Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya. You have interfered with the productivity and work of my project team member. Prepare to die. This was a tweet status I saw on my #agile View and I couldn’t resist writing a blog post using the theme from The Princess Bride. It’s a topic that I am passionate about. (Productivity, that is. The movie is also very enjoyable to me! I wrote a lot about the fact that one of my primary roles as a project manager is to remove any obstacles from the project team. I am a constant advocate for my teams, making sure their focus and time are as unaffected as possible in order to create amazing systems. Here are some of the things I do to achieve this. Please leave your comments! You can work from home with a twist. Many tasks can be done by an individual. Although team interaction is important, there are times when it makes sense to minimize distractions. In a recent case, I suggested to one of my team members that they work from home two days per week, every other week. Here’s the twist. Normally, people working remotely are bombarded with instant messages. Sometimes it seems like less work was done than usual because of all these distractions. This agreement states that, except for the daily team tag up in the morning, they must be available online and unavailable by phone in critical situations. This agreement does a few things.

It allows them to focus completely on their tasks. It is also a sign of trust in the professional. It also reinforces my personal.

HBR shares how to move your stalled projects forward promise-based management Harvard Business Review offers a great service that sends subscribers a daily management tip taken from an HBR article. The following tip was discovered earlier this week. This Management Tip was taken from the Harvard Business Review article “Promise Based Management: The Essence of Execution”, by Donald N. Sull, and Charles Spinosa. April 2007. Even the most well-run companies can lose momentum on critical initiatives. Important work is left unfinished. Emerging opportunities get ignored. What are the culprits? Poorly written promises — these personal pledges employees make to satisfy stakeholders within and outside your organization. Work will move forward if employees are taught to craft promises carefully. Onekey to a well-crafted promise is explicitness — especially when employees andstakeholders have different cultural backgrounds or a promise involves anabstract construct (“optimization,” “innovation”) subject to multipleinterpretations. To avoid confusion, parties should make clear requests from the beginning, provide progress reports and define success (or failure) at the time of delivery. What makes a promise clear? There are five elements, and five other characteristics that make a promise reliable. I use the term “elements” for essential parts. It is impossible to promise anything if any of these parts are missing. These elements are:

Customer This person is listening to the commitment. If the customer isn’t listening, there won’t be a commitment. Performer This is the person who.

Happy Mother’s Day

Happy Mother’s Day to all the hardworking, under-appreciated moms out there! Here’s Jennifer Bedell’s great tribute post. Enjoy! Practice Project Management at home By.