ICPM

The question is: "Should Project Managers Retire and, if so, what is the place for our project management elders amongst the project management community?" Having reached that age when one begins to think of leaving a "legacy", I was persuaded to attend a "Philosopher's Café". This assembly was arranged by our local university to discuss the subject of "The Place of Elders in an Ever-evolving Society". In his introduction, the facilitator observed that "In traditional societies the elders were respected for their knowledge and wisdom."

What me, upset? OK not you, but let’s consider the fact that perhaps one day, someone close to you may become angry. Perhaps even in the workplace. And you already know that communications become clouded when anger does the talking. Try this recipe next time anger appears on the menu.

People living in the LA area are big on perception.  Billy Crystal used to say, “It is better to look marvelous than to feel marvelous.”  Sometimes this works to your advantage.  When I was in my early 20s my hair started turning grey around the temples.  This gave me the appearance of being older and wiser and others took me more seriously as a consultant.   

Recruiting Team Members - The project manager has to follow the rules of the host organization. The PM must be aware of, and work well with, the levels of authority. If the PM is working within a Functional matrix, then he must be prepared to allow the employee’s functional manager to determine things like availability and the PM must provide feedback to the functional manager regarding performance. The PM has little authority to perform these tasks.

An Organizational Chart represents the structure of an organization in terms of rank. The chart usually shows the managers and sub-workers who make up an organization. The chart also shows relationships between staff in the organization, which can be:

Analogous estimating - Uses similar historical information to predict the cost of the current project. Such estimates are usually performed early in a project and rely on knowledge of the actual cost outcomes from similar projects.

Duration includes the actual amount of time worked on an activity plus the elapsed time.

Effort is the number of workdays or work hours required to complete a task. Effort does not normally equal duration. People doing the work should help create estimates, and the PM should review them. Duration estimating is assessing the number of work periods (hours, days, weeks,) likely to be needed to complete each activity. Duration estimates always include some indication of the range of possible results, for example, 2 weeks + or – 2 days or 85% probability that the activity will take less than 3 weeks. Activity Duration Estimating:

The most prominent tool applied with scope change control is the Integrated Change Control System. Because changes are likely to happen within any project, there must be order to process, document, and manage the changes.

This system may include:

A WBS identifies all the tasks required to complete the project. The focus of the WBS can be either Product (deliverable) or Project oriented, or both. WBS elements are usually numbered, and the numbering system may be arranged in various manners. If a WBS is extensive and if the category content is not obvious to the project team members, it may be useful to write a WBS Dictionary. This describes what is in each WBS element. It may also say what is not in an element. The primary purpose of the WBS is to develop or create small manageable chunks of work called work packages.

Constraints are factors that may limit the project management team’s options, whereas assumptions are factors that for planning purposes may be considered to be true, real, or certain. Understand the differences between constraints and assumptions, and be able to recognize examples of both.