Is planning a phase?
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- Created on Sunday, 08 November 2009 22:45
Below is a comment Erik hamburger of Ambidexter Management Inc. made on a discussion board on Linkedin. See here for the original posting.
I did read Bill's rant and will address that later but I'd first like to address the statement Colin made about Prince2 (P2).
Planning is not a phase in Prince2. It was not so in the 2005 edition and neither is it in the 2009-refreshed edition. In Prince2 phases (called stages) are what they are supposed to be, a management instrument! Prince2 also clearly makes a distinction between management stages and so called technical stages. Technical stages can be used to group work by the set of techniques it uses, e.g. design, build and implement. Technical stages can overlap, management do not. Each Prince2 project always has at least two stages: The initiation stage is mandatory, and there should also be at least one more stage to cover the rest of the project.
Prince2 has a process based approach, The Prince2 process model contains the following processes: Starting-up a Project; Directing a Project; Initiating a Project; Managing Stage Boundary; Controlling a stage; Managing Product Delivery and Closing a Project. Planning is done throughout the process model. Note that these are processes and not phases! "Plans" is one of the seven principles that are also part of Prince2
Why projects fail
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- Created on Sunday, 18 October 2009 21:50
Trick-or-Treat? And get what you deserve!
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- Created on Saturday, 30 October 2010 16:52
A little while ago I heard an interview on the radio with Robert Epstein, the author of the book “The case against adolescence”. His basic point of argument is that we keep our teens from becoming adults and that we treat them too much as big children. It's not an argument for more freedom but an argument for more responsibility.
The author shows that teenagers have more capabilities than most grown ups are willing to admit. Sounds familiar?
We coddle our teenagers too much and treat them as if not capable of making sound decisions for themselves. We treat them as stupid. And guess what? That's how they start acting.
So, are they acting irresponsible and stupid because they are or because we made them that way?
Based on the findings of Epstein and my own experience in the “grown up” - world I argue the latter. There is a more universal principle at work here: The principle that if you treat someone a specific way that person will start acting that way.
Call it a self-fulfilling prophecy by proxy. And now you have a reason to treat them like idiots because they act like them. And so it goes on and on.
In my encounters in the business world, the world of management, the workforce, I've come across a lot of “reap-what-you-sow” situations. Managers, bosses and supervisors complaining about their irresponsible, untrustworthy staff while not noticing that they themselves are more than anything else the cause for this behaviour.
I once had the pleasure of attending a role playing management game with a twist that proofed this point very clearly. It was one of those games where a simple case was presented with different functions/roles to be played by the participants. It was an air plane .png "Now That's Crazy")
manufacturer with a sales manager, an hr manager, a productions manager and so on. Each of the participants was given a short (not all the same) description of the situation and a description of the role and responsibilities of the person they were to play. So far nothing out of the extraordinary. The twist was that each of us got a cap and on that cap the facilitators attached a sticker with a character description. It was a short one or two letter description of the type of person each one of us was. The catch was that you did not know your own description. The added instruction was that we had to treat the other participants as per the sticker. We were not to tell the others about the description on their caps.
So there was 'a flirt', 'a comic', 'a tyrant', 'an indecisive guy', and a whole bunch others. And do you know what happened? Within the hour everyone was acting more or less as described on their caps. So the crabby gal really got crabby, the dumb guy was acting dumb and the bossy clerk was bossing everyone around.
I know that this not a scientific exercise but it has learned me very clearly that the old saying “As you sow, so shall you reap!” is very true. 
Especially when applied to dealing with people.
In other words, if and when you treat your people and colleagues like idiots, don't be surprised when they start acting like that.
Which Project Management Diploma have you chosen ? (PRINCE2 ? IPMA ? CAPM ? PMP ?) and Why?
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- Created on Tuesday, 15 September 2009 05:27
Below is an excerpt of an answer Erik Hamburger of Ambidexter Management answered on LinkedIn. Click here for the full question and all the answers.
I've done Prince2 Practioner, MSP Practioner, and prepared for IPMA B.
The primary reason for Prince2 was that at that time (1997) it had just emerged from the UK into the Netherlands and it seemed (and proved) to be a very powerful process driven PM methodology. I has studied the PMI PMBoK at that time and found (and still do) that more descriptive and Prince2 more prescriptive.
PMBoK and Prince2 can and should be used in conjunction. More about PMI a bit later.
What is a good mamager?
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- Created on Tuesday, 12 October 2010 21:27
I was once asked, as part of a management training course, to give my definition of a good manager. I was one of the last ones to give an answer. After a slew of a-dime-a-dozen platitudes (my perception, I agree!) such as "A great leader", "Very skilled in his/her practise domain". "A good listener" I answered simply: "A good manager is home on time. And so are his people"
In other words, don't try to be the hero PM/Leader/CEO