Volume X - Issue VI - June 2008
Viewpoints
Are We Failing the Next Generation and Ourselves? By Rebecca A. Winston Not long ago I wrote a thought opinion piece on mentoring and how it was part of what a professional should give back to his or her profession. I am coming back to this topic because of three experiences recently that have not only reinforced my previous position but also in many respects made the necessity of mentoring in our profession as well as others as a priority. Yes, I said priority. It is not something that is the courteous, professional, nice thing to do. It is a must. Mentoring for the purposes of this piece is not just the sharing of the occasional piece of wisdom. It is the active care and feeding of those individuals who will take our positions in the future. While it is hard to reflect on the fact that each of us can be replaced, the fact is we can if we view ourselves as a package of skill sets. Yes, we may deploy them uniquely within the framework of personality and that may indeed make us irreplaceable to a certain extent, but replaceable we are. Read complete paper in English
Infrastructure Project Management; By Getachew Teklemariam Alemu I hope May was a marvelous PM month for all of you, as I have wished for it to be in my last month’s viewpoint article. Here in PM Forum, there is a real respect to promises. Being part of it, I am also indebted to keep my promises. So, here I come. Last month I tried to put four lessons that we, project professionals, especially project managers, could learn from the Chinese infrastructure sector. Strong emphasis on planning ahead of project works, maintaining effective horizontal and vertical integration, avoiding individualistic approaches and focusing on team work, and celebrating the success of the project together were my points. Despite the lessons that we can learn from the world-leading infrastructure sector could be as wide ranging as our observations, I will add four more points that I think are, mostly, being given less recognition. Meanwhile, don’t forget to add on the list, comment on my points, or share your own perspectives on our sailing boat-pmworldtoday. Contacting me is also as easy as to drop a line to getdem2006@yahoo.com, or getupfront@gmail.com Read complete paper in English
The Other Key Question By Dennis Stauffer When you launch a new project, are you asking the wrong questions? “Do we have the necessary experience and expertise?” is an important question to raise early on in any project. Or, to put it more bluntly, “Do we know what we’re doing?” The very discipline of project management itself is an area of personal knowledge and expertise – one that not everyone has. Another question that is just as important but gets asked relatively rarely is, “What do we not know?” … about the customer, the technology, the target market, the ultimate user, or any of a myriad of other relevant isues…along with, “And how can we find out?” When we take on new challenges, or encounter obstacles along the way, for most of us the default response is to draw on our knowledge. We all have a tendency to focus on what we already know and understand and assume to be true of a situation. This tendency can cause us to overlook the vast number of things we surely don’t know until that unrecognized gap creates a problem for us. Read complete paper in English
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