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...

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 ...