Focus On The Trends, Not Precision

Through the years I have been involved in many engagements where we look at how project teams manage the cost and schedules of major projects and portfolios of projects. The clients we work with execute projects ranging from tens of million dollars to tens of billion dollars. Through these engagements I have met professionals that … Continue reading Focus On The Trends, Not Precision →

Quick-Take on the Zoom Fiasco in Texas High Schools

This morning I received a notification from Katy ISD that they were experiencing outages with their video conferencing platform, Zoom. I later learnt of the incident in McArthur High School in San Antonio, Texas, that involved an intruder that spent 40 minutes sharing racist and sexual content remotely with high school class. The intruder used … Continue reading Quick-Take on the Zoom Fiasco in Texas High Schools →

Not Making A Decision Is Also A Decision

Imagine an ad that reads as follows: Help reduce productivity Use resources less effectively Increase costs Not many people would rush to buy this "solution". However, this is exactly the solution chosen by a large number of projects and companies on a daily basis, putting billions of shareholders' capital in jeopardy. Instead of establishing fundamental … Continue reading Not Making A Decision Is Also A Decision →

Notifications Are Exactly Wrong

With ubiquitous connectivity we have constant access to everything we can imagine at a moment's notice through apps and websites on our PCs, Macs, phones and tablets. At the same time, those exact apps and websites also have access to ping us when it suits them. Left unchecked, you will have a continuous stream of … Continue reading Notifications Are Exactly Wrong →

The E-Mail I Received From Myself

This week I received an interesting e-mail from myself while I was sleeping. I informed myself that an international hacking group had full control of my account, along with my messaging and social media accounts. This group claimed it had sifted through my messages and determined I had "little and big secrets" along with recordings … Continue reading The E-Mail I Received From Myself →

Show Me Your e-Mail and I Will Tell You Who You Are

Like many others, I tend to keep e-mails unless I have a good reason to delete it. Free storage and easy retrieval from wherever I might be makes it the ultimate reference library. Yes, I know — anything you do or store online should be considered public information — but e-mails only leak from high-profile individuals, like presidential candidates … Continue reading Show Me Your e-Mail and I Will Tell You Who You Are →

First Change Your Processes, not Your People

Iris Bohnet is the Director of Women and Public Policy Program at the Harvard Kennedy School and cochairs its Behavioral Insights Group. She was recently interviewed by Harvard Business Review, where she made the point shown above in connection with diversity training. She contends that rather than running more workshops or try to eradicate the … Continue reading First Change Your Processes, not Your People →

What Are You Doing to Improve Quality Today?

Like many others, I sometimes walk the stairs instead of riding the elevator. This morning I did, and I as I was walking the stairs I noticed a couple of used napkins lying in the staircase: I was first thinking, someone really needs to keep the staircase better maintained! Shortly after another thought starting dominating … Continue reading What Are You Doing to Improve Quality Today? →

Is Your Project Controls Organization Data-Driven?

DJ Patil, U.S. Chief Data Scientist, defines a data-driven government as a “connected organization that responsibly gathers, processes, leverages, and releases data in a timely fashion to enable transparency, create efficiencies, ensure security, and foster innovation to benefit the nation.” Since data is at the core of every project controls organization, can we apply elements … Continue reading Is Your Project Controls Organization Data-Driven? →