PM Minimalist Selected by Laureate Education (Walden University)

I'm pleased to announce that The Project Management Minimalist has been selected by Laureate Education, Inc. for use in Walden University's Masters in Instructional Design and Technology. 

Laureate Education owns and operates campus-based and online universities through the Laureate International Universities network.

In addition to the standard content included in The... Minimalist, we've added some additional tools and information specifically related to managing instructional design and development projects. Thanks, Laureate, for choosing The Project Management Minimalist!

My Incredible Shrinking PM Recommendations

Simplify, simplify, simplify! This post describes why I’ve gone through all of my PM “Body of Work” and boiled it down to the essential few items you need to design and manage your projects with “just enough” PM discipline… and no burdensome PM administrivia!

I have been wandering through the world of project management (PM) for more than 30 years — first as a working project manager; then as an author, consultant, and trainer of PM newbies.  Here’s a graphic summarizing my PM “Body of Work:”

My "Body of Work" in Project Management

My PM textbooks have been adopted by individuals, colleges, universities, and organizations (public and private).  I’ve published articles, conducted informal PM studies, maintained this websites for nearly two decades, published a blog/podcast (Inspired Project Teams) and have been a presenter at many professional conferences. I’ve also helped develop proprietary PM job/competency models. Finally, for more than 20 years, I especially enjoyed creating customized PM Basics workshops and presenting these on site, for PM newbies in almost every industry imaginable.

My "Wisdom Filter" Working to Reduce Complexity

After so many years of explaining PM and helping newcomers apply PM to their own projects, I’ve developed a kind of filter (like the strainer shown above) that’s made up of my experiences. I call this my Wisdom Filter. And, as the years go by, I have begun more and more to engage this filter to help me strip out the needless complexity from the field of PM.  The result is a simple, practical vision of PM which I call Project Management Minimalism. It’s based on these two premises:

First:  Despite what many PM “experts” and professional associations would like you to believe, it’s fairly easy for anyone to learn to use a few basic PM tools and processes to assure that projects are well-organized and completed on time, on budget, and with excellent results.

Second: A strong case can be made that extensive PM training and certification is a “nice to have,” not a “need to have.” (For more on this, see my article Beyond PM Certification: Achieving PM Performance Improvement.)

To support this PM Minimalist vision, I’ve gone through all of my PM “Body of Work” and boiled it down to the essential few items you need to design and manage your projects with “just enough” PM discipline… and no burdensome PM administrivia!  And I’ve assembled this in an easy-to-use book, The Project Management Minimalist: Just Enough PM to Rock Your Projects!

PM Minimalism: 10 Essential Steps to PM

Sharpening Galileo’s Quill: My Amazing Trip to ALMA in Chile

At the ALMA "high site" in front of one of the telescopes in the array.
(I'm the one on the left with the fashionable belly bag.)

A couple of weeks ago I returned from one of my most exciting client engagements ever: Teaching a three-day PM Basics workshop for some of the ALMA team based in Santiago, Chile.  ALMA is “The world’s most advanced radio astronomy observatory currently under construction at 5,000 meters [16,400 feet] of altitude in the Chilean Andes” and it is designed to go “in search of our cosmic origins.” [Check out my annotated online photo album documenting my whole adventure!]

ALMA stands for Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array — In other words, it’s an array (collection) of radio telescopes (63, to be exact!) under construction in the Atacama desert by a multi-national team of construction people, engineers, scientists, IT people and other specialists.  (See http://www.almaobservatory.org/ for more.) If you’ve ever seen the movie Contact with Jodie Foster, you have an idea of what such an array is about.

I was working with the people who will be assuring that the technical services function smoothly when the array begins serving the world’s scientific community. What an amazing, brilliant, and dedicated group of people! A science fiction fan, I was in awe of what they were doing. But I had no illusions about my ability to fully comprehend their work.  Still, while I didn’t know the science, nor could I completely grasp the ground-breaking technical specifications they were trying achieve with their equipment, I hoped to be able to help them get some of their projects a little better organized.  Thus, in my small way, I could support their efforts to go “in search of our cosmic origins.” I would be, in effect, sharpening Galileo’s quill! (And how cool is that?!)

It turns out that we had a successful class.  We worked together to create PM processes, artifacts, and plans that would help them better organize the work products and projects undertaken by some of the great big brains who are behind this effort.

One of the best things about this trip was that I arrived a few days early and was given a guided tour of the ALMA desert sites by my client. This helped me understand the challenges the class participants were facing. In addition, the ALMA team also arranged a guided tour of Santiago, Chile (since it was my first visit there).  All-in-all, this was one of the most fascinating,  challenging, and gratifying business trips ever! And I am extremely grateful to the ALMA team who worked so hard to make it so.

Since I’ve had several requests from friends and colleagues who wanted to see pictures of my trip, I prepared this special annotated Google Photo album documenting it. Enjoy!  Go to: https://photos.app.goo.gl/Lh7w8RLjc3mDhXP47

=================

Update: Comment from Richard Prestage (appears in photo above, center)
January 1, 2010 at 1:50 pm

Hi Mike –

Thanks for posting a very complimentary (but I would say accurate!) description of your trip. We also thought it was extremely successful, and we really benefited from your expertise. You are very modest; you did an excellent job of relating your PM expertise and processes to our situation.

(As a very minor nit-pick, we hope to have 66 antennas when we are finished!)

Regards,

Richard Prestage
Head of Technical Services
Joint ALMA Observatory

-----------

Reply from Michael Greer
January 1, 2010 at 6:07 pm

Thanks so much, Richard. 66 antennas it is. (Now you see why my wife always checks my numbers!)
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)