Project Shrink

This is a guest post by Andrew Sparks. Find out more about Andrew at the end of this post. What does a well-run project sound like? Generically we speak of successful, high-performance projects (or factories or other team operations) as “humming” or “ticking like a Swiss watch”. Every successful project I have ever seen has [...]

This is the final post in my series about using systems thinking for analyzing problems in projects. 1. Systems Thinking: A Technique To Find Project Problems 2. Systems Thinking: Looking For Causal Loops 3. Shifting The Burden And Fixes That Backfire – Archetypes Part 1 4. Limits To Growth And Tragedy Of The Commons – [...]

As a Project leader you are dumped in an organization you have never seen before. You get people assigned you don’t know. The organization prescribes methods and tools you don’t like. And of course, there are a gazillion of unwritten rules. Welcome to your project life. You run on partial Information, partial Influence and partial [...]

How do you get your team to do the right thing? To adopt agile practices? To go the extra mile? To be on time for meetings? To produce polished products? You can be on the lookout for the latest techniques. You can put your hopes in the most hyped up tools. You can always search [...]

This is the fourth post in my series about using systems thinking for analyzing problems in projects. I recommend you read the previous posts before diving head first into this post. Archetypes can be considered as stereotypes of problematic situations. When analyzing a situation they are the standard patterns you look for. In this post [...]

In episode 21 of The Project Shrink Podcast I am talking to Christine Hohlbaum. She is the author of “The Power of Slow: 101 Ways to Save Time in Our 24/7 World”. We are talking about personal productivity, time management, the art of delegation and expectation management. You can watch the episode below or follow [...]

It used to be that Wednesday was a great day to talk about yourself. That is soooo last quarter. Now it’s Friday. Last week I had the pleasure to be interviewed by Cornelius Fichtner on the legendary Project Management Podcast. Yes, yes. It was about social media: “Bas argues that social media will help you [...]

This is the third post in my series about using systems thinking for analyzing problems in projects. I recommend you read the previous posts before diving head first into this post. After extensive research Peter Senge, author of the book The Fifth Discipline, found patterns that were common among the situations he studied; a couple [...]

Yesterday I talked about how systems thinking can be used to find patterns and cause-effect-chains that help you find solutions to problems in projects. All these patterns, links and loops are fine and dandy, but you are probably wondering right now how this is going to help you running your project? Check Out This Example [...]

Finding the real cause of a project problem can be a difficult task. You have to look for patterns … “These patterns are dynamic systems in action, a human system seen over a time period. Patterns are trends over time and involve dependencies with other systems. To spot such trends in projects we use metrics [...]