Project Epiphanies: The One I Add This Year and Seven fundamentals of IT project success.
Cornelius Fichtner: Here we go!
Elizabeth Harrin: Not the Status Report with Josh Nankivel and Cornelius Fichtner.
Cornelius Fichtner: Hello everyone! A week has gone by and Josh Nankivel and myself, Cornelius Fichtner are back with another weekly recommendation of the things you should go check out in regards to project management on the internet.
Hello Josh and what’s your recommendation this week?
Josh Nankivel: Hey, Cornelius! My recommendation for this week comes from the Project Shrink by Bas de Baar and he had a post just recently here called “Project Epiphanies,” the one I add this year. And this is something he has had running on his blog for the last few years where he looks back at the year and says: “What’s the big epiphany that I have for the year?”
So his epiphany for this year is “Social media skills improve communication.” And he starts of by really just talking about how when you meet people online via social media tools --- Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, whatever --- and then you see them in real life at a conference or just whatever then you’ve already got something that you know about each other. The ice breaker has pretty much already happened so it’s a lot easier to get to know people which I completely agree with. So I really liked this one because of that.
And I’ve seen this personally myself just locally here. I met someone through Twitter that’s a local internet marketing type of guy and so I got plugged in to a local network here in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. And on January 5th, there’s a LinkedIn group that’s going to do a meetup called South Dakota Geeks. And so I’m really excited about that.
Cornelius Fichtner: Wouldn’t you better much go to the South Dakota Project Managers?
Josh Nankivel: Well, that’s pretty much the local PMI chapter and I’m already a member of that so I have to go to that. This is a geek thing so this is like a lot of IT guys, developers. Some project managers and that kind of thing but I’ve got a development background too so I’m always interested. They’re actually going to be talking about developing applications for android which should be really interesting.
Cornelius Fichtner: Ooh! Yeah, it’s the up and coming, isn’t it?
Josh Nankivel: Yup, definitely. And then the other thing I want to talk about based off of this is he’s really looking back at the year at what his epiphany was. And I want to do a New Year’s resolution. So my New Year’s resolution is that in 2010, my goal is to help through PM Student, another place is waiting or whatever, help twice as many people as I did in 2009.
Cornelius Fichtner: Nice! So doubling the people whom you helped.
Josh Nankivel: Right, exactly.
Cornelius Fichtner: That’s a very a New Year’s resolution.
Josh Nankivel: Yeah! Yeah!
Cornelius Fichtner: Yeah!
Josh Nankivel: What about you, do you have one?
Cornelius Fichtner: I actually have a very good record in regards to my New Year’s resolutions because for the last 20 years, I’ve had the same New Year’s resolution, every single year!
Josh Nankivel: Yeah!
Cornelius Fichtner: Yeah, it’s quite a simple one: “I will not have any New Year’s resolutions!” And really for the last 20 years, I have followed up on that and it’s amazing what it does.
The reason why I don’t do any is I just realized that you don’t need to the New Year’s Day to make a resolution. I can make a resolution and an improvement anytime throughout the year and don’t have to wait until December 31st to make one.
So to me this is just my way of being different, so to speak, and not have a New Year’s resolution. I’ll probably improve my…find something to do, say on February 18th and figure out what I want to do in 2010 then. But it doesn’t have to be January 1st or December 31st rather.
Josh Nankivel: I can respect that. I’m a contrarian too so it’s alright.
Cornelius Fichtner: Yes, the society of contrarians. Well!
Josh Nankivel: What have you got?
Cornelius Fichtner: This week, first, I wanted to talk about penguins and project management. And yes, I decided to do that next week instead because I got an email from, where is he, Paul Dow. And he says: “Loved the show! Here’s an interesting article from the Tech Republic relating to IT Project Failure.”
So I clicked on that article and it takes you to a video called “The Six Categories of Failed IT Projects.” And the guy in the video, his name is Jason Hiner. And then there is a link again and that link takes you to an article: “Six Types of Project Failures” written Michael Krigsman. And in that article is another link which takes you to finally, the article that I want to talk about and that is “Seven Fundamentals of IT Project Success.”
Now, here is something contrarian, right? Everyone always talks about why projects fail but this article here in particular talks about why projects succeed. Ah! Very interesting! It’s quite in depth, it goes over various pages and the first one here is you need to have a business case. You need to have stakeholder and user engagement is number two. Then we talk about executive sponsorship. It’s pretty much what you had expected to find in an article like this. But it’s just from another angle. It’s from a positive angle. Finally, what makes projects succeed and not ‘What are you doing wrong?’ and ‘Why are your projects failing?’ So there you go, two contrarian things. I do not have a New Year’s resolution and I do not point you to the why-projects-fail article. I point you to the how-to-make-projects-succeed article this week. Yeah!
Josh Nankivel: Well, you know Michael’s blog is IT Project Failures so maybe he was just being contrarian to his own.
Cornelius Fichtner: He could be.
Josh Nankivel: He decided to talk about success for a little while.
Cornelius Fichtner: Could be. Well, that’s it for me this week. Goodbye, Josh!
Josh Nankivel: Goodbye, Cornelius!
Cornelius Fichtner and Josh Nankivel: Goodbye, Elizabeth!
Elizabeth Harrin: See you next week! You’ve been listening to Josh and Cornelius, 5 minutes of project management magic.
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