Member Favorites
Very active asapm member Rose Johnston recommends two sites for Project Managers who have interest in career improvement. See her two links below, with her descriptions of how to maximize their benefit. (May, 2005)
A. The following link would be a good one for asapm members and friends. Here's the brief:
Article: Start and Stop by Douglas E. Welch.
Part of: Career Opportunites series from Computor Edge magazine.
Synopsis: It is a rare high-tech project that progresses neatly from beginning to end. Most project schedules change dramatically over the lifespan of the project. Along with this, many projects can go on hiatus for days, weeks or even months at a time. You probably already know that the ability to move from task to task is an important quality in your high-tech career, but learning how to put a project "to bed" and awaken it later can help you move up the career ladder. To access this link, click here.
Back at the home page of Doug Welch's website, you can follow his blog, which contains links to additional interesting articles.
B. Here's another recommendation from Rose, this one for job-hunters.
Craig's List is a portal / bulletin board for classified ads around the world. It started in 1995 in San Francisco and today represents more than 100 cities (mostly in the U.S., but some outside the U.S.)
The site is free unless you are posting a job; in that case, there may be a fee depending on the city.
Compared to other job boards, surveys suggest that Craig's List is more effective for employers and job-seekers.
Unfortunately, there is no job category for project manager; instead, the jobs are posted within a specific field such as accounting, biotech, and so on. However, using the site's search capabilities, you can easily search within a selected city to find all listings for project managers. Here are the steps:
1. Go to www.craigslist.com
2. Click on your city of interest in the list at the right.
3. Click on the "jobs" heading (blue, bold, near top of page):
- In the search keywords box, type "project manager" (in quotes). Select ALL jobs.
- Click the Search button (we found 16 PM jobs in Milwaukee, and wow! 43 in Denver/Boulder!).
Alternatively, given that your city is part of Craig's List and that there are postings, here's a short-cut:
1. In any Google search box, type the following:
site:city.craigslist.org "project manager"
Examples:
site:denver.craigslist.org "project manager"
site:losangeles.craigslist.org "project manager"
2. On the Google toolbar, click on Search Site
Recently a few of our members told us about some
of their favorite resources. In this section, the recommendations
are from a few of asapm’s
Officers and Directors. We're asking members
and visitors for your frequently-visted favorite sites, and your interesting
soundbites. Tell us where to go at Favorite Links.
- Bob Youker recommends two sites that he’s been visiting for
several years. He relies on PMForum® for ongoing current news about
project management around the world. He also recommends PROJECTMagazine
for thought-provoking articles such as “Are you a Kofi Annan
or a Saddam Hussein?” in
which Ed Hartnett discusses using diplomacy to get the best from project
teams.
- Bill Duncan reminds us about NewGrange, an asapm affiliate
and our official ListServ (a discussion forum conducted through email).
A participant
since at least 1998, Bill says NewGrange has something for anyone who
is interested in project management, from novice through advanced.
Go to: www.newgrange.org
- Rose Johnston recommends “Managing Your Documentation Projects” by
JoAnn T. Hackos, ISBN 0-471-59099-1. On her bookshelf since 1999, she
refers to it for guidance and reminders about project processes, standards,
techniques, and skills that are key to publishing efforts. The book
has project management templates and checklists. The book is also special
because of its topic and quality; i.e., books about managing documentation
projects are rare, and ones this thorough and well-written are very
rare.
- Stacy Goff likes GanttHead, www.gantthead.com,
a site where even the free membership has great value. Although specifically
oriented to Information Technology project managers, it is a rich resource,
with templates, a lot of opinions, and great
articles. Example: The
recent series on the value of today's PM certifications: www.gantthead.com/article/0,1380,152653,00.html (requires
a painless log-in or registration). The paid Premium membership is
even richer for professional project managers, with more than twice
as much available content.
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Thanks for the Sound Bites and Ideas
We mined the articles at the asapm web site for sound bites and ideas
you can use right now.
Sound Bites
- “Top managers and clients do not like surprises [so one way
to] define project management is as an insurance policy … To
reduce uncertainties, meet internal and external customer satisfaction,
and be unhurt at the end of the project.” - From Why
Manage Projects(vs Just Doing Them)? by André Barcaui,
ESI International, PMP, and college professor, Brazil
- “Plans are enabling, not constricting. Aberrations are normal.
You work with what happens. Order is emergent, not predefined. Disorder
is not chaotic.” – From Playing
the Jazz of Project Management,
submitted by Pat Morgan, Director of Certification, who fought to the
finnish (pun intended) to bring us this article.
Ideas You Can Use Now
- Kick-start a project by involving the team and stakeholders in creating
a rank-ordered list of desired results based time, cost, quality, scope,
and other project vital signs. – From Prioritize
Vital Signs, by Stacy Goff.
- To set the right tone for actions, think carefully about the words
you use: post-morten, post-implementation review, lessons learned,
or after action review? – From Once is Not
Enough by Bill Duncan
See these articles and others in the articles
section of asapMag.
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