My Incredible Shrinking PM Recommendations
Simplify, simplify, simplify! This post describes why I’ve gone through all of my PM “Body of Work” and boiled it down to the essential few items you need to design and manage your projects with “just enough” PM discipline… and no burdensome PM administrivia!
I have been wandering through the world of project management (PM) for more than 30 years — first as a working project manager; then as an author, consultant, and trainer of PM newbies. Here’s a summary of my PM “Body of Work:”
My "Body of Work" in Project Management
My PM textbooks have been adopted by individuals, colleges, universities, and organizations (public and private). I’ve published articles, conducted informal PM studies, maintained this website (now for over 10 years!), published a blog/podcast (Inspired Project Teams) and have been a presenter at many professional conferences. I’ve also helped develop proprietary PM job/competency models. Finally, for more than 20 years, I have especially enjoyed creating customized PM Basics workshops and presenting these on site, for PM newbies in almost every industry imaginable.
My "Wisdom Filter" Working to Reduce Complexity
After so many years of explaining PM and helping newcomers apply PM to their own projects, I’ve developed a kind of filter (like the strainer shown above) that’s made up of my experiences. I call this my Wisdom Filter. And, as the years go by, I have begun more and more to engage this filter to help me strip out the needless complexity from the field of PM. The result is a simple, practical vision of PM which I call Project Management Minimalism. It’s based on these two premises:
- Despite what many PM “experts” and professional associations would like you to believe, it’s fairly easy for anyone to learn to use a few basic PM tools and processes to assure that projects are well-organized and completed on time, on budget, and with excellent results.
- A strong case can be made that extensive PM training and certification is a “nice to have,” not a “need to have.” (For more on this, see my article Beyond PM Certification: Achieving PM Performance Improvement.)
To support this PM Minimalist vision, I’ve gone through all of my PM “Body of Work” and boiled it down to the essential few items you need to design and manage your projects with “just enough” PM discipline… and no burdensome PM administrivia! And I’ve assembled this in an easy-to-use ebook, The Project Management Minimalist: Just Enough PM to Rock Your Projects!
- Click here to learn more about the The Project Management Minimalist ebook (including a sample and full table of contents).
- Click here to hear the FREE “Become a Project Management Minimalist” podcast or read the blog post on my Inspired Project Teams blog.
PM Minimalism: 10 Essential Steps to PM
This tight little 87-page e-book (PDF) includes:
- 10 Steps to Project Success, including (for each step):
- Overview – An introduction to what’s going on in the Step.
- Results – The end product of the Step.
- Process – The specific actions to take to complete the Step.
- Tool, Worksheet, Guidelines, Samples, etc. – Something you can use to help you complete the step and get top-quality results.
- 10 Sets of Challenges to Inspire Teams, including (for each Challenge):
- Quotations, war stories, examples, and a little philosophy that can inspire project managers and project team members.
- Reflections for you to think about… as project manager or project leader.
- Team Challenges – Questions and suggestions to challenge your teams to stretch and grow.
- Project Manager Challenges – Specific actions you can take as project manager or team leader.
- Learn More… – Books and audio references (with links) that can help you learn more about the topic of each particular set of Challenges.
- Hundreds of live links (just click and go!) to valuable online project management resources.
Posted: February 2nd, 2010 under Announcements, Project Management.
Tags: new book, Project Management Minimalist, project management teams, project management tools, project management training
Comments
Comment from Michael Greer
February 27, 2010 at 10:47 am
Thanks, Kaz! I appreciate the encouragement and your validation re: simplification. Best regards.
Mike
Comment from Kaz
February 27, 2010 at 5:51 am
Great site, Michael, and great post here regarding simplification of process in project management. It is funny how we come full circle with time and experience, first following methogology to the letter and then as we grow in our profession, we do become minimalists. ‘Keep it simple’ certainly works for me and is well received in todays project environments which demand deliver with minimal overhead! Keep up the good work and great information you offer.