New This Month — January 2020

Guests: Author Todd Williams describes The Reasons Governments Struggle to Run Projects Successfully is because the classic measure of project success is to achieving scope, quality, time and cost targets. Whereas government's project successes are measured primarily in terms of outcomes such as the number of people served, mouths fed, or heads provided with roofs.

Papers: This month's Book Review comments on Crispin ("Kik") Piney's development of Earned Benefit Program Management, for Aligning, Realizing, and Sustaining Strategy through the whole domain of project management. This is from the project level, to program, to portfolio, including the necessary close relationship with on-going operations. Thus, Kik's findings expands our understanding of the larger picture of project management.

Musings: Humor is really a Missing Skill for promoting through leadership Happiness and Success, at work. Funnily enough, this book is hilariously useful. Author Drew Tarvin describes five values needed to lead on your feet in an ever-changing world.

Project management tip of the month — See below for Max's latest contribution.

Recent

Guests: As a follow on to his paper Did You Give Up on Quality?, Author Robin Hornby says: Put Quality in its Place — on the basis of four new models: Point of Quality, Duality of Quality, The Quality Triangle, and The Quality Quadrant. Robin says that, as project managers, we must reclaim our quality leadership role by changing the emphasis on quality.

Guests: Author Daniela McVicker presents Six Ways to Effectively Manage Your Project Budget and keep it under control during all phases of your project.

Musings: How to get it just right, if you intend to get into your customer or prospective customer's shoes, by Asking Powerful Questions and Listening!

Musings: If meetings are so boring, as we mentioned last month, then J. Elise Keith presents Make Meetings More Effective Part 2 by engaging the individual talents of the people involved.

Special paper: Policies, Principles, Practices, Procedures and Core Concepts, a position paper developed for the International Standards Organization (ISO) to identify a set of universal Core Concepts for the Governance of all project work. ISO's world-wide task force is charged with updating ISO 21500 (2012) Project Management Guide.
Go to Papers index (04/19) and Download your PDF copy from there !

Classic: The original and only Project Management Body of Knowledge (dubbed "PMBOK") published by the Project Management Institute in 1987, is now available as a PDF document. Want a copy? See PMBOK-1987 Reborn under Other Areas and Interests below. Contains valuable advice even today.

At-A-Glance

Issacons (Issues and Considerations) are sets of slides providing summary information for specific questions associated with particular PM topics. Designed to save hours of searching yet more detailed than a plain bulleted list.

PM Glossary version 5.5 is free on this site. The glossary shows how many project management terms mean different things to different people. For latest version 6.1 see below.

Papers & Books are thought-provoking and valuable insights into project management and include numerous book reviews. You will also find information about books that I have written or co-authored from time to time.

Max's Musings are brief thoughts on various project management topics.

Guest Articles contain articles on particular PM topics contributed to this site by a wide range of other authors.

Click on the links above to see the most recent additions.

Other Areas and Interests

	PMBOK-1987 Reborn — The Project Management Body of Knowledge (1987) is now available as a PDF file. It is a statement and not a "Guide". It is free, but we really would appreciate a donation of $20 to our next round of Glossary updating. To contribute, please go to this page. For more background, see: 1 Early work on a PMBOK 2 PMBOK then and now 3 The Project Management (PMBOK) Framework 4 And then what happened next . . .
	Project Management 101 is a fun edutoon series on project management — things you should know but may have forgotten.
	The Wideman Education Foundation ("WEF") is a registered Canadian charity. We run project competitions providing experience in basic project management skills for high school students and undergrads in Toronto and Vancouver. For more information, and how you can help, please contact me. Donations are invited (tax-exempt in Canada).
	Management Framework for Project, Program and Portfolio Integration presents basic insights and explanations of project management. An excellent source of great value to a new project manager, stakeholders, as well as experienced project managers. Request PDF version ($7.99 USD). The Paperback version is no longer in print.
	The Wideman Comparative Glossary of PM Terms * What's New in Glossary V6.1 ? * Background to this update * A New Goal for Our Glossary * A more detailed description * To see the selection and place an order * The need for both a plan and communication * The Challenge to meet the need * The Project Management Hierarchy * Industry/Product Sectors * Our Internet Research * Taming the Long List of Industry Sectors * Different types of PM outputs * Putting Types of Work and Types of Product together * Comments on Internet and other info. sources * Summary of our deliberations

About Max is a brief biography outlining my professional career, some personal history, and even a little trivia about me.

P.Eng.
FCSCE, FEIC, FICE, FPMI, FCMI*

*What do these letters mean? See Recognition on this page.

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Disclaimer — The views expressed are those of the contributors and no responsibility is accepted for the accuracy or reliability of the content or the results of its application.

Site last updated — January 1st, 2020

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