APM Blogs

Its often been said that making time for a cup of coffee with a client can be immensely rewarding.

Wherever possible in project management, vagueness should be your enemy.

Whilst the buzz word of the Olympics is legacy I argue that in Northern Ireland the idea of lasting benefit is an almost intuitive concept for project managers.

For many the number seven is deemed to be lucky while for others it has religious significance.

If you have read Project over the past few months, you will be well aware of the success of the Olympic construction programme.

The Management of Portfolios (MoP) guidance has been in the public domain for quite a while now, and before that, it was available in draft form.

The Canadian accent is more than slightly different to their American counterparts.

What does it take to develop the next generation of project manager? In the last decade or so, have we placed too much emphasis on academia, as opposed to good old-fashioned on-the-job work experience?I recently interviewed Sir John Armitt, the chairman of the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA), who argued just that.

What do the following ideas have in common?InnovationProject entrepreneurshipDealing with time critical projectsRe-discovering the human elementProjects within organisationsBlowback and the unintended consequences of decisionsSelling project management to executivesStakeholder involvementCollective actionSocial change(See answer at the end of the article)Project managers are continuously challenged to deliver more with less whilst improving the track record of project delivery.

There is a perception in some quarters that resource management is either what you do in SAP or is what line managers do in Excel to keep track of what their folks are up to – that it is either ‘local’ or ‘macro’ – but the two perspectives are too difficult to join together.