If only it were just about defining scope, creating a project plan, and tracking costs! Project Management obviously encompasses all those things, but now more than ever it’s also about relationship development, team building, influencing, collaborating, and negotiating often in a very complex environment. As my father often said, this job would be easy, if it weren’t for the people!

To those of you who made it this far into this article, kudos!  For many, as soon as they saw the words “earned value” in the title, they begged off.  No one wants to have the earned value conversation, particularly those folks who are not actively doing earned value.  But they could and they should.  Why?  They should give serious consideration to the earned value criteria because they’re criteria that actually lead to effective mechanical application of project management and its tools and structures.

How do you manage to create change and incorporate PM processes when stakeholders are telling you to minimize change as much as possible? Below, please find how my team and I were able to make successful changes that established a Program Risk Management Office, implemented an Organizational Taxonomy for Risk, and created a learning environment designed to build capabilities that ensure successful project execution.

Few things in life generate as much stress as the job search! For those in the midst of the job search process – this certainly isn’t news. For those who have gone through it, and that would be most of us, it could be locked away and filed under “Experiences We Wish To Forget.” Realistically, most of us will undergo the job search process more than once in our professional lifetimes – voluntarily or not, so it’s a good idea to think about what this entails and do a bit of prep work – just in case.

There are many kinds of teams.  A functional team is a permanent team established to conduct operational activities for a particular part of the organization, such as finance, sales, marketing, etc. 

There is no specified time limit on functional teams as they are needed to keep the business running.  A project team is brought together for a discrete period of time to achieve a defined goal.  At the end of the project the team is disbanded. 

Project teams are often matrix in nature, staffed by members taken from diverse functional teams in order to achieve the project goal.  When the Project Manager has a high degree of authority this is known as a strong matrix; when Functional Managers have stronger authority this is known as a weak matrix.

Here’s something I hear a lot in IT development teams:

• Users don’t know what they want
• Users are always changing the requirements

The other day I sat in a meeting with a development team PM and her client. The system, mind you, is already built, but not yet live. I listened, incredulously, as the users asked for one new requirement after another. It was like watching children go nuts in the grocery store while the slightly clueless parent says “Please Johnny don’t.” I was embarrassed for the PM because, quite frankly, she had done a very poor job of managing her users. 

There are times we all fall out of love with those things we cherish the most. Our closest friends, our homes, and our careers can all migrate from being what we treasure to becoming what we tolerate. And yet, with Valentine’s Day upon us, it’s a great idea to find ways to fall back into love. And yes, I’m talking about falling in love with your career as a project manager.