On Thursday, April 19th I attended the Project Management Institute's Central Virginia Chapter's (PMI-CVC) dinner meeting. The keynote speaker, Dr. Ahmed Sidky, addressed the question, "What's the big fuss about agile?" One of Dr. Sidky's points in his address was that Agile is not a process, methodology, or framework; but rather Agile is a mindset.

Dr. Sidky's opinion is that a fixed mindset and an agile mindset have the following characteristics:

Let’s first level set on Organizational Change Management (OCM). It is not Change Control which relates to changes to business, system or other technical requirements.  OCM is the act of anticipating, preparing, managing, monitoring, measuring and supporting stakeholders through a transition. Regardless if that transition is large or small, technical, process, or organizationally driven.

People don’t fear change. We bring change to our lives all the time. We change jobs, get married, have children, move etc. People fear and reject change that doesn’t provide value to them or that they perceive as not valuable. As Project Managers, who by nature are inflicting change on an organization, you need to be prepared for your role in change management.

I submit to you that without realizing it, as an experienced Project Manager and/or PMP, you possess more knowledge than you realize to prepare you for your role in change management.

Introduction:

This month’s blog entry explores the complex relationship between project success and project leadership.  Risk of failure is potentially higher for IT projects than commonly acknowledged and, by all accounts, it would appear that success hinges less on strict adherence to methodology than on leadership.  Leadership, of course, assumes manifold forms, but in the context of this discussion I narrow it down to its core:  the moral/ethical responsibility of project managers to "tell it like it is," so that appropriate decision-makers can make effective decisions in a timely manner.

This is the third and final part of the Project Management Leadership series, the first of which was published on 8/18.  Here we make the link between success, leadership, and ethics explicit.  Ethics in project management elude rigid definition,but realism (rather than optimism) is critical to every organization's ability to think critically and to maximize the opportunities for effective and timely decisions at every organizational level.

Introduction:

This month’s blog entry explores the complex relationship between project success and project leadership.  Risk of failure is potentially higher for IT projects than commonly acknowledged and, by all accounts, it would appear that success hinges less on strict adherence to methodology than on leadership.  Leadership, of course, assumes manifold forms, but in the context of this discussion I narrow it down to its core:  the moral/ethical responsibility of project managers to "tell it like it is," so that appropriate decision-makers can make effective decisions in a timely manner.

This is the second of three parts, the first of which was published on 8/18.  Here we shine the spotlight on ethics in the context of project success.  Ethics in project management elude rigid definition, particularly as the PM discipline has evolved to encompass truly global projects, but even so, project management success is not synonymous with project success.