does, is to record memories so that clients can have a record of the stories and personalities of their ancestors for future generations. Simply put, it helps people Talk Across Time.
People record their parents, grandparents, colleagues or friends stories and sometimes their own Life Stories are captured as a family legacy for their children and children’s children.
These stories offer a window into a world that will be lost forever with their passing. And they also magically take you back into the locations, stories and personalities of their parents, grandparents and even great grandparents. They have a precious key into the past that will now be preserved forever through their telling. It is about recording history NOW for future generations. Not leaving it until it is too late and we are left saying, ‘We should have’ or ‘I am so sorry we didn’t.’
The Life Stories Project team consists of researchers, interviewers, camera people and sound recordists, commissioned to record peoples lives and then edit them into beautifully watchable or readable experiences (DVD, Audio and written). The team trawls through amazing photographs and old film, discover letters, documents and fascinating mementos. They ask questions and get wonderful, moving, funny and poignant answers, supporting people to share what is most precious – the story of their lives.
The project goal is to create thousands – even tens of thousands – of conversations across time and geography that are archived forever on DVD, CD and in text. But also available online on open or private platforms so that they don’t get lost and are accessible and sharable at the click of a button.
It doesn’t matter how you do it! Use a cellphone to record, sit down after dinner or go and visit a family member. Just take something down. Anything! Or consider using the Life Stories Project team to come and handle it for you. Don’t regret not having captured your heritage.
In terms of the project vision, the team doesn’t look for lives worthy of blockbuster scripts, or ones that publishers might consider bestsellers. The project supports wonderful regular folk whose story is important and fascinating because of its intrinsic and genealogical value. Every life is important – and even more so when the family wants to capture it. The simple idea is to help people share these stories with the future. And it is the greatest privilege to do so.
And remember to let us know in the comments what you think of this project!
About Lisa Chait
Lisa Chait is a former history teacher and radio talk show host. More recently she has co-produced, written and presented the SABC3 television and online series ‘I Am Woman Leap of Faith’(www.iamwomanseries.com). At last count it had 38 000 online viewers. Lisa has sat up a pole for charity at the V & A Waterfront raising R1.2 million for the prevention of child abuse. Lisa is also the passionate founder and project director of Life Storieswww.lifestories.co.za.
As a project manager you have to deal with multiple meetings almost every day. Whether you plan for which meetings to avoid or attend, you cannot deny the fact that meetings are crucial for planning and delivery of projects you manage.
In these meeting, you may to interact with your project team members, colleagues, customers, partners, project sponsors, senior management on various aspects of projects like issues, plans, progress, risks, budget, resources, etc.
As a project manager, you always have limited time and if you are anyway going to spend it in these meetings – why not utilize it to the best possible extent?
Here are 7 tips to help you in effectively managing your meetings.
1. What do you want to achieve? (Objectives)
Unless you have clear objective(s) to achieve as a result of a meeting, the meeting and discussions may not lead to anything useful to organization also, potentially wasting every attendee’s time. Before you call for a meeting or attend a meeting, ensure that you have clearly defined objectives that you would like to achieve.
2. What are you going to discuss? (Agenda)
Meeting agenda sets the roadmap for meeting – as what meeting participants can expect. As an organizer you should share meeting agenda with everyone invited, well before the meeting.
3. Who is going to drive it? (People)
If the meeting is expected to conclude in terms of some decision, you will have to ensure that there will be a senior representative – decision maker, present in the meeting. The steering committee may make all useful discussion, but if it is going to be a senior manager who is expected to approve it, organizer should inform him/her about it and invite them to meeting.
4. Are you discussing off-topic and wasting time? (On-track)
It is not uncommon to see that meeting discussion goes off-topic, sub-group of people starts discussing within themselves. As a meeting coordinator, everyone would expect you to direct all such discussion to the point and that you insist everyone to focus on the agenda.
Of course, quick humorous notes/comments are just fine to make the meeting environment little relaxed and healthy.
5. Criticize concepts/concerns and not people
Project team members and stakeholders may have differences, liking for one topic over other or preference for one resource over other; however it is important to focus on the concepts, ideas rather than preferences in people.
Sometimes, meeting participant may tend to criticize other attendees. If you are in the best position; you should drive them to discuss the concept rather than the proposer.
6. Understand, Accept differences and Propose Solution
Sometimes there are bound to be differences of opinion and for meaningful discussion, you need not have unilateral/consensus on a given topic. As a meeting attendees, you should be able to accept these differences, record those and understand what works best for your organization and meets the goal of meeting.
7. Share MoM, Action Items to follow up
An equally important point to carry out is post-meeting activities. Always record minutes of meetings (MoM), enlist action points with a due date and assignee and share this information with all meeting attendees.
I am sure, as a project manager you have plenty of meetings to attend every week, too many emails to go through and plenty of agenda, MoM, action items to search through. There is no easier way of organizing all information than using central meeting manager system.
Bottom line
A meetings is like a drawing board and it’s critical to the success of project planning and delivery. You should carefully plan for it, attend and conduct it effectively.
How do you make your meeting more productive? Please share your experiences in the comments.
About the Author:
Dhan is co-founder of Zilicus, the technology company that offers online project management software – ZilicusPM. ZilicusPM helps organizations in managing entire lifecycle of projects with advanced project planning, risk management, issue tracking, timesheet management, meeting management, document management, resource management, reports and dashboards.
This article is aimed at students who consider internships to expose themselves to more career opportunities, for example in project management. Also discover 5 tips for best performance on internship programs.
As a college student, you may want to take on a business internship. This is a type of on-the-job training that prepares you for your future career, whether this is in project managementor any other field. Suitable internship opportunities can give you a better feel for project management and what it entails, especially if you happen to find an internship program that allows you to use your creativity, initiative and ability to guide others.
Why Should an Internship Interest You?
Just as a student studying Education needs experience in teaching, business students need internships offered by businesses. However, future employers also look for graduates with some professional experience out of the classroom. They look for candidates that take initiative and do more than just the coursework necessary to get their degree – and a project management internship could give you this experience.
Where to Find this Type of Internship
While many businesses offer specific internship programs, many of these don’t deal with project management, as this can be a delicate and complicated process. If project management is your aim, then you could look for this type of internship in the non-profit sector. It is easier to find a non-profit with internship positions for students that pertain to getting a certain project or process completed.
If you take on an internship offered with the sole purpose of completing a certain project, be sure you understand what the project goal is and the company’s expectation is. Ask all the questions you need in order to understand the expectations of the project sponsor and what defines project success. This will allow you and the team to develop the plan and to verify the goals.
Identify the project success criteria, how each of the tasks will be accomplished and tracked, and the time frame for when these will be achieved. This is part of the Planning phase of a project.
#2- Identify Team Responsibilities Early On
Once you have a plan you can determine what you and the team are responsible for. Whatever your project is, remember that this is not an individual study. A project team is a working unit, sharing one goal, but each member has its own responsibilities. If you take on the role of project manager, you need to identify the skills and talents of each individual team member and put those skills to work (much like your sports team coach does).
#3 – Identify the Project Milestones
With the help of your team members, you should identify the project milestones. Remember that each project has four phases; initiation, planning, execution and closure. Evaluate the process of the project against these phases and place time limitations on each of these.
#4 – Project Communication
One of the most critical parts of project management is to communicate regularly with stakeholders like management and team members. Keep everyone informed of the process and keep communications open, honest and as concise as possible.
#5 – Test the End Result
Before delivering the end results you should review, and if possible, test the results to make sure they are correct and according to expectations before delivering the finished product.
Conclusion
Many students are apprehensive about entering an internship program, and some even more so when it has to do with project management. So it’s important to realize that any company that gives you an internship position and project to manage, won’t give you any project that they don’t feel you are completely capable of handling.
As an intern you won’t receive a critical business project to work on. Even so, any project offered to you offers you a great opportunity to gain experience in the field. It offers you the opportunity to learn how project management teams really work and what is expected of you.
About the author: Jennifer Moore, an experienced business and tech writer, once worked on many training-team business projects for large corporations such as General Motors, John Deere and Trico. She frequently contributes to Degree Jungle, a research resource for college students and young professionals.
Recently I attended a Project Management Conference in South Africa, Next Generation Project Management. One of the Keynote speakers was Peter Taylor, who became known for books like “The Lazy Project Manager”, “Leading Successful PMO’s” and “The Lazy Winner”.
The Art of Productive Laziness
In his presentation about “The Art of Productive Laziness”, he introduced us to lazy project management. What he means by this is that we should all adopt a more focused approach to project management and to exercise our efforts where it really matters.
One of the quotes he likes is: “Progress isn’t made by early risers. It’s made by lazy men trying to find easier ways to do something” by Robert Heinlein.
Making this applicable to project managers, what he’s recommending is to identify the 20% of work you need to do today to get 80% done and that will move your project forward. In other words, prioritise the most important things first.
His Lazy Project Manager’s Theory of Projects, from a Productive Laziness perspective is:
‘All projects are thick at one end, much thinner in the middle and then thick again at the far end.’
According to the productive lazy rule, a smart project manager should apply time and effort at the critical stages of a project, i.e. the start and the finish, and less time in the middle or the less critical stage.
At the beginning a project manager needs to be ahead of the game by making sure you agree on the project scope, manage your Sponsor and properly plan your communications.
Learn as much about the project sponsor as you can from other project managers who have worked with him/her, and have a discussion with the sponsor to ask open questions about their expectations and concerns. Try to understand the sponsor as best you can.
Customise communications to be appropriate to the stakeholders. Do regular health checks and work with the people on your team and encourage them often.
Lastly he shared some best practices relating to the project retrospection that happens at the end. The prime directive for this is to make it clear that regardless of what is discovered, the team understands and truly believes that everyone did the best job they could, given what they knew at the time, their skills and abilities, the resources available and the situation at hand.
Some of the Key questions to ask include:
What worked well?
What should be done differently next time?
What do we need to discuss more in greater detail?
What did we learn?
I found it to be an interesting and valuable perspective on project management. Leave a comment and tell me what you think!
Non-profit organizations have special needs when trying to manage the resources to meet their goals. Unlike for-profit organizations, they primarily rely on a “staff” of volunteers, and the majority of their funding comes from grants and donor funds. Project software must have special characteristics to help non-profits meet their goals.
Here are just a few selection criteria that non-profit organizations can use when choosing the right project management software for them.
Ease of Use
A large staff of volunteers may not have much technical expertise or feel comfortable learning complicated software systems. Any project management software that you choose, must be easy to use and learn. Basecamp is one example of an easy-to-use program that allows you to track projects and tasks in an online system.
Ability to Handle unique Accounting needs
The software program, Serenic Software, offers a market-specific success kit for NPOs that helps with maintaining a current, accurate, and transparent picture of your financials.
Ability to Manage Volunteers
After fundraising, recruiting and managing volunteers is one of the biggest tasks that non-profits face. Project software should make that job easy by allowing you to monitor all your volunteers in one database. Podio is one useful system that allows you to collaborate with your team, monitor tasks and projects, and monitor your recruiting efforts.
Free or Low Cost
Non-profits are always working on a budget, and being at the whim of grants and donations makes it especially important to find ways to cut costs. There are a few options for free or low-cost project management software, likeBasecamp, and Huddle. Explore these options to find one with the best features to meet your needs. Cost shouldn’t be the only factor, even though it’s an important one!
Project software can help you to better track your goals, manage the work of your volunteers, manage recruitment, track grant application and expenditures, and much more. It is important to keep these criteria in mind when shopping for project software, including trying to find some free or low-cost options to meet your budget.
What other criteria did you use when selecting project management software for your non-profit? Share your picks in the comments!
Sarah Clare is a writer and researcher for projectmanagementsoftware.com, which offers advice and reviews of project management solutions. She has recently been researching project planning software. In her spare time, Sarah enjoys cooking and scrapbooking.
Good leadership skills are what make a good project manager great. This article will explore the attributes that would make the project manager a great leader.
Inspire a Shared Team Vision
For a project to work, everybody needs to share the same vision for the project. Great project managers help all team members feel like they have an equal stake in a project, and empower everyone to share and experience the group’s vision. When team members share a similar vision, they are committed to deliver their best.
Integrity
Good leadership requires commitment and adherence to ethical practices. Good project managers abide by ethical standards and reward those team members who follow suit is part of the responsibility of the job.
Great Communication Skills
Project managersneed to clearly communicate goals, performance and expectations; and they need to manage feedback coming at them from all directions. Being accessible, open, and direct is critical for being a good communicator. Further, having the ability to persuade team members to do certain tasks a bit differently, or work overtime when necessary, is equally as important. Overall, a project manager’s overall effectiveness is often realized by the ability to communicate effectively.
Competency in the Subject Matter of the Project
Team members need to feel like their project manager has some degree of expertise in the project’s subject matter. As such, project leaders should have the ability to lead their team with technical expertise if the project so requires it. Leaders who are seen as competent by their peers have the ability to inspire, enable and encourage.
Promote Team Building
A project manager must understand team building dynamics. He or she must go through each phase of team development – even when conflict arises – and get the team to focus on the common goal. Great project managers foster a sense of unity on the team, across personal dynamics.
Good with Task Delegation
Assigning the right tasks to the right people and trusting them to leverage the best of their abilities is a key characteristic of a great project manager.
Good Problem Solving Abilities
Great project managers solve problems by sharing the responsibility with the experts on their team. This means leveraging the knowledge of those team members and stakeholders who have the expert knowledge to assist; and setting a plan to solve tough problems by harnessing that team experience.
Stay Cool Under Pressure
In a perfect world, every project would complete on time, on budget, and on scope. Unfortunately, when the going gets tough, good project managers remain calm. Warrant Bennis stated: “Out of the uncertainty and chaos of change, leaders rise up and articulate a new image of the future that pulls the project together.” Great project managers stay cool under pressure.
I like this definition of Leadership: “leading is about establishing direction and influencing others to follow that direction”. This is a good indicator of how project managers should lead their project teams.
As a project manager you lead and facilitate the team members to work towards the same goal consistently.
About Linky van der Merwe: Linky is the Founder of Virtual Project Consulting. Her mission is to provide project management best practices and to recommend resources to aspiring and existing project managers. A certified project management professional with more than 13 years project management experience and a track record of more than 30 successful projects.
This promotional article is aimed at seasoned project and programme managers in South Africa who aspire to be more successful and outstanding in how they deliver projects. The information to be presented will also apply to CEO’s, Managing/ Project/Chief Directors, Engineering Directors, Project Leaders, Operations Executives, COO’s, HOD’s, I.T. Directors, Municipal Managers, Financial Project Managers, Team Leaders, Project Planning Managers, Business Analysts, Construction Managers.
Organisations more than ever are under pressure to operate and deliver more effectively and efficiently, place greater emphasis on stream-lining internal operations, increase focus on customer needs, on superior service delivery in relation to competitors and within shorter timeframes. This is necessary to retain their existing customer base as well as to increase their market share. With the current rate that Companies are moving at globally, coupled with the pace of change, now more than ever an organisation’s ability to execute (on time, on budget, to stakeholder expectations) is not only good for business but is a necessity.
This shift in mind-set requires organisations to have the ability to manage and effectively utilize their resources to the best of their ability to derive direct tangible value through the projects they initiate.
The Project Management Leadership Master Class will provide you with the essential insights in today’s industry and project efficiencies and touch on what’s required today to initiate, manage, monitor and drive delivery through the life cycle of a project successfully. Delivery is not only measured by the fact that it was brought to existence, but the manner in which it was executed and whether it is in line with the original expectations and business benefits of what it was intending to deliver.
Key strategies to be discussed, include:
Implementation of a project lifecycle methodology
Risk Management
How to deal with shortage of project management skills in South Africa
About the Author: Kiruben Reddy is the General Manager of Solutions Bridge, a 100% Black Women Empowered company and is Level 3 B-BBBEE certified. Your organization can recognize 110% of your spend for the Leadership Master Class hosted by them.
Today’s article is about matching your work style with a dream job. It shows how you can assess your strengths and skills; then how to create a transition plan to move you towards your new job.
Working in a field and within a work setting that matches your own instinctive abilities and workplace needs can make a world of difference in how you perceive your job and your goals.
The Conative Connection
When people place themselves in a role that matches innate work styles then the job feels right. You know the feeling even if you have never heard of the theory.
When people are most unhappy in a professional situation it is often because the job they are doing doesn’t match their inherent talents or desires. The Kolbe Index made me re-consider my career path and also see co-workers differently. Someone I perceived as stubborn in my other part-time workplace, I began to see as having a different way of problem-solving as me, and so I needed to shift communication tactics when dealing with that person.
Overall, the assessment provides insight into four main categories of instinctive “action modes” that people inherently use for creative problem-solving; these are:
Fact Finder – addresses the innate process an individual uses to gather and share information.
Follow Thru – addresses the “arrange and design” part of the work process.
Quick Start – addresses the way “risk and uncertainty” is interpreted and acted upon.
Implementer – addresses elements of dealing with “space and tangibles.”
The test then matches those indicators on a continuum of workplace strengths such as being able to: “specify, maintain, modify, and imagine,” among others. For each area people have varying degrees of innate tendencies; working with a team that is balanced across the continuum makes for a highly effective workplace.
Work Style and Happiness
Knowing your work style can help you narrow down the sorts of jobs that best match your conative ability (and also clarified for me the type of work environment or team that I was or was not willing to collaborate with in the future).
It also gives you glimpses of what your perfect job would be and lays a foundation for getting there. Here are some job ideas in growing fields based upon a few highly simplified work style tendencies:
If your passion is being analytical and seeing a problem through until its completion then these areas might be a good fit:
If you are more inclined to work on a sustained problem alone and in general feel the need to interact with people less, then here are some growing career fields would allow for that flexibility:
ROI methodology;
forensic accounting; and
IS security.
If it turns out that working with big ideas and using your innate charisma to influence teams and sustain growth is your passion then these areas might be a good match:
Six Sigma Leadership;
HR management; and
Business administration leadership.
Transitioning Smoothly
By and large everyone I have ever known that took the Kolbe Index found long lasting insights that are directly applicable to life at the present moment. You might feel that overwhelming sense to jump boldly on over to new meadows. Channeling some of that energy into creating a plan first is a great idea. Consider the following before your take the leap on over to your dream job:
Take a few online classes while you are still employed at your old job to be sure you have what it takes to be competitive for the transition.
Attend a few of the local chapter meetings held by professional organizations in the field(s) you are considering.
Attend a regional conference to learn more about key topics in the field, career growth, and employment opportunities.
Join LinkedIn and participate in forums related to your prospective field.
Explore volunteer or paid internship positions (most professional organizations have lists of opportunities on their homepage).
Identify an affordable and knowledgeable career coach and create a more detailed time line and action plan for the transition.
In a tough economy competitions for jobs is fierce; passion for a job is not enough to secure employment. Creating a strong transition plan will keep you focused on you dream, but also able to feed yourself in the meantime.
Ryan Sauer is a writer and editor for Bisk Education in association with University Alliance. He actively writes about project management and leadership in different industries and strives to help professionals succeed in getting their PMP certification online.
This was the title of an editorial that was published by David Pells in PM World Today in 2011. It was about the loss of experience and knowledge that was occurring as project managers retired. While this is particularly pertinent in South Africa where skills shortage is considered an acute concern, it is clear that this is a global phenomenon.
The reality is that in spite of all the technology that is available to us today, we have not yet found a presentation format that captures the essence of this wisdom in a way that is relevant to future usage, readily searchable and easy to store. It needs to be shared with present and future generations in a format that’s interesting and easy to use. This highlights the significance of project management, knowledge management and the lessons learned process.
Lessons Learned Discussion
Recently there has been a lively discussion about Project Lessons Learned on the Association of Project Management (APM) blog. A few key take-aways are shared here in order to understand how various individuals and companies have dealt with this requirement.
Some organisations have a more proactive approach and would gather in PM forum meetings specifically to share lessons learned from all projects from the whole PM team. This heightens awareness of problems, lets you see where the same thing is a happening and find solutions to prevent them from happening again. It also allows you to highlight the good things and not just focus on the problems.
The documenting of lessons learned on most projects is not particularly good. In many cases it isn’t done at all. Where it is undertaken (often only because it is mandated by corporate procedures) it is all too often seen as a tick in the box exercise. At least it sometimes is done. What almost never happens is a review of relevant lessons reports by new projects.
Some individuals create a Lessons Log during Project Start-up and record anything that could help to create a best practice for my projects. The Lessons Log is reviewed regularly along with the RAIDs (Risks, Assumptions, Issues and Dependencies) management documents at Checkpoint Meetings and Gate Reviews. This really makes a difference when populating the Lessons Log and makes the job of writing the lessons into the End-of-Project Report so much easier. (Colin Hewson, APM blog)
Lessons Learned a Contributor to Success
An interesting finding was published by Cranfield University School of Management. They conducted research to find out what helps projects to succeed or contributes to failure. They have found that the biggest differentiating factor between organisations that generally succeed with their projects and those that don’t is “the willingness to publish and distribute lessons learnt”.
Therefore it’s not enough to close out the project and to create a Lessons Learned report – the reports have to be made available to others in a way that makes them want to read and apply. The key capability here is communication and some best practices could be:
organising the critical information in a way that makes it appear relevant and easy to understand,
making the different stakeholder groups aware that the information is available,
ensuring that stakeholder know where to find it,
arrange things so that they can quickly turn the information presented into useful actions.
Unfortunately, most lessons learned, although captured, are not being communicated out, and key learnings mostly remain with the individuals involved. Also, for major complex projects, what you can actually capture in a report is only a small percentage. The only way real learning gets shared is through conversation.
Certainly access to historical information in the form of validated lessons learned will be a valuable way of helping people who want to deliver successful projects. The challenge is developing a way to make the information accessible.
Case Study: London 2012 Olympics
An excellent example of capturing lessons learned, disseminating it and applying it immediately is theLearning Legacy Project of the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) who was responsible for the London 2012 Summer Olympics. The Learning Legacy Project was developed to share the knowledge and lessons learned from the London 2012 construction project for the benefit of industry projects and programmes in the future, for academia and the government.
Reports and related information from the Learning Legacy have been categorised into ten themes on this website. Each theme contains short reports, tools and templates, case studies and research summaries that document how this area of work was approached and the lessons that have been learned and the successes that could benefit others.
Learn Your Lessons
Here are a few suggestions to ensure that we learn our lessons from past projects and that the knowledge is transferred across to future projects.
Create a plan for recording lessons learned at the end of each project life cycle phase. This can be done in the form of formal team meetings, to simply requesting that people post to a discussion board, wiki, or some other form of media. Reference: “Learn your lessons” blog, Projects at Work by John D’Entremont.
If an ongoing process of capturing lessons learned cannot be followed, consider conducting a closing review once your project is complete. A post-project review can serve two important purposes. It obviously aids in the collection of project historical data that can be shared, but it can also be a means of validating the work that your project team accomplished. The acknowledgement of work being done well provides good closure to the team members and a sense of achievement.
A more Agile principle is recommended by Anthony Mersino, founder of The Agile PMO, for teams to reflect at regular intervals, on how to become more effective, then to tune and adjust their behaviour accordingly. The teams need to be communicating and collaborating on what works well, what doesn’t work so well, and then use that to make change. It is discussed, debated even, and it becomes part of the teams shared journey and collective memory. The advantage of this approach is that you can immediately incorporate what you learned.
The PMO’s role in Lessons Learned is to make sure the teams are conducting retrospectives on a frequent and regular basis and incorporating the lessons learned into their planning.
Success Stories Shared Framework
As you can see from the Lessons Learned debate and the Learning Legacy project, this is a challenge that our current generation of project managers need to face and solve. In an attempt to capture the wisdom and transfer the knowledge to future projects, a framework is proposed.
This is to collect Success Stories from experienced project/programme managers in order to share experiences and to promote learning across the project and programme management community of South Africa and abroad.
Please visit the Success Stories Shared pageand send me an email should you wish to participate and to make a contribution in leaving a legacy to future projects and generations.
About the Author:
Linky van der Merwe is a Project Management Consultant who has worked in various industries including IT with various Microsoft Consulting customers in private and public sectors, Telecommunications (Vodacom), Retail (Woolworths) and Financial Services (Santam).
She is also the Founder of Virtual Project Consulting, an online company dedicated to equip and empower new project managers on how to become professional project managers, and to support existing project managers by recommending training, software, books and products. She educates through her blog by giving practical advice on project management processes, templates and tools based on best practices. She contributes to publications and by giving talks on relevant topics.
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