The discipline of project management is constantly evolving and maturing. Recent changes to the PMI Talent Triangle categories reflects this fact. PMI first introduced the Talent Triangle in 2015. The concept behind the talent triangle, was to help build recognition that, to be successful, in addition to technical project management skills (understanding scheduling, costing, risk,… Read More
Helping team members avoid the fears of working remotely
HBR (Harvard Business Review) recently published an article titled Managing your WFH paranoia. In the article, the author focuses on the impacts of the “out of sight, out of mind” concerns which many workers have developed over the course of the past year resulting from COVID-19 pandemic work restrictions. Such fears could include a sense of… Read More
How do you hold safe meetings when some team members are invisible?
After presenting on how to build psychologically safe virtual teams at a conference in November, one of the delegates asked me what suggestions I’d have to help her with a team where some of the members refused to turn their cameras on during video meetings.
Sink or Swim – How in 3 weeks we transformed our service delivery model
On March 17th, the Premier of Ontario declared a state of emergency in Ontario and ordered most business to be closed in order to reduce the spread of the COVID-19 virus. At that time, all the project management training and consulting services offered by WCP (except for Microsoft Project related training), were only available in-person. The highly interactive, scenario based, and hands-on nature of our project management workshops, did not (we had always assumed) make them conducive to virtual training.
Let’s bust an agile myth: Sprinting is agile
If the only agile framework you have been exposed to is Scrum, you could be forgiven for thinking that to be agile you must organize your work into sprints.
After all, agile delivery is incremental and iterative and a sprint is just a short iteration, right?
To escalate or not to escalate? That is the Question!
A review of troubled projects reveals that the inability of the project manager or team to appropriately escalate decisions or issues is a common contributor to failure.
Seven Deadly Project Manager Sins
In spite of an increased focus on competency in PM conferences, journals and online knowledge sources, organizations continue to experience project failures at the hands of incapable PMs. Identifying common negative behaviors that can contribute to these failures might be the first step towards recovery: Communication imbalance – communication consumes a significant percentage of a… Read More
Should you hire a contract PM? It depends…
Most organizations with titled project managers rarely have enough capacity to handle peak staffing situations. While some of the excess project demand could be managed by functional managers or other senior staff, there may still be one or more projects of sufficient complexity to demand the services of a professional project manager. Faced with such… Read More
Seven deadly sins of scheduling
Something I’ve taken for granted is a project manager’s ability to create and maintain a project schedule. The reality is that most “accidental” project managers spend at least as much time struggling with their schedules as they do getting real value out of them. No project scheduling tool is inherently bad, but there are a… Read More
I may be a “Crazy Fool” but I consider the A-Team to be agile!
When teaching agile classes, I’m occasionally asked if I could provide an example of an agile team from cinema or television. While the first Avengers movie does a good job of illustrating Bruce Tuckman’s stages of team development (especially storming!), they are far from being agile. The example I most frequently provide is that quintessential… Read More
PMI plus Disciplined Agile might be a marriage made in Heaven
The announcement of the acquisition of Disciplined Agile (DA) by PMI is almost a month old so I thought I would share my thoughts on it. There is no doubt that PMI has been flirting with agile progressively over the past decade. The launch of the PMI-ACP credential, the addition of adaptive life cycle considerations… Read More
The PMP Exam will be very different after January 2, 2021
The original text of this blog post has been updated to reflect PMI’s announcement on March 18, 2021 that the significant changes they will be making to the PMP exam will now take affect on January 2, 2021 due to the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. In their previous announcement, the changes were to take… Read More
You may be able to write your next PMI credential exam in your PJs!
For as long as many of us can remember, booking and taking a PMI credential exam has been done through Prometric. Last April we wrote how PMI has partnered with Pearson VUE, a global leader in computer-based testing, and how the PMI-ACP and CAPM exams were the first to be available through Pearson VUE. As… Read More
Kiron Bondale – one of the top 130 Project Management Influencers of 2019
On June 12, 2019, Kiron Bondale, Senior Consultant with World Class Productivity (WCP), was recognized as being among the brightest minds and influential thinkers shaping today’s project management industry. Those of us who know Kiron are not surprised he received this recognition. Kiron is a well known and sought after project management speaker and contributes… Read More
Agile advice from our ancestors
Old sayings might not be the first thing which comes to mind when considering agility, there are many proverbs which are apropos. Two heads are better than one (or the similar Maasai proverb “One head cannot hold all wisdom.”): I’ve found this saying to be useful when presenting pair programming. Prefacing an introduction of the… Read More
The PMP, PMI-ACP and other PMI credentials are about to become much more accessible!
Obtaining a PMI credential such as the PMP, CAPM or PMI-ACP designation is hard enough, but having to go to an exam centre to do so, especially if there isn’t one in your city, makes it just that much harder. Well good news! Starting April 1, 2019 (no this is not an April Fools joke)… Read More
Why Achieving “Project Success” is Not Enough
Every week management receives a status report telling them the project is on time and within budget and that the product will launch at the end of the first quarter as planned. The project is clearly on a trajectory for success – or is it? Upon completion, it is found that next quarter, a leading… Read More
Time to turf these project management terms!
Project management practices have been used since human beings first started to work together to achieve greater outcomes than they could have accomplished as individuals. Modern practice of the profession started in the 1950’s so it is natural that certain practices, tools and nomenclature will be discarded as the profession evolves. Unfortunately, some anachronistic project… Read More
WCP Strategic Partnership With CMC (Canadian Management Centre)
For over 55 years, CMC has leveraged their deep knowledge of Canadian business to become Canada’s go-to provider for business strategy and leadership training. In 2017, CMC (Canadian Management Centre) approached WCP to request that our companies form a strategic partnership. By our second meeting, it was clear to us that CMC shared our passion… Read More
How do we encourage organizational adoption of an agile mindset?
Changing mindset is all the rage in the agile community. Years of failed transformations which started with practice, methodology or tooling changes are convincing many that changing the hearts and minds of all stakeholders involved in value delivery provides a more safer road to organizational agility. But how do we change people’s minds? We aren’t… Read More