In complex and dynamic projects, it’s hard to filter out the noise and focus on just one element. You might want to diagnose some particular problem with a temporary narrow and deep perspective. In the film “Predator”, the alien’s helmet has an enhanced viewport with...
If you've been a project manager for any time, you've probably experienced an emergency. Sometimes it happens during a project, say during system testing. The test configuration was working fine, and then "bam!" something changes, and it flips over to being wholly...
Non-linear dynamics and project management is a recurring topic for me, e.g. Project management uses linear tools for non-linear situations and Linear and Non-Linear Thinking in Project Management. But the Covid-19 pandemic underscored the inability of many people to...
This post wasn’t planned. The last post wrapped up the 3-part series that unpacked our pivot points in more detail, after the headline post. I realised that the 4 posts contain a lot of material and had evolved a bit in the writing of them. So, I thought it would be...
In the last post, I looked at the "Structure of Breakdown". In this post, we look at the third pivot point that I raised in the headline post. We're looking to answer the question: How do we leverage a broader range of knowledge and tools to help us go about doing the...
In the last post, I looked at the narrative of Breakdown Structures and how confused it is. In this post, expand on the second pivot point towards improving Breakdown Structures in general, and the Work Breakdown Structure in particular. This point is to create a...
In the last post, we summarised three pivot points central to our mission to rethink and reframe the Breakdown Structure. In this post, we look at the first pivot point in more detail: To have better WBS's, we need to pivot towards a unified, precise and repeatable...
This post looks at the points around which we will pivot in our new approach to the WBS to make it more useful and easier to create. I don't want to be too negative or picky, but if we're going to improve things, we need to understand what's wrong. In my last post, I...
Breakdown Structures have been part of the project management narrative for approximately 50 years. The Work Breakdown Structure, in particular, is seen as a primary mechanism for core project management processes, such as planning, scope control, estimation, vendor...
This post drills into the detail of the many attributes of projects that are non-definitional, but are critical to the effective management of projects.
Each week Adam writes about interesting and varied topics for Project Managers everywhere and curates useful articles, books and papers from other sources.