Project Shrink

For two years there is a conversation in the comments of The Project Shrink that pops up once in a while. It’s one of my favorites. Why do we do what we do? Are our industry’s best practices really that, or do we merely say they are because as a PM we are expected to [...]

This is a posting in The Fish Pond Metaphor series by Ali Anani and Bas de Baar As projects start and end within organizations the demand for employees fluctuates. It seems that in certain times the workforce is just too small to handle all tasks, and in slow times many employees are doing nothing. With [...]

This is really my favorite Project Management question to which I don’t have a real answer: are our industry’s best practices really that, or do we merely say they are because as a PM we are expected to say so? You know that when you fall, you experience pain. You have felt that as a [...]

by Ali Anani and Bas de Baar In this posting we will introduce a view on organizational structures using The Fish Pond. It provides an alternative perspective in answering the question whether we should have flat organizations, pyramidal organizations or something in between. We will use the process of pond stratification as illustration. Other people [...]

The world is changing dramatically, fast and beyond everything we have seen. Globalization and technology have introduced more diversity, more dynamics and more interdependencies than ever before. This provides project management, and management in general, with a challenge. How to survive in this environment? Together with dr Ali Anani, I am taking on this challenge [...]

By Ali Anani and Bas de Baar In our previous article we painted the image of people walking on the OODA highway, continuously performing OODA loops, interacting with the environment, in the search for information packages that help them adapt to changes. In this posting we want to extend this notion to the use of [...]

Earlier this month Ted.com published a presentation by Howard Rheingold called “Way-New Collaboration“. He talks about how the old paradigm of command-control is being replaced by Way-New Collaboration. He connects his story with social dilemma’s like Prisoners Dilemma and Tragedy of the Commons. This is the best presentation I’ve seen that is telling the story [...]

Whatever your take is on projects, at the end of the day it is just a bunch of people working together to achieve a certain goal. During this endeavor to laugh, cry, pull pranks, play dirty tricks and have all other kind of behavior towards each other. If you are lucky they even work to [...]

This is a repost of the original Project Sociology article/video. In the first episode of this series I used a very simplified model of how stakeholder behavior is determined: Stakeholders have needs Based upon there needs and their perception of project reality they will choose a strategy that benefits them most. The execution of this [...]

This is a repost of the original Project Sociology article/video. I removed the old one a while ag o oops. In this first episode I will discuss how project people look at each other to measure them selves. Projects are all about people. Its the human element that determines the success or failure of this [...]