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    Neal Whitten's Let's Talk! More No-Nonsense Advice for Project Success
    Neal Whitten's Let's Talk! More No-Nonsense Advice for Project Success
    Neal Whitten's Let's Talk! More No-Nonsense Advice for Project Success
    Ebook562 pages5 hours

    Neal Whitten's Let's Talk! More No-Nonsense Advice for Project Success

    By Neal Whitten PMP

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    About this ebook

    Neal Whitten's Let's Talk! More No-Nonsense Advice for Project Success focuses on best project behaviors, by answering more than 700 insightful, personal, and sometimes sensitive questions on a broad range of topics from leadership, communication, and culture, to accountability, ethics, and conflict resolution. Following on the heels of Neal Whitten's No-Nonsense Advice for Successful Projects, this book offers more of the no-nonsense advice that has helped countless leaders and projects. This book is for those who aspire to become consistently effective leaders, project members, or employees and therefore become more valuable to their projects and organizations.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBerrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.
    Release dateMar 1, 2007
    ISBN9781567263039
    Neal Whitten's Let's Talk! More No-Nonsense Advice for Project Success
    Author

    Neal Whitten PMP

    Neal Whitten, PMP, is a popular speaker, mentor, trainer, consultant, and author in the areas of project management and employee development. He has more than 35 years of front-line project management, software engineering, and human resource experience. Neal is president of The Neal Whitten Group, and is a sought-after project mentor who has helped countless project managers reach their potential and enhance their careers.

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      Book preview

      Neal Whitten's Let's Talk! More No-Nonsense Advice for Project Success - Neal Whitten PMP

      all!

      Introduction

      I am very fortunate to work with thousands of people each year—year after year. I make contacts through mentoring, consulting, and speaking; by leading training seminars and workshops; by performing project reviews and project management troubleshooting; and by writing many articles and books. These opportunities help me monitor the pulse of the people behind the projects, organizations, and companies. Throughout this journey, I have noted a common set of issues that are critical to the consistent success of these projects and organizations. Many of the topics and issues were addressed in my previous project management book, Neal Whitten’s No-Nonsense Advice for Successful Projects.

      This book also addresses these critical topics, focusing even more on behaviors and their importance to the individual’s success. The individual’s success, in turn, contributes to the success of projects and organizations. People want to emulate behaviors that will help them successfully turn their professional dreams into reality. This book, Neal Whitten’s Let’s Talk! More No-Nonsense Advice for Project Success, reveals best behavioral practices.

      The presentation style and formatting of Neal Whitten’s No-Nonsense Advice for Successful Projects was well received. Among other features, I included Q&As at the end of each chapter. I received considerable positive feedback regarding the value of the Q&As and how effectively they focused on specific issues. Because of this feedback, I have chosen to write this entire book in a Q&A format. This format:

      Lets you quickly find the most relevant topics, issues, and questions

      Offers smaller and more focused nuggets of information to enhance retention

      Makes the book especially useful as a reference tool in which specific lessons can easily be found and marked

      Gives you, the reader, a feeling of having a personal mentor by your side, guiding you through your workday.

      From this point forward, I will communicate using the Q&A format.

      Key strengths of this book

      Process to select Q&As

      Audience for this book

      Professional behaviors … plus more

      Similarity to Neal Whitten’s No-Nonsense Advice for Successful Projects

      Applicability of Q&As to you, your projects, and your organization

      Organization of book

      One last comment—mine and yours. …

      PART ONE

      Project Stakeholders

      Part One has eight chapters—one chapter for each of eight key groups of project stakeholders. These groups were chosen because of their universality across most projects and because I routinely field many questions about them. A sampling of the issues addressed in each chapter is listed below.

      CHAPTER 1: THE PROJECT MANAGER

      Taking on too many monkeys; understanding scope of accountability; behaving as an absolute dictator; working with insufficiently skilled project members; dealing with competing projects; developing project members; being both a project manager and a resource manager; dealing with difficult resource managers; taking on an excessive workload; and taking on a troubled project.

      CHAPTER 2: THE BOSS/RESOURCE MANAGER

      Focusing on employee strengths versus weaknesses; dumping employees on project managers; assigning jobs to employees; making commitments for employees; accountability for commitments made by employees; managing commitments based on priority; determining the closeness of your relationship with employees; dealing with poorly performing employees; frequency of performance evaluations; coaching, counseling, and tracking employees; your role in downsizing employees; employees tooting their own horns; and employees seeking help from their bosses.

      CHAPTER 3: THE PROJECT SPONSOR

      Finding a project sponsor; defining the relationship between the project manager and the project sponsor; disagreeing with the project sponsor; involvement of the project sponsor with the project; and what to do if a client/project sponsor relationship is disruptive to the project manager.

      CHAPTER 4: THE BUSINESS ANALYST

      Ensuring an effective requirements document; understanding the client’s business-related processes; meeting minimum requirements; producing results that conform to requirements; the power of the business analyst; creating a healthy contentious environment; disagreeing with the project manager; fostering a good relationship with the project manager; and being the client’s advocate.

      CHAPTER 5: THE PROJECT ANALYST

      Enabling the project manager to be more effective; providing primary interface to project management tools; assisting in the preparation of project plans; constructing an overall project plan; role in project tracking meetings; expanding the project manager’s reach; and backing up the project manager.

      CHAPTER 6: THE CLIENT

      Client not providing enough dedicated people; working with internal versus external clients; confiding in client about company-sensitive information; saying no to a client; honoring a client’s request that undermines a project’s outcome; what to do if the client is displeased with the project manager’s performance; and whether the client must always come first.

      CHAPTER 7: CONTRACTORS

      Hiring contractors in lead positions; contractor as the project manager or resource manager; treatment of contractors; begrudging contractors; uncooperative contractors; and cost-effectiveness of contractors.

      CHAPTER 8: VENDORS

      The project manager’s accountability over the vendor’s performance; low vendor quality; resolving disagreements with a vendor; what to do if a vendor removes project-critical personnel; overseeing vendor performance; and the criticality of the project manager’s leadership.

      CHAPTER 1

      The Project Manager

      "Shallow men believe in luck.

      Strong men believe in cause and effect."

      —Ralph Waldo Emerson, American author, poet, and philosopher

      Primary duties of the project manager

      Taking on too many monkeys

      PM as critical path

      PM’s accountability for all project members’ performance

      PM as absolute dictator

      Insufficiently skilled project member

      Deferring vacation of project member

      Competing projects

      Skill development of project members

      PMs writing performance reviews

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