General « CottagePM.com

Good PM Planning Mitigates Illness Risks

OK, that title sounds more noble than I’ll be writing. See, I just caught a flu bug. Not very severe, and hopefully it won’t become severe. But it’s been flirting with me for 4 days now, and the fever finally began today, just when I thought I was getting better. But this post isn’t about [...] [...]

Talking PM with a Developer

I have hanging outside my office the overview poster that came with my PMBOK4. The poster shows a rough flow chart of all the PMBOK’s project management processes. It also shows the macro-flow between Planning, Monitoring & Controlling, and Executing. A decent flow chart. Wish I could find a soft copy of it. One of our [...] [...]

Project Methodology Brings Focus

I spent Friday morning in the first of several one-on-one meetings with staff finalizing objectives for the fiscal year. That’s got to be the best part of managing! Last quarter, one of my teams had an important project to deliver by Q-end. It seemed impossible. We were half-way through our Fundamentals of Project Management book club [...] [...]

Cottage PM Example – Managing for Change

I got the first issue of my renewed subscription to Inc. Magazine this week (November 2009, see inc.com). One of the first articles I read had a good Cottage PM scenario as the opening story. The article is “Slow Growth = Slow Death?” and is mostly about growth questions and strategies. It’s an insightful read [...] [...]

Ideas on avoiding project failure

In December, Pawel Brodzinsk post the following article on his blog, Failed Projects: You Can Do Worse. In that article, he puts a really good list of contributors to project failure. While Pawel writes from a formal project environment, I find his list of contributors project failure relevant to informal PM environments — Cottage PM. Here’s [...] [...]

Rewards — and Merry Christmas!

One of the personnel management principles for project managers is that of rewards: the need to recognize and reward project team members for good, effective work. And that’s what I’m going to do for the next 2 weeks. While academically speaking, my launching a new professional blog with me owning all the tasks may not [...] [...]

De-mystify PM: Avoid Jargon

Like most disciplines, project management has its own set of tools and processes. Those tools and processes have names. To those in the practice, those names have meaning. But to others, it’s just jargon. And jargon is bad. Especially in an informal project management environment (“Cottage PM”). You can go a long way to demystifying [...] [...]

WBS – First Tool for New PMs

I’ve used “WBS Coach” to improve my use of WBS on my projects, and it is the basis for an in-house WBS course I’ll be offering in Q1 2010. I recommend it. Here’s why. It strikes me that many of us project managers land here accidentally. We’re doing other work in the organization, and we show [...] [...]

Exploring Professional Use of Social Media vs. Privacy and Safety

Way back when, “back in the day,” when I was young(-er), I used to be very particular about using my real name online. I created a handful of aliases with matching email addresses to use. I figured that while it didn’t solve privacy concerns really, it was sort of like locks on car doors — [...] [...]

CottagePM.com Lauched

CottagePM.com is now live! I’ve stolen enough hours over the holiday to complete the basics for the site. CottagePM.com is my place to explore what I’ve begun to call “Cottage Project Management.” I talk about what that means on the “About” page. I hope that you find that interesting. Now, in true blog fashion, I’ll begin to [...] [...]

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