After all the hype from the World Cup in South Africa, one very driving lesson that can be applicable for any Project Manager is that the sum of the team is worth more then any single star player. France, previous world champions, had a team full of great stars like Thierry Henry, Franck Ribery, Patrice Evra and Nicolas Anelka. Italy had Fabio Cannavaro, Simone Pepe and  Daniele De Rossi. England has Frank Lampard, Wayne Rooney, Steven Gerrard, Ledley King and Peter Crouch. Portugal had Cristiano Ronaldo, Simao, Tiago and Deco. Big names in their own right but when put together somehow could not deliver the goods. Similarly when forming a project team, you may have the brightest resources available, but if the team does not gel together and work effectively, then the outcome of the project will surely be in jeopardy. A good project manager is able to bring all these resources together and unite them in a common goal. It is not an easy task to gather and moti...

In the movie Invictus, Matt Damon who play the Springboks South African side captain François Pienaar, gives a rousing inspirational speech to his team when they faced the awe-inspiring All Blacks New Zealand Rugby squad in the Rugby World Cup finals. Intimidated by the huge reputation and stature of the New Zealand team, in particular Jonah Lomu played by Zak Feaunati, the Springboks were in sore need of some inspiration. In his rousing speech, Matt Damon inspired the team saying that who ever was nearest to the huge player, was to hold on to him no matter what and rest assured help will come. In any project, there will be times when the team members will need to be assured as there may be some doubts as to their capabilities to complete the task at hand or they may have reservations in the capability of the team to be able to complete the project due to some slippage in the schedule, additional requirements etc. The core of Matt Damon's speech is a great assuring piece,which ...

Every PM will have this nightmare of things that can go wrong in a project. Just like Robert Green in England's opening match with the USA in this year's World Cup finals in South Africa. At a crucial point, when everything was looking good for the England team, Robert Green made a tragic error and allowed an equalizer for the US which turned out to cost the England team their 3 points for the match. In every project, there will come a time when someone will drop the ball. What happens next is the crucial part. Rather then focusing on the event that caused the ball to be dropped, the PM will need to rally the team and help them to move on to complete the project, no matter how critical that event was. This is something that should be learnt from this match as this happened relatively early in the match and there was still plenty of time to rectify the situation. As a project manager or captain of the team Steve Gerrard should have rallied his troops and step up a gear to ...

There are many references for motivation but I found this link to be most useful. You could call it the 50 things to get you going. Check it out Motivation at www.motivation123.com  This is a great site for motivational tools.

The proverbial question. It may be surprising that many people do not really know what is a project manager or really understand the role this position undertakes. Many would associate this role only with the construction industry. Now project managers fulfill an essential role in many industries outside of construction and provide one of the many essential elements to make project run successfully. This blog is dedicated to the many project managers who help to run projects in all aspects of industry and are often very much misunderstood. A definition provided in Wikipedia : A project manager is a professional in the field of project management. Project managers can have the responsibility of the planning, execution, and closing of any project, typically relating to construction industry, architecture, computer networking, telecommunications or software development. Seems over simplified but does bare out the role which project managers or PMs provide. This blog is named...