PMing on the cheap: TaskBin free online project management

PMS Relief: Guerilla Tactics for Project Management

Is Consulting for You?

Four Things You Can Do to Hire Better and Head Off Resource Issues Early

Working with Aliens:  Advice on working with the current generation

Are You a Leader or a Manager?   How to tell the difference, why it matters

Why Are We Doing This Project Again?  Evaluating why you are doing your current projects

A short week, but a good one.  Enjoy!

Four Values of Social Networking

Or, why LinkedIn matters.  And maybe Facebook.  But not MySpace.

The Self-Project: Jerry Seinfeld’s Productivity Secret

Learning to be do lots from the guy who wrote the show about nothing.

The Self-Project: MBA in a Page- a Simple Guide to All Major Management Theories

Where to find out about all those management theories people talk about (but seldom practice)

Five Articles You Should Read Before You Powerpoint Again

Help with making your powerpoint less pointy

PM-Fu: Seven Steps to Gaining Buy-in to Change

Getting help getting people on board

Corporate GTD: Recognizing What Not To Do

How to help find direction in a sea of work to do

The Self-Project: Six Building Blocks of a Quality Reputation

Building a better you

The Self-Project: 25 Tips to Being Happier at Work

Building a happier and better you

Soapbox Time: What’s the Integrity Level of Your Business?

Building a better company for the better and happier you to work in

PM-Fu: How Much Detail Is Enough?

Learn how to keep your Work Breakdown Structure out of the weeds

Enjoy!

PM-Fu: Keep Your Eye On The Ball

Advice on keeping your project on track by sticking to your scope.

Writing Right: The Art of the Status Report

How to write the stately Status Report.

The Self-Project: Get to Know the Folks That Can Help

Why it’s okay to talk to the janitor while you’re in the office late at night.

UF Postings Past: Three Ways to Destroy Morale

Three things you should never do when leading people.  Unless you want to.  Don’t say I didn’t warn you though.

 Stay tuned!

Getting stakeholders involved, though, is a difficult task. It requires constant communication- but not too much communication. It requires dealing with many different groups which have different, varied and occasionally opposing interests in your project. Here’s some advice on involving stakeholders:

1) Get all stakeholders involved as is reasonably possible in your project. You need their input and their support. Their input will make your project better in the long run. Giving them a say will help get their support, which will help you get your project complete on time and successfully.

2) There is no valid reason to exclude any stakeholder from your project (no matter how much of a pain they may be). If the project affects them, they deserve a say. They also can add value if engaged properly.

3) Stakeholders do not need to be involved 100% of the time. In fact, most of them have other job duties which are designed to take up their entire work day. Trying to involve them full-time will make you a pest. Recognize when is the right time to involve them and make sure they’re there. The rest of the time, let them do their jobs.

4) Stakeholders *do* need to be involved regularly in some way, even if it’s only sending them a status of the project with notes relevent to their interest. Notice I said relevent to their interest. You must involve stakeholders at some level regularly to keep enough of their attention engaged. If you lose their attention, you will have trouble getting their help later on. Only involving them in relevent tasks and sending them relevent information is important because you don’t want to bore or confuse them. Remember, you want their interest. Work to get it, but also take care not to waste it.

Remember, the best way to gain access to stakeholders and get help from stakeholders is to keep their interest and attention. Never waste their time with details that do not matter to them. You want to show them that the time you receive from them is valuable to you. If their time is valuable to you, then what you are doing with their time (that is, accomplishing your project) will seem valuable to them.

 Thanks to all the folks who missed me and the kind words!

1) I love football way too much (cheers Superbowl!)

2) I am really bloody sick right now (boo, influenza)

Whatever I have, I came down with it almost a week ago, and it shows no sign of going away.  More posts to come when my health returns.  Thanks for your patience folks!