January 2009

The Archives

• communication

  5 powerful questions

  01.29.09 | Permalink | Comment?

  I found out that asking yourself and your team members the right questions makes a whole lot of difference. It makes things easy once you get in the habit of doing it. Try some of these: in a stressful moment: What next thing makes the most sense at this time given the current situation? someone [...]

• Project Management

  What does a good Project Manager do actually?

  01.24.09 | Permalink | 2 Comments

  Good question, someone asked me a few days ago and it got me thinking about the essentials. So what does a good PM do actually? Here’s a list of good PM behaviors that I think are important: communicate with all the people who are influenced by the project monitor and control the scope, budget and [...]

• Business writing

  Assumptions vs. Dependencies

  01.21.09 | Permalink | 7 Comments

  Words have the incredible power to set the trend in a business agreement, nothing new there, but at times differences can get subtle. That’s the case with using “assumptions” vs. using “dependencies”, they can mean the same thing but give a different message in the same context. There will always be things that are unknown [...]

• Mindmaps, Project Initiation

  Shorter Project Charters

  01.19.09 | Permalink | 3 Comments

  A project charter is the document that provides ownership (and authority) to the PM for a project, after someone hands that to you or when you write it up yourself and get it signed, you are the owner of the project on behalf of your company. The point is, you start out with it and [...]

• Methodology, Project Closure

  3 Reasons to do a Retrospective With Your Team

  01.13.09 | Permalink | Comment?

  One of the most important things you should do in the project closure phase is a retrospective meeting with the team. The best website about retrospectives on the entire internet ever is retrospectives.com, it just says it all. I send a link to retrospectives.com together with the invitation to the meeting to set the purpose [...]

• Inspiration

  Get Your PM Inspiration on the Web

  01.10.09 | Permalink | 2 Comments

  I’ve been reading a lot of blogs on project management, in the sidebar on this site you can find them under links. The ones I absolutely like best and love to read are: The Struggling Manager Project Smart PM Hut The Struggling Manager has some really cool articles about efficient communication and I bet Rob [...]

• Methodology

  Doing What is Good For The Project.

  01.07.09 | Permalink | 4 Comments

  There are many management methodologies around, like ITIL, PRINCE2, the one I’m currently studying PMI, and many more but actually there is only one thing a PM has to do and that is doing what is good for the project. Just leave out all the processes that you don’t need. Whenever you can, do less [...]

• Books

  Blink, how experts are thinking

  01.03.09 | Permalink | Comment?

  I just finished the book Blink, The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell. A few important lessons here: Truly successful decision making relies on a good balance between deliberate thinking and instinctive thinking. Don’t make important decision when you have a high heart rate. Once above a certain point the brain just shuts [...]

Journeyman Project Manager

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Hi, I’m Bert Heymans and I’m a journeyman project manager.

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