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Monday, February 19, 2018

Free Advice Retold!

Tell somebody you care, and how much they really mean to you. Let them know how they have changed your life

If you have children, encourage them with love, and let them know they are a blessing to you

If you live to make more money, get a (new) life!

If you aren't having fun doing your job, move on to something new

Reward excellent failures. Punish mediocre successes - Tom Peters!

Embrace change and do all you can to expose unethical behavior

Don't allow deadbeat managers and/or lazy executives to ruin your career or influence your project. 

Gossiping is for children and old women.  Don't be a part of the office gossip loop.

Great leaders with ethics and a solid morale center are rare. I hamve never met one; however I'm sure they exist.  Seek them out with everything you have

Executives have forgotten how to be leaders. Because of this, we have a 200 billion dollar trade deficit, stock option scandals, CEOs going to prison, massive layoffs, outsourcing to India, disloyal workers, and a plethora of corrupt politicians

Make sure before you go to work for an organization you know who is running the show

Love the unlovable

Be nutty at work, somebody will appreciate the break in the monotony

Find a manager in your company that is doing a bad job and ask them about the middle management shake up that is eminent. Walk away quickly before they can respond

Look at yourself in the mirror closely for 60 seconds. Feel really bad that you look so old, then remember that life is precious and be thankful to God that tomorrow is a new day

Challenge authority when it makes sense

Project managers can't be wimps

Don't respect unrespectable people. Avoid them, workaround them, go through them. They are career killers

If you like to solve problems and make a difference, work for a non-profit or charity

Be a blessing to somebody

Stephen F. Seay, PMP sfseay@yahoo.com

Saturday, February 03, 2018

A Glimpse at my Project Management Beliefs

Remove people from your team that don’t ask questions, don’t talk with other team members, won’t provide documentation, or won’t do analysis

Only people that aren’t competent won’t show off their work

Question authority or live with the result

A sense of humor can help get teams through tough times

A working meeting should have no more than five people. Meetings with more than five should be reserved for providing updates or relaying information

Project failure is planned at the beginning of the project

Project initiation is the most important project phase

Be honest in all your dealings

Project managers are expected to offer their opinions, but be accountable for their words

When it comes to project scope, what is not in writing has not been said

Have verifiable milestones

End of project surveys must be completed and the results distributed to the team

Bad conclusions lead to more bad conclusions

Documented assumptions are believed to be true for planning purposes

The best lessons learned come from failures

Without data you only have an opinion

Data doesn’t tell the whole story

Bad data leads to bad decisions

Senior management is usually clueless when it comes to what your project is all about

A bad project team will never deliver good project results

If your project sponsor isn’t responsive you should put your project on-hold until such time they can become involved

The bottleneck is at the top of the bottle

A project manager’s main job is to keep the customer happy

At the end of a project if you have met all scope, quality, budget, and schedule objectives, but the customer isn’t satisfied your project is a failure

Documentation doesn’t replace knowledge

Most people want to do good work. Many times they don’t have the tools or information they need to perform well, or they aren’t managed properly

Project managers aren’t successful if their team members aren’t successful

Not all successful project managers are competent and not all unsuccessful project managers are incompetent. Sometimes you just have to be lucky

Good project managers are insecure by nature

An introvert can’t be a (successful) project manager

A project manager with lots of enemies won’t be successful over the long run

You must be a relationship guru and be ready to fall on the sword sometimes

A project manager must be a motivator

If you don’t listen, you can’t plan

Project managers deal with change. You must be the change agent for your project. Your project sponsor is the change salesman