"Chunking" Sounds More Fun than Work Breakdown Structure
60+ Quotes from Blink by Malcolm Gladwell
12 Project Management Pet Peeves
5. Requiring Verbal Foreplay
"Project Managers don't care about the niceties of social interactions. I actually heard someone tell a project manager that they needed some "verbal foreplay" before jumping into all the work talk. Seriously, while we are asking about your kid's stupid play, all we are thinking about it how long do we have to endure the boring chatter until we can finally ask when the heck your report is going to be done and many times, our insincerity shows." - Melissa D
List of 500+ Stakeholders
Stakeholders have the power to:
- provide funding or take it away
- fill your workshops/events/exhibitions/etc. or leave them empty
- offer major decisions that push the organization forward or into the ground
- execute the project deliverables or completely screw up the deliverables
- manage project team members' progress or allow the project to run awry
- keep your vision/mission alive or completely skew your mission/vision
Why, as an Artist, You Should Think Inside the Box
Auditing a Closed Project: Questions That Address 47 Processes
Below are some of the questions I've asked other project managers in regards to their closed projects:
- What were the biggest headaches with the project you supported?
- If you could do it again, what aspects would you change?
- How did you deal with team members that stopped communicating?
- How much did planning help with the project?
- What last minute surprises occurred that threw you off guard?
- What were some great outcomes of the project?
People Will Judge Your Profile, Presentation, and Packaging
Coined by Cheskin, he recognized that "when people give an assessment of something they might buy in a supermarket or a department store, without realizing it, they transfer sensations or impressions that they have about the packaging of the product to the product itself...Cheskin believed that most of us don't make a distinction - on an unconscious level - between the package and the product. The product is the package and the product combined (Gladwell, p. 160)."
So what?
Lessons Learned from Project Closeouts
David Kassel states in his textbook, Managing Public Sector Projects, “…the project close-out period can be one of stress and anxiety as both the project management team and the contractor sprint to the finish line…” (2010, pg. 199)
I used to have a hard time with the end of projects because:
- The execution phase sucked out all of my energy
- I find it hard to let go of something beautiful I helped create
- Organizations I worked for had no formal close-out processes, so it was considered additional work
- I've built such strong relationships with my team members
