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Archive by category "Communication" (Page 3)
Project management is often about learning to communicate in another language. I’m not talking about a national language, but instead the language of the industry or domain that we are working in.
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October 19, 2011 Bruce Benson
Communication
My job was to evaluate how well our government projects were doing. The projects were expected to be using the prescribed latests and greatest project management tools and development technologies to help ensure they were successful. Here is how we finally achieved an "A" in our project management.
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September 23, 2011 Bruce Benson
Communication
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Project management is often about getting people to do the things we need them to do. Here is how we got people to better follow policy by improving how we communicated and how we can apply this to managing projects.
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September 12, 2011 Bruce Benson
Communication
In trying to get a handle on improving product performance, we discovered that simple examples were more effective as project management tools than were complex charts and spreadsheets.
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March 29, 2011 Bruce Benson
Communication
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Meetings are seen as either the way we manage projects or the bane of efficient project management. Can boycotting meetings really help us straighten this mess out?
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March 15, 2011 Bruce Benson
Communication
It is a big deal today. Project management tools to get people together. Crowd source. Wisdom of the crowds. Even in the Agile Manifesto: "individuals and interactions over processes and tools." Hogwash!
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June 28, 2010 Bruce Benson
Communication
Balance using your messaging (e-mail, texting, voice mail, etc.) project management tools with talking one-on-one to key people, but beware of overdoing it when talking in person.
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November 30, 2009 Bruce Benson
Communication
My article on e-mail infoglut resulted in a pointer from DoddsSimon to Inbox Zero by Merlin Mann. Merlin takes classic time management ideas and applies them to e-mail. One notion he presents is that much of your e-mail becomes "dead skeletal husks" and can be thrown away. I'm going to suggest instead that your "old" e-mail can be a great project management tool.
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November 24, 2009 Bruce Benson
Communication, Time Management
Reducing the project management tool "honesty buffers" is a way to rapidly improve the organization. Much of what I've talked about assumed that we really did know what was going on, and it was more a matter of just delivering the facts than figuring out what the facts are. When we don't yet know the facts, but must report or update senior management, hard facts are often readily available such that we can supply something more concrete than "we don't know yet."
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November 12, 2009 Bruce Benson
Change Management, Communication
Eliminating “Honesty Buffers” helps to confront your organizational project management bad habits and hence improve your productivity and quality. Here are nine techniques I’ve used to successfully reduce the “Honesty Buffers.” In Eliminate Your Project Management Honesty Buffers I talk about how you can apply...
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November 3, 2009 Bruce Benson
Change Management, Communication, Reporting
Manufacturing buffers help to smooth over problems at each stage of production. The project management tool "honesty buffer" is when someone holds back reporting issues and problems to make things look better than they are. Reducing or eliminating such buffers quickly exposes problems and enables rapid process and quality improvement.
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October 29, 2009 Bruce Benson
Change Management, Communication, Reporting
Look into using your existing business systems as part of your project management tools. The business systems used by everyone to do their daily jobs can often provide more current and predictive information than relying solely on our traditional project management tools.
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September 2, 2009 Bruce Benson
Communication, Reporting
If we want a successful project, we may want to develop it remotely, so it is away from the chaos of the main office.
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August 30, 2009 Bruce Benson
Change Management, Communication, Reporting
The problem with being a good project manager, or any kind of good manager, is that often your project or organization is running along too smoothly. You stay on top of the issues and continuously improve the way you do things based upon feedback from your team and customers. Boring!
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August 17, 2009 Bruce Benson
Communication
What you say and how you say it may have more impact than you expect. Communicating is one of your key project management tools. Just be sure you do speak up and be reasonably persistent in getting your ideas out to the team.
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August 9, 2009 Bruce Benson
Communication
