Lynda Bourne
Written Articles
Your ability to successfully contribute to a project team depends a lot on your ability to relate effectively to people. Managing relationships is the core to managing; managing your managers, managing your team and managing other stakeholders. There are no neutral relationships; every relationship you have influences you and can lift you up or weigh […]
Describing scheduling, Earned Value and financial management as ‘project controls’ is, I would suggest dangerous! The steering mechanism on a car is a control system, you move the steering wheel and the front wheels turn; and if the car is in motion its direction of travel is altered. Control systems cause a change. Altering the […]
How to Suffer Successfully, is the title of chapter four in Alain de Botton’s first book of philosophy, How Proust Can Change Your Life. The same idea is the theme of The Adversity Paradox by J. Barry Griswell and Bob Jennings. The Adversity Paradox is full of inspiring examples of people who have suffered major […]
I am frequently asked to quantify the value of improving an organisation’s stakeholder management capabilities or how to establish the ROI for a new PMO. Whilst these questions are sensible they are nearly impossible to answer. Certainly there are strong indicators of the value generated by an effective PMO, this has been demonstrated repeatedly in […]
The only purpose of undertaking a project or program is to have the deliverables it creates used by the organisation (or customer) to create value! Certainly value can be measured in many different ways, improved quality or safety, reduced effort or errors, increased profits or achieving regulatory compliance; the measure is not important, what matters […]
Customer service is part of stakeholder management that is frequently overlooked. Most projects develop a list of stakeholder as part of their communication planning include customers, clients or ‘end users’ in the list and then get on with the work of the project. However, if you think about your own life, the cafés, service stations, […]
Ethical management and corporate governance are about balancing the competing needs of all of the organisations stakeholders, balancing long and short term goals and being socially responsible (CSR or Corporate Social Responsibility). The good news is empirical studies consistently show organisations that focus on these objectives also consistently out perform those seeking excessive profits in […]
Quality was defined by Juran as fit for purpose, this elegant definition applies equally to the quality of your management processes and information as it does to your production processes and project deliverables. Much is written about producing quality deliverables (products): this column looks at the cost of quality in your management work, particularly as […]
Describing scheduling, Earned Value and financial management as ‘project controls’ is dangerous! The steering mechanism on a car is a control system, you move the steering wheel the front wheels turn; and if the car is in motion its direction of travel is altered. Control systems cause a change. Altering the duration of a task […]
The purpose of undertaking a business change activity is to have the new processes used so as to create value! Value can be measured in many different ways, improved quality or safety, reduced effort or errors, increased profits or achieving regulatory compliance; the measure is not important, what matters is the business change is intended […]