Online Webinar
Duration: Blog article & Webinar 0.5 Hr
Credits: 0.5 PDU Category C
Posted On: SagePoint Software

Richard Wilner (LinkedIn profile) started SagePoint Software in 2008 and is currently Sr. Project Manager with Genzyme. In his blog article from August 2010, Richard highlights a TED Talk presented by Bill Gates. He says “In this TED Talk, Bill Gates provides a glimpse into his project management practice and approach. Bill’s “project” is to make the world a habitable and sustainable place for as many humans as possible.”

About the TED Talks

At TED2010, Bill Gates unveils his vision for the world’s energy future, describing the need for “miracles” to avoid planetary catastrophe and explaining why he’s backing a dramatically different type of nuclear reactor. The necessary goal? Zero carbon emissions globally by 2050.

About Bill Gates

Bill Gates is one of the best-known entrepreneurs of the personal computer revolution. After retiring from Microsoft, Gates has pursued a number of philanthropic endeavors, donating large amounts of money to various charitable organizations and scientific research programs through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, established in 2000.

PDU Category C documentation details:

Process Groups: Initiating Planning Executing

Knowledge Areas: 4 – Integration 5 – Scope 10 – Communications

• 4.1 Develop Project Charter
• 4.2 Develop Project Management Plan
• 5.2 Define Scope
• 10.1 Identify Stakeholders

As a Category C, ‘Self Directed Learning’, activity remember to document your learning experience and its relationship to project management for your ‘PDU Audit Trail Folder.’

Click to read Richard Wilner’s article Project Management Lessons from Bill Gates [TED Thursday]

Click to view the TED Talk Bill Gates on energy: Innovating to zero!

Articles / Video
Category C 0.25 (per article) to 2 PDUs (all articles + the Scrum video)

Here in Canada, it’s Barbecue Season and that got me to thinking about “Secret Sauce.” Every Outdoor Chef has his own special mix of ingredients to give that special taste – spicy, or sweet, tomato or fruity (mango, apricot or peach).

Yesterday, we highlighted a webinar on “Sharing the Secret Sauce: Lessons from a Business Analysis Mentor.” We followed up on that theme and a little research revealed several variations of the “Secret Sauce” for project managers and project team leadership.

5. Don’t Change the Secret Sauce by Todd Herman

“What’s your business’ secret sauce? Do you know it? If you do, great — you know what’s working, and you can keep doing it. If not, then you’ve got a problem — because something you do might inadvertently change your secret sauce and confuse, or alienate, your customers or clients.” – Todd L. Herman

4. Failure’s Secret Sauce: Poor Project Management by Joe Kunk

In this article, a software developer (Joe Kunk) explains the distinction between software development practices and project management practices.

In his opinion, “Experience over 30 years is that the root cause of most distressed or failed software projects is overwhelmingly due to poor or missing project management practices. Developer mistakes are relatively easy to remedy compared to poor planning, a lack of leadership, bad estimates or the impact of unanticipated risks.”

3. The Secret Sauce Of Your Gut Feeling by Simon Cleveland

“Next time you are in the midst of a project and something doesn’t ‘seem, smell, or sound’ right, it is because it isn’t right. … when your brain is telling you to watch out and pay attention, YOU are generally right.” Simon talks about trusting your gut instinct based on the latest scientific consensus as explained by Jonah Lehrer in the book How We Decide. Click to see a list of all of Jonah Lehrers wonderful books on decision making

For our Canadian and American readers, this “going with your gut instinct” was well illustrated on a recent episode of Ice Pilots NWT, a reality show focused on Buffalo Airlines (operating in Northern Canada).

In season 2 episode 6, the grizzled mechanic Chuck had a gut feeling that the oversized heat exchanger that had to go to Cambridge Bay would fit in the airplane even though the younger rampies and pilots said it couldn’t be done based on their math, computer charts and graphs.

The company trusted chucks experience and gut feeling. The veteran Chuck, was correct and the younger fellows had to concede that the piece could be transported. Ice pilots episodes are available on iTunes for $2.99 an episode.

2. The “Secret Sauce” that experienced PMs have and new PMs need by Cinda Voegtli

In this article Cinda Voegtli discusses how the “secret sauce” that comes with experience “can help new managers a great deal by coaching them on and modeling how to make judgment calls, how to apply the basics, how to adapt to different situations.”

1. Self-Organization: The Secret Sauce for Improving your Scrum Team by Jeff Sutherland

This video is a ‘must watch‘ Google Tech Talk by Jeff Sutherland, one of the founders of Scrum, about the ‘secret’ ways to achieve ‘hyper-productivity’ in an Agile Project Management environment.

Bonus:

Coaching: The Secret Sauce of Success by Michelle LaBrosse the founder of Cheetah Learning

“Project managers, … with the right coaching, you can take your career and your image wherever you want it to go.It’s the time to dream big and then have the plan to make the dream happen.” – Michelle LaBrosse

PDU Category C documentation details:

Process Groups: Executing

Knowledge Areas: 9 – Human Resources

• 9.4 Manage Project Team

As a Category C ‘Self Directed Learning Activity’ remember to document your learning experience (include the weblinks) and its relationship to project management for your ‘PDU Audit Trail Folder’

RMS Titanic was a passenger liner that struck an iceberg on her maiden voyage from Southampton, England, to New York City, and sank on 15 April 1912. She struck the iceberg four days into the crossing, at 23:40 on 14 April 1912, and sank at 2:20 the following morning, resulting in the deaths of 1,517 people in one of the deadliest peacetime maritime disasters in history.
-Wikipedia

The Sinking of the Titanic on April 14/15, 1912 offers many valuable lessons for the Project Manager, from both a popular perspective and from a more serious academic perspective.

The Sinking of RMS Titanic – a Popular Perspective

Various authors have used the sinking of the Titanic to illustrate popular lessons, such as Icebergs are only 1/7th above water (hence the expression “tip of the iceberg“). Blog entry “Management Lessons from Titanic” on the Taming the Software Dragon blog lists 10 such lessons learned.

The Titanic story is well known to many people from the various movies that have been made over the past century. Wikipedia has a list of films featuring RMS Titanic, beginning in 1912 and including the 1997 film by James Cameron.

The 1997 film Titanic focused on the characters of Jack Dawson (Leondaro DiCaprio) and Rose DeWitt Bakater (Kate Winslet). The making of the movie was a massive project, with an estimated budget of $200 million. This included the building of a reconstruction of the Titanic at Playas de Rosarito, Baja California. This set, as well as the scale models and computer-generated imagery are shown in the Making of the Titanic, featured on YouTube.

Academic Studies of the Lessons Learned from RMS Titanic

If you’re willing to spend the time for a more in-depth study of the disaster, these links provide a deeper study of the Titanic disaster, from the perspectives of the design and construction of the ship, the design of the White Star ocean-crossing service, through her maiden voyage to the discovery of the wreck in 1985.

For an in-depth study of White Star and the design and construction design and construction decisions, Mark Kozak-Holland has written two books. These books are available on the Lessons From History website – Titanic Lessons for IT Projects (the first and second chapters are available for download), 160 pages and Avoiding Project Disasters, 312 pages.

Mark Kozak-Holland serialized much of the material on gantthead.com in a 16 part series IT Project Lessons from Titanic.

In “Project Management of the RMS Titanic and the Olympic Ships“, Alan Scott Miller examines the Titanic as a service, particularly a ferry service, to its end customers.

In “Project Management and the Discovery of the Titanic,” James Peter Murphy discusses the 1980’s project to find the wreck on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean.

Category C Activity: Lessons Learned from The Sinking of the Titanic

You can make these articles part of your PDU Plan and earn Category C PDUs. We have provided you with the educational references in this article, if you choose you can create your own Category C learning activity keep track of the Project Management lessons you have learned and the educational time you spent on the activity. For more information see our article which describes Category C Self-Directed Learning (SDL), the Three Learning Questions and SMART goal setting.

Article / Exercise : Stakeholder Management
Five Page Article with Exercise By: Susanne Madsen
Category C PDU 0.5 (article) to 2 (follow exercise with your project)

“In order for you and your project to be successful, you need the support of as many of your stakeholders as possible. You need their buy-in to effectively progress the project.” – @Susanne Madsen

Susanne provides a four step to exercise to help you uncover “who your stakeholders are, how influential and supportive they each are and what you can do to optimize the way you interact with them”

Category C Learning Primer for this activity: Choose a project you are working on and go through this exercise to create a strong and trustworthy relationship with all of your key stakeholders.

Process Groups: Initiating & Executing

Knowledge Areas: 10 – Communication ( PMBOK Reference)

• 10.1 Identify Stakeholders
• 10.2 Plan Communications
• 10.4 Manage Stakeholders Expectations

Presenter: Susanne Madsen (LinkedIn) is a sought after project manager, mentor and coach with over 15 years experience in managing and rolling out large change management programs. A PRINCE2 practitioner and a qualified corporate & executive coach, she works as a Program Director for one of the world’s largest financial institutions.

Susanne is dedicated to helping organizations deliver better change management programs and is passionate about coaching and mentoring project managers to improve their leadership capabilities, performance and well being.

Here at pduOTD.com we are looking forward to Susanne’s newest venture. We love Susanne’s writing/mentoring style and we know others will too. She is currently writing a practical workbook filled with tips, tools and techniques for everyone who wants to coach themselves and others to become highly valued and truly successful project managers and leaders. Way to go Susanne! – EdmontonPM

As a Category C ‘Self Directed Learning Activity’ remember to document your learning experience and its relationship to project management for your ‘PDU Audit Trail Folder’

Click here to access the Stakeholder Management article /exercise.

Great Articles! Click here to go to Susanne Madsen’s site