The
Federal
Project Manager
Quote of the Week
One measure of leadership is the caliber of people who choose to follow you.
- Dennis A. Peer
For if the trumpet shall give an uncertain sound, who will
prepare himself for battle?
Measure twice, cut once
(This Old House)
Decisiveness, that ability to make quick and unambiguous decisions, is a trait often associated with great leaders, especially great military leaders. But how does that kind of decision making fit into the demands of modern program management and when is a more deliberate, data-driven approach called for? What is your decision making style and how do you adjust it to situational demands?
Here are some points to consider about your decisiveness and a self-interview to help you gain some insight into your decision making style.
| THIS MONTH'S POLL | ||
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Sometimes the hardest thing to know is to know what you know and know what you don't know.
To help out, we have a series of 10-question quizes on different areas of project management that you can take to get a feel for what areas in project management are your strengths and what areas you may want to brush up on.
This month's quiz with question-level feedback is on Earned Value Management.
Have Something You'd Like to Say?
Have a comment about this site, a suggestion about things you'd like to see on it, or resources we might want to include? We'd love to hear it!
Click on the button below to go to a comments page where you can enter comments or just see what others have said.
WELCOME
Welcome to the Federal Project Manager site! The aim of this site is to aid the professional development of project managers who work for the federal government or for a company that supports a government agency. To do this, the site includes articles, individual exercises, links to other web resources, reviews of techniques and tools related to the practice of project management in the public sector.
In the near future, the site will launch a project management
schoolhouse that will provide no-cost and low-cost training in a
variety of project management topics. The schoolhouse's initial
offering will be an e-learning course and associated study aids to
assist PMs intheir preparation for the Project Management
Institute's Project Management Professional (PMP) exam. The
importance of this certification has never been higher and we look
forward to helping the federal project management community reach
the level of knowledge and proficiency needed to achieve this
qualification.
A technical note: The site's operation makes use of both Flash and javascript so your full use of its features requires that Flash is loaded on your system and JavaScript is not blocked.
Drop by often to stay up-to-date on the site's new features!
Information and Opinion About Federal Project Management:
GAO Report Details the Challenges of DoD Weapon System Programs
The Government Accounting Offices (GAO) recently released the results of its sixth annual review of Defense weapons system programs. The results showed significant, widespread, and growing problems in these programs. More . . .
Ways to Improve Collaboration in Cross-Government Projects
An interesting article by Brian Robinson appeared in Federal Computer Week recently about how to foster collaboration in projects involving federal, state, and local government agencies. We only have to think about the successes and failures in disaster responses over the last few years to appreciate just how critical such collaboration can be to meeting the publics needs. More . . .
DoD Changes Earned Value Management Requirements
The Department of Defense has issued changed clauses to the Defense Acquisition Regulations System (DFARS) concerning the requirement for contractor use of Earned Value Management (EVM) on federal projects. More . . .
Scope Management & Risk Management From the Get-Go:
Most PMs are familiar with the rush of enthusiasm that often comes with the start of a new project. Like any new beginningfrom the the Cubs' first preseason game to the start of a new school semestera new project is a clean slate, full of potential and the promise of significant achievement.
With the project's full budget still available, with its entire duration stretching out into the future, and with the immediate distractions of getting the project underway, it can sometimes be easy to sail blissfully through the projects early honeymoon period. But if that happens without a sharp focus on critical issues like scope verification and risk management, those issues are likely to develop later into major project management problems -- the honeymoons hangover.
This series of articles talks about some of the issues a project
manager needs to formally address and resolve during the kickoff
meeting and the first couple of weeks of a project in order to
bulid a firm foundation for the project's management. Key among
these issues are those concerning the project's scope and
risk.
Improve Your Project Management Learning Methods:
When did you learn how to learn? If youre like most folks, the way you study and learn today is based pretty much on what worked for you during your school years. Yet, what worked then was shaped as much by the topics you were studying and how your teacher taught as it was by your own learning abilities and style. For this and other reasons, how you learned way back in school may not be the best approach for your adult learning.
As a project
manager, you are a lifelong learner. Whether youre learning your
initial task management skills, preparing for your CAPM or PMP
certification test, or staying up-to-date in your technical
field, improving your learning skills can only help your
development as a project manager.
This just might be a good time then for
you to assess your present learning strategies and adjust them to
your adult learning skills and style. Adding a few new techniques
to your well-worn learning approaches will not only freshen up
your training and study sessions but could also help you match
what you have to learn with how you can best learn it. In that
way, you can make the most of often-limited development
opportunities.
Check out our series on learning styles and strategies for ideas and tools that might help you in your project management development.
Project Management Learning Strategies Article
Federal Project Management-Focused Search
Looking for search results that are keyed to the issues and interests of Federal Project Managers?
Enter your search terms in the space below for a Web-wide search that produces results that are focused on Federal project management.
Our Project Manager Competency Model
The competencies that successful project managers need certainly go beyond just a knowledge of the PMI PMBOK contents. But where do they end? Effective negotiation is no doubt one; effective stapling, maybe not so much.
Click the link below for a description of the project management competency model that guides our selection of this site's content. And feel free--no, encouraged--to give us the benefit of your input and feedback.
Five Avenues of Project Manager Competency Development
Project manager development is best based on an understanding
of how project managers' competency requirements change
across a career. The needed project management technical
competencies have been identified by the Project Management
Institute (PMI)
and others. However, there are other, broader changes in
leadership and management requirements that we should
be aware of as we plot the course of a project
manager's development. In this article we'll describe five
key leadership and management requirement shifts that occur
over a project manager's caree
r
and that should be considered in project manager development.