Lynda Bourne
Written Articles
In the first part of this two-part series, I looked at the diverse nature of ‘a project’ across different organisations and as a consequence, project management within those organisations. This post seeks to define the key elements of ‘project management’ and then understand how the concept of professionalism can be applied to the practice. The […]
The project management associations worldwide are at the forefront of the push to have project management recognised as a profession, but what does professional project management look like? To answer this question we first need to understand the project a project manager is managing…… The PMBOK® Guide 5th Edition defines a project and project a […]
In The Power of Happiness, I suggested a ‘happy team’ was more likely to be an outcome of a motivated team, than something you can work to achieve in isolation. This post looks at some of the key elements a leader can use to develop a motivated and committed team that in turn should lead […]
As we all know the problem with good practice is it slowly slips away as we respond to time pressures and expediency and bad habits take root. We know what’s supposed to be done but settle for a comfortable second best until it’s too late. Well, this is a New Year and a new opportunity […]
At best lessons learned are explicit knowledge. Explicit knowledge can be readily articulated, codified, stored, accessed and transmitted to others. The process of transforming the ‘lessons’ recorded by a project team into explicit knowledge requires: The lesson to be recorded by the team. Ideally this is a contemporaneous process designed to capture current experiences and […]
The chances are you organisation is already focusing on ‘stakeholder engagement’ but is using another name for the activity. From an organisational perspective stakeholder engagement is a means to achieving outcomes that are increasingly being seen as being commercially desirable or necessary to comply with various rules and regulations. Some of the overarching terms that […]
Last year I went along to see Headlong’s stage adaptation of George Orwell’s masterpiece ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ (at the Melbourne Festival); which started me thinking………. The way words shape people’s thinking can be very powerful. This power can be used for both good and bad and is an important element in effective communication. Oratory and rhetoric […]
Organisational agility is being promoted as the ‘silver bullet’ to create value and eliminate project failures, but decades of research show that methodologies, standard operating procedures and organisational maturity are essential underpinnings of consistent success. Are these mutually exclusive propositions or is there a more subtle answer to this apparent contradiction? The starting point for […]
A conversation with a clerk in a HR department looking to ‘buy’ some training for a staff member and the passing of English actor, George Cole in early August started me thinking. The defining role in Cole’s long career was playing ‘Arfur Daley’, the devious ‘spiv’ in the long running TV series Minder. ‘Arfur’ always […]
Project stakeholders can be helpful, obstructionist and almost anything in between – but for most stakeholders, how you deal with this is largely up to you! The only certainty is your stakeholders are not about to go away and ‘leave you in peace’…… There are three basic ways to deal with stakeholders: Crisis management: you […]