Project Communication Series: Planning Meeting Agenda

I wanted to use this series as examples of basically all the types of communication that can and does happen on a project.  Since I have no real vision yet of format, it can really be anything.  Specific examples, templates, etc….anything worthy of discussion as relevant and necessary communication on projects.  I still feel that effective and efficient communication is the most critical responsibility of the project manager.  If our readers on here have suggestions of things to cover as part of the communication series, please send them to me or comment on this or subsequent articles.

Below I’d like to present something I found in Carl Pritchard’s book, “The Project Management Communications Toolkit.”  It is basically a template for the project planning meeting agenda – which, as we all know – is a very critical team-to-team communication point on any project.

Here is Mr. Pritchard’s summary for this agenda….

Purpose

Project planning meetings are held, as the name implies, in order to develop all or part of the project plan. They are intended as both data gathering and data-organization sessions. They are intended to generate not only the project plan, but a consensus on that plan and its implementation. The agenda serves as a guide for how these sessions will be held.

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March Survey – Remote Project Management

If you’ve been reading my articles for any length of time you’ll know that I’m somewhat passionate about remote project management and green or sustainable project management practices.  And I believe that one supports the other.

For my March survey – or at least March survey #1 (there may be more) – I’d like to get an indication on where our readership stands on remote project management.  How many of you out there are independent or involved in an organization that supports the management of projects in a primarily remote situation.

And for those of you who are, or have been, involved in the remote management of projects, I’d like to hear what you liked best or least about them.  The capabilities of my website right now still limit my surveying options, but I’ve put up what I think are common pluses and minuses with remote or virtual project management in a team environment.

Please take the survey – it’s completely anonymous and it’s brief … only five questions.  But I think the results could be very interesting.  I’ll close this survey down in 10-15 days and then do a follow-up article on PM Tips analyzing the results.

Please go to this address to complete the survey…

http://www.bradegeland.com/march-survey.html

If any of you survey takers have feedback or something you’d like to add after taking the survey, please feel free to comment on this article or email me at Brad.Egeland@pmtips.net.

Thank you in advance for taking this survey.  Your participation is greatly appreciated by me and everyone at PM Tips and Seavus – the creators of Project Planner and Project Viewer.

CEOs and the Changing Technology Around Them

Today’s CEO is challenged in a way that no CEOs were challenged before.  Technology is changing and too fast for even the CIO of an organization to keep up with, let alone the CEO.  Yet those critical decisions of company direction, how and where to grow the business, and what new technology to incorporate ultimately falls in the lap of the CEO.

How does one person do it?  The right answer is, they don’t.  It’s critical for the CEO to be surrounded by the right people to help him make good decisions for the company.  Just like an employee has to answer to their manager or management team, likewise the CEO is subject to the guidance, oversight, and decision-making of his board of directors.  Everyone is accountable to someone.

Making tough decisions

The CEO must make sound decisions on what new market niches to attack.  He’ll look to his marketing team and expect the right decisions will be made based on their analysis of the industry, but ultimately he’s responsible.

The CEO must make sound technology decisions.  He’ll look to the CIO or IT Director for their input on what direction to take, what technology to acquire, who to partner with, etc., but ultimately it’s his decision and the target is on his head.

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February 2010 PMP Survey Results

First, I want to thank all of our readers who took the February PMP certification survey.  I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I was very pleased with the number of responses and found the results interesting.

Certified or not?

Since this was basically a survey on PMP certification, I thought it might draw more certified PMPs to the site to take the survey.  I fully expected a majority of the responders to be PMP certified project managers.  I was somewhat surprised to see that a solid majority of the responses were from non-certified project managers.  60% of the survey responses were from non-certified PMs.

Passed on the first try?

45% of responders indicated that they have taken the exam by virtue of their ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer to this question.  In all, 88% of our survey takers passed the PMP exam on their first try.  PMI statistics have shown that 72% of PMP test takers pass it on their first try.  Therefore, we definitely have an above average group of PMP readers on this site.

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Virtual Teams: Key Success Factors – Part 2

As we identified in Part 1 – seven key success factors for virtual teams are:

• Human resource policies
• Training and on-the-job education and development
• Standard organizational and team processes
• Use of electronic collaboration and communication technology
• Organizational culture
• Leadership support of virtual teams
• Team-leader and team-member competencies

In this Part 2, let’s look deeper at the first four of these: human resource policies, training and development, standard processes, and the use of collaboration and technology.

Human Resource Policies

Human resource policies should support working virtually. Systems must be integrated and aligned to recognize, support, and reward the people who work in and lead virtual teams.

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