See (and hear) me speak at the BPPM Summitt in London

I was on the telephone with a client recently and mentioned to her that I was speaking at a conference. She replied:

“You should tell everyone about this…”

Duly done!

I am speaking (in collaboration with Team Animation) at the BPPM Summit on 24 April (London Heathrow Marriott Hotel). The topic of the participate workshop is:

"How to adopt and make best use of project management in your organisation."

I will be addressing the key issue of project management culture and I look forward to seeing one or two of you there.

You can find out more information by clicking on this link http://www.bppmsummit.com/bppmsummit07/project_agency.html. Do contact me if you want more information. Click here to send an email.

I need more resources

A common cry from people we work with the lack of resources available to them. One aspect we mention on our courses is the need to use every method you can to obtain not only skilled resources but skilled recourses that are available to support you in your project.

But how can you do this?

I was amazed when working in one organisation when Nick, one of my colleagues was able to orchestrate extra resources simply because he knew the organisation far better than I did! I leant a lot from this; mainly that Nick had (and still has) excellent networking skills. My network was so slim as to be size zero!

Networking is a real skills and it is something rarely mentioned as a tool for resourcing projects. Partnership arrangements are becoming much more common – especially among our public sector readers. These arrangements commonly mean the involvement of members of community groups, or a partner organisation. These often become really valuable resources for some of the people involved in projects however…..the key is to tease out those recourses which Nick seemed to be able to pull in so easily.

So how can you develop a strategy for networking? Why not visit another blog by an expert? Have a look at Andy Lopata’s blog – click on this link http://networkingandreferrals.blogspot.com/ and read how to set up your networking strategy. Read from a real expert.

Happy networking

Project management survey 2007

I come across many articles and surveys in the course of my trawl of the internet. Here’s one that is really good!!

Themes from the survey include:

• more and more project management professionals are gaining accreditation - but which qualifications?


• people who took place in the survey felt there were too many accreditation bodies


• contractors are generally in the older age bracket


• 2006 was a challenging year in the remuneration stakes where only 38% saw an increase in their earnings.
  

Why not read the whole report which you can download here

Lots of projects but how well delivered?

You will see below the awful statistics which came out of the Heritage Lottery Fund. The figures are in line with other statistics which you can find on the internet.

To support companies and individuals to deliver more effectively we have written a White Paper called:

From Ready- Fire - Aim to Ready- Aim- Fire

How to improve project delivery, on time, to budget, every time.

Read all about it here......

Lottery Funded Projects - late and overbudget

An article in The Times (Friday March 16) points to:

• a quarter of the projects were completed late
  
• one in six projects overspent by an average of £293,000

The report quotes Sir John Bourn, head of National Audit Office which scrutinises public spending on behalf of Parliament concluded that the main cause of delays was “poor planning, and lack of project management skills by some of the applicants”, as well as “unanticipated events” during construction.

So why doesn’t the Heritage Lottery Fund train its applicants to manage projects more effectively…..??

You can read all about it by clicking here

Project Sponsorship.....time to improve?

I was looking at my web site recently – doing a bit of tidying up and came across an article I posted in March 2005 called Project management Screw Up 5 – We didn’t have the right sponsorship by Lonnie Pacelli.

He goes into some detail about the need for there to be a project sponsor. He says the following:

“…..every successful project always had an engaged project sponsor.”

Over the years Project Agency has worked with many organisations saying effectively the same thing to many of our clients.

Why not read the article? Click here or go to www.projectagency.co.uk/downloads.htm. It is the article headed: Poor Project Sponsorship.

Posted on the web site in 2005 and the issue is as current as ever i.e. we need more senior managers to play their role as project sponsors.

Free conference!!

I mentioned in my previous Blog a conference I went to. Well here is a free one.

You can go to PROJECT CHALLENGE. It is being held on 14 and 15 March. It has more than 50 organisations exhibiting and free seminars to attend.

You can find out more by going to www.projectchallenge.com

Enjoy the conference.