RobertSteele

One of my favorite hobbies is to build custom longboards in unique shapes and designs. Having built many boards, I sometimes tend to put new projects off, starting just a few days before the deadline. Once, doing such resulted in disaster.

In any company, it can be difficult to feed relevant information up to the executive level. In large enterprises, it is especially difficult to do this. The infrastructure in which an executive receives this information is called, fittingly, an executive information system (EIS).

When project management gets too casual, I think it's easy to stop paying attention to risk. Sometimes, in the monotony of menial tasks and processes, one can lose the scope of a project.

Project managers can be placed in three categories: 1) those who invest a lot for best quality, 2) those who invest some for medium quality, and 3) those who invest minimal for minimal quality. Then, there is also an outlier category: the project manager that expects something else altogether.

There's always the person who is ready to spend the entire budget and climb the tallest projects without equipping the proper gear. Then, when there is little financial backing left, this person simply waves off the small, yet fundamental, spending matters that make the difference between success and failure.

Most people that encounter serious dangers or death in the wild do so because they are not equipped with the gear or knowledge required for their environment. In project management, having the proper tools and knowledge is fundamental to project success. Although a project is not the same as a life threatening situation of course, the same principles apply.

While it is obvious that there is power in collaboration to get work done, I would like to consider the power of collaboration on "how" that work gets done. After all the "how" is ultimately what carries projects through their life cycle.

When I stuffed my beagles into a collapsible doghouse and drove for two hours, I got what I asked for. When managing project-based work, dealing with the team can be difficult, but what are the team's circumstances, and how did they get there?

In previous articles, I have written about my endeavor to drain a swamp behind my cabin. Having recently discovered the final step to this process, I wish to use it as a metaphor for the final steps of project management.

One of my projects this summer has been a grueling process of stopping a swamp from flooding my cabin. I gained control of the flood, and what was once a boggy marsh is now a meadow with a stream running through. However, because I can only manage this area with a simple shovel, the flooding still presents a problem.