Project manager – project staff fit: Does it matter?

The ad-hoc nature of project organizations necessitates putting together new teams at the start of almost every project. This could be unsettling for people who are coming into the project to work with people that they may have never worked with before. People have to adjust, find common ground, and be ready for an environment […]

D. Jesús Guillén Torres, Profesor Titular de la Escuela Politécnica Superior de Huesca de la Universidad de Zaragoza, falleció en la madrugada del 26 de febrero

Jesús Guillén Torres, Profesor Titular de la Escuela Politécnica Superior de Huesca de la Universidad de Zaragoza, falleció en la madrugada del 26 de febrero. El pasado mes de diciembre Jesús sufrió un accidente vascular, que tras más de dos meses de difícil lucha por recuperarse, desgraciadamente no ha podido superar. Jesús realizó sus estudios […]

Ciao, Russ! You will remain forever in our hearts*

Introduction, by Stacy Goff The World has lost a true Change Agent, with the passing of Russ Archibald on Sunday, May 3. And in this post, rather than focusing on our loss, we celebrate his life with testimonies of the experience and insights of a few practitioners who worked with Russ. In the testimonies below, […]

Agility Starts with the Assumptions about Human Nature written by Marcus Raitner

  Agility hinges on the prevailing assumptions about human nature in the organization. Wherever people are generally distrusted and where the belief prevails that people must be motivated to perform, agility will not thrive, but only fear, cargo cult and label fraud. The problem is not people, but demotivating and dehumanizing structures and processes. Agility […]

Projects and Project Management in Peru

The Republic of Peru [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peru] is a country in the north-western part of South America. It is bordered in the north by Ecuador and Colombia, in the east by Brazil, in the southeast by Bolivia, in the south by Chile, and in the west by the Pacific Ocean. It´s an extremely biodiverse country with habitats […]

Project-based learning for a changing world of work – Part 3

Project-based education and training approaches  The terms “education” and “training” are interrelated but represent two different concepts. “Education” is defined by the Oxford Dictionary as follows: “the process of receiving or giving systematic instruction, especially at school or university.” [Oxford 2018a] Therefore, it refers to learning in classrooms for acquiring knowledge. Education helps for developing […]

Do we need a new leadership approach for projects?

Last week I joined a discussion on LinkedIn, triggered by Dr. Marcus Raitner, Agile Transformation Agent at BMW, who pulled together a “Human Leadership Manifesto”. The discussion was based on the assumption that in an agile world, traditional leadership approaches do not suffice anymore. Project teams need to organise their work more on their own, […]

Dancing with your project – anticipating next steps based on weak signals

The time close to New Year´s Eve is the season for the fortune-telling business. How is our economic and political situation developing, or how are personal circumstances changing to the better (or the worse). Some of this fortune-telling is just charlatanism, others are extrapolating the past developments and ignore the disruptions that are part of […]

Value proposition design for projects

One of my favorite books, “Value Proposition Design”  written by Osterwald, Pigneur, Bernada and Smith shows how to design and test value propositions in an iterative search for what customers really, really want. The basis for the right value proposition is a Canvas (see illustration based on Strategyzer), which shows on the one hand side […]

Tunisia 2020: An opportunity for Project Management

Tunisia is starting the road to inclusive and sustainable development. After four years of consultations, supported by the international community, the country’s political transition is now underway. The first free elections were held at the end of 2014, leading to the establishment of new national democratic institutions. Since Spring 2015 the Government of Tunisia has […]