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If You’re Not Tracking, You’re Guessing. Tips for Making Project Tracking Easier
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If You’re Not Tracking, You’re Guessing. Tips for Making Project Tracking Easier

The thrill of tracking is probably not what keeps most of us in the field of project management. Unfortunately for those of us not too fond of tracking, it’s not really an option if we want to be able to answer the question most project stakeholders are asking, that is, “How’s the project going?” We also need a baseline, …

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Five Tenets of Project Customer Service
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Five Tenets of Project Customer Service

The trip my wife Elizabeth Larson and I took to South Africa to speak at this year’s BASSA 2013 ended well. The conference had over 200 registered participants, and the organizers kept the sessions moving smoothly. We were delighted with the response from the attendees, made new friends, and re-connected with existing ones. While travelling …

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So You Think You Want to be a Project Manager
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So You Think You Want to be a Project Manager?

I ran across an online discussion recently that posed the question: What would make you quit your job as a project manager? What would make someone not want to be a project manager? As I considered this, it didn’t take long for things to come to mind. I got to thinking about my students’ and …

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Project Management Lessons Learned from Jury Duty Part 3
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Project Management Lessons Learned from Jury Duty Part 3

This is the third and final part of a three-part series on the lessons learned from jury duty. In Part 1 I explored the analogy of potential jurors waiting for assignments to stakeholders waiting for their end product. In Part 2 I examined the importance of communicating the complete scope, and in Part 3 I …

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Email Best Practices - Top 3 (Back by Popular Demand)
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Email Best Practices – Top 3 (Back by Popular Demand)

Oh the joys of a vacation…and the agony of going back to work. For many, it’s the email in-box that we dread returning to most. After a week of vacation, how many unread emails do you expect in your in-box?  100?  500?  1000? I believe that somewhere in the not-too-distant future is a world free of …

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IIBA Business Analysis Summit Southern Africa - Part 1
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IIBA Business Analysis Summit Southern Africa – Part 1

 Part 1 – The Process. We recently traveled to the IIBA Business Analysis Summit Southern Africa, and were exposed to several different “systems” as we traveled from Minneapolis to Cape Town: the TSA in the US, airlines, security in Amsterdam, and yet a different airline. They all manage to get the job done, but with …

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Project Management Lessons Learned During Jury Duty
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Project Management Lessons Learned During Jury Duty

Part 2—Communicate Complete Project Scope  In Part 1 of this jury duty blog I discussed how, when called to serve for jury duty, I had no idea that so much of my time would be spent waiting for something to happen. I compared this wait time to what many of our business stakeholders experience waiting …

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The Power of Partnerships
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The Power of Partnerships

 The power of partnerships is a simple concept that applies to many obvious examples, like business partnerships or marriage. It’s also a key concept that I find myself spending more time on in project management training because of the profound implications it has for projects. You can also find partnership examples and their impact on …

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Lessons a Business Analyst Can Learn on Jury Duty
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Lessons a Business Analyst Can Learn on Jury Duty

Part 1—Why Do We Have To Wait So Long?! The reality of a jury trial is different from what we see on TV or read in books, where the action moves quickly towards the acquittal or conviction of the defendant. On TV the opening arguments, the witness interrogation, and the closing arguments are all pertinent …

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Staying Fresh - Three Keys to Growth in Everyday Interactions
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Staying Fresh – Three Keys to Growth in Everyday Interactions

 August makes me think of lots of things: hot summer days, lemonade stands, and one of the most popular topics in the media this time of year, the summer slide. I’m not talking about the summer slide like the one you’d see at a swimming pool. I’m talking about the “slide” of students who fall …

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