Enterprise Project Management

Definition of leadership

Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

Definition of leadership has many aspects yet it agrees that a leader is one whose magnetic personality galvanizes people for some cause. Great leaders influence their followers not by words but by their actions. They do what they preach. They act as a catalyst and their presence is enough to motivate people.

It is often argued that leaders are born they are not made. Sufficient examples can be cited for both the arguments. However, history has been a testimony to the fact that several leaders have shown extraordinary leadership capability in later parts of their life. No one can become a leader unless and until he is able to influence others. A leader is one who is able to create a lasting influence in the minds of the people making them believe that whatever the leader is doing, it is for his own benefit.

One definition of leadership categorizes a leader as ‘X’ leader if he has an extraordinary personal leadership capabilities. The ‘X’ leaders have inner instinct to lead. They demonstrate their leadership ability by developing requisite skills and knowledge. They lead from the front and show utmost care for his followers. These leaders also do not hesitate in admitting his mistakes and learning from it. They constantly keep on innovating themselves. They are open to new challenges and are ready to adopt unconventional approach to achieve their objectives. These leaders also have the ability to take big risks.

While defining leadership it is imperative to understand that a leader is one who is effectively able to communicate with his followers. One definition of leadership defines leaders as natural leaders. These natural leaders are called charismatic leaders. The charismatic leaders have the potential to bring radical changes in the society.

Leaders need to monitor the environment continuously. They cannot just act locally but instead they need to have a broader outlook. They should be very flexible and adaptable. A better leader is one who is able to foresee the future and take steps to deal with it. Leaders can be nurtured also. It is for the leader to groom the future leaders for their organization. Proper training, guidance and responsibility help an individual to emerge as a leader.

It is often argued that there is not any single definition of leadership. Every leader in the past exhibited some unique trait, which made them the hero of their followers. Consistency of purpose is necessary. A fickle minded leader confuses his followers and takes them nowhere. A leader should lead a life of discipline. He should act as a catalyst and should not jump to take credit for any success. Once it becomes evident that the leader is behind name, fame and money, he loses the credibility and trust of his followers. A leader should show utmost restraint and patience. During adversity, he should create a positive environment around himself, which will motivate his followers. A leader should not only be visionary but he should be practical also. He should be able to establish a chord with his followers.

Definition of leadership is a post from: Enterprise Project Management

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Business Leadership Coaching

Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

While working in MNC or starting any small business, the leadership quality plays a vital role for making such business successful. There are several companies, which conduct business leadership coaching for improving the managerial techniques of their employees.

In various professional courses like MBAs, business schools, the syllabus is incorporated with techniques of business leadership coaching. The key role behind such coaching is to familiar the future trainee CEOs with responsibilities, difficulties in the business world which they will face in future. So this business leadership coaching is one kind of disaster management program in corporate world. By using such coaching, the trainee students actually deal with how to take decisions in critical situations, how to make co-ordination among teammates, how to convince them in some of managerial disputes, how to make mutual understanding with employees and how to encourage and admire their skills and competence.

Apart from such internship and training program of business school, various renowned corporate houses, organizations organize business leadership coaching for their managerial level employees. These types of business leadership coaching program hold several advantages for the growth of employees and their organization.
By giving proper attention to such business leadership coaching, the CEOs and managerial persons find out their strong and weak points and they are facilitated with proper solutions on such negatives which assist them for contributing more in the excellence of their organization.

Also these type of leadership coaching endow with proper techniques which is useful for solving several kind of critical situation like employee strike, working shifts, problems regarding the salary of employees and other conditions of employees association.
Also such business leadership coaching facilitate some techniques the HR manager of the company about how to appoint key and eligible candidates for the company. That include how to check the business knowledge of the candidate by conducting technical, aptitude test. This coaching also gives idea about how to set a paper for various recruiting positions of the organization.

Also such coaching sessions really assists to increase the trustworthiness of the executives towards the ideology of the business organization and their kind attitude towards the welfare of the employees.

The business leadership coaching helps to enhance the leading quality of the executives. So that gives us idea about how to handle the employees for achieving the targets. By using such leadership coaching, we see the enhancement in the working stamina of the Employees. So that really helps to utilize the available working hours for making the enhancement in the production rate. Also such leadership coaching illustrate various inventive ideas which really useful for making development of the company.
By using the coaching techniques, the executives exactly knows what is the current position of their organization in the market.

In the business leadership coaching, the students are facilitated with how to take decision on any critical situation. For such important topics various techniques, mental and physical situation are discussed in the coaching session. Through this leadership coaching, the situational approach of leadership to such critical situation or dispute makes the condition safer.

Business Leadership Coaching is a post from: Enterprise Project Management

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Ignore Job Applicants that Ignore Your Requirements

tom — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 00:10:56 +0000

I’ve been increasing the number of hires for my company in the last couple months a lot. What I’ve been looking for is both – freelancers and employees. In Austria, and outside Austria (I don’t care where people sit if they can do the job well)

However, what I learnt over the past couple months is, why it’s said that bigger companies are “arrogant” when it comes to responses to job applications.

I learnt with an increased number of job postings for my company that the quality of the application ABSOLUTE relates to the quality of the person applying for the job.

My submission requirements are not easy, but easy to read.

I want

a CV
some writing samples in german AND english
and recently a filled out form where a couple of questions are to be answered (okok – it’s about 600 words to write I would estimate, but hell – people want a job)

I get

10% of complete submissions
90% crap

Yes, frankly NINE out of TEN persons applying for a full-time job are NOT capable to read a 2-line-requirement of things to send in.

Funny thing is, that in the beginning I started to answer them back to say “hey, please send in a a complete application, or there’s THIS missing or I’m still requiring THAT”… And one guy even wrote back “What’s still missing? I sent you all”

I must admit – I’m anoyed by so many crappy applications especially for full-time jobs located in Austria.

Frankly, today I feel this is in a direct correlation to the

austrian social system (you can get $2500 or MORE for doing nothing) … and I tell you – one lady once had the guts to tell me “If I would work for you, I would no make a profit – I’d rather keep unemployed… what a pest, eh?”

the extemely hot weather currently ( I guess many people go bananas when it’s over 35 degress celsius )

most people are just damn LAZY and think “maybe I would still get an interview with incomplete application, but then THEY’LL see me and hire me rightaway …”

damn… hiring can get frustrating at some point…

I tell you what –
I stopped answering incomplete applications
PLUS
I will stop feeling anoying after today

What’s your hiring and interview experience?

Ignore Job Applicants that Ignore Your Requirements is a post from: Enterprise Project Management

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PHPAGA – a cool quotation, project management, time tracking, invoicing tool

tom — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 23:29:14 +0000

PHPAGA: is the new kid on the open source project management software block…

PHPAGA is a web-based project/task/invoice/quotation tracking solution, providing an efficient, centralized manner to keep on top of your day-to-day jobs and activities. Its features include: printing invoices, quotations and task lists to PDF, productivity statistics per project or per person, and financial overview.

Frankly guys, I got no idea how they got to that shitty name, but still it’s built in Italy, so AGA maybe stands for some italian PM related abbrevation…

And most important, this is by far the most flexible and comprehensive timekeeping, project management and invoicing tool I’ve seen in the last 2 years…

of course there’s still no online-charging integration, but you got everything else you need as a PM to keep manhours and materials, albeit I’m not sure the material catalog is good enough…

transforming a quote into a project works like a charm… seems to me like one of THOSE tools that are not just built to build one, but being used by the creators!

What is NOT in that tool is a real request/task tracking where I’m using Mantis: at the moment… and every PM dreams of migrating his internal requests into a project manager’s plan.

However – if you stick to creating quotes, project time plans (should be sufficient for quite a lot of average sized projects) and let your people type in their time in that tool you are perfect with it…

Frankly, believe this is the first OS pm tool I think is worth digging deeper since it’s usertinterface AND datamodel are both so comprehensive… even taxing is already prepared via country specific modules …

check it out!

PHPAGA – a cool quotation, project management, time tracking, invoicing tool is a post from: Enterprise Project Management

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RentACoder gets better, GetAfreeLancer worse

tom — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 20:14:45 +0000

Today I learnt about two changes in the internet outsourcing world

1) RentAcoder.com: implemented a new ExpertGuarantee – which requires the bidders to agree to a money deposit that will be forfeited if they miss the deadline…

this is a great thing if you are in a critical project or just can’t stand those people procrastinating exactly YOUR projects and telling you all sorts of odd reasons for that

2) GetAfreeLancer: implemented new rating rules that are VICE VERSA

today I learnt that you cannot leave negative feedback if a provider agrees to your price and deadline just to drop out of the project somewhere in the middle… of course you’ll get your money back if you were wise enough to ESCROW it (NEVER pay anything upfront as I, the dumbass, did with 2 providers because they told me some weird story… NEVER)

this is essentially the reason why I will move away from GAF. GAF did never implement a proper process for problematic situations and they REFUSE to help you – either if you are the buyer or the seller… they just don’t care

with this recent step they even incentivised or at least no more penalized providers to drop out of a project in the middle… and THAT’S BAD – as you might meet “top-coders” (with all those 5 star ratings for 20$ projects) and they might simply suck and try to get away with low-quality work or bad deliverables… and if not, they drop out and don’t even get their bad rating…

Interested changes, eh?

RentACoder gets better, GetAfreeLancer worse is a post from: Enterprise Project Management

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Funky Job Title Mania

tom — Wed, 13 Dec 2006 21:46:26 +0000

Just a few days ago I thought “hey, the online marketing world is a cool one, people are not crazy for funky job titles” …

but THEN I came across Todd’s post for 14 new titles: i-like-making-up-titles/ and I must revise my thinking… while looking thru my business card heap from the recent conference I still need to go thru I found at least 14 other cool and funky job titles..

so as they say

If you won’t get a payraise, they’ll give you a cool title to boast around…

and NO, I won’t take the time to type them in here TODAY

or should I?

Funky Job Title Mania is a post from: Enterprise Project Management

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TrackStudio – found what I’ve been looking for?

tom — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 08:42:31 +0000

Wow… sounds too good to be true finally.

After searching for a good helpdesk/ticketing/project management solution for distributed project teams for over 1,5 years without really finding what I wanted today I came across TrackStudio and I think with

Hierarchival Task Management and Work Breakdown Structure
Field-Level Visibility per user role
Inheritance of project structure setups (that means setting up

the three major features I was missing in so many “small scale” systems out there seem to be in place.

I haven’t tested this solution yet, but with an enterprise license including source-code (java) for around $3k this is one piece of software that every bigger project should be able to afford even for it’s own sake… not to mention a bigger project organization.

What impresses me further are a broad range of (soap-based) integration options

into SCM systems CVS and SVN out-of-the-box
into Outlook (out of the box?!)
into the whole MS office app palette (I want to see THAT!)
and so many more…

and finally a hefty user security thing, tons of e-mail subscription and e-mail submission features (even for time-tracking! hi trackertool – I spent 8 days today on task #424 LOL)

The workflow features deserve a separate mention – TrackStudio allows you to specify and enforce your tracking process through states and state transitions… that’s per project … and of course you might have different project types like marketing project, software project, evaluation project, procurement project, employee hiring project etcetc in your organization, don’t you?

some goodies:

Web-based workflow editor
Complete workflow customization: states, transitions, etc
Unlimited numbers of workflows, states and transitions
Multiple workflows per project
Multiple task categories per workflow
Dependent task categories
Workflow inheritance WOW.. that’s what you want
Per-project workflow customization,
Per-workflow customizable fields /fancy!/
Elapsed time history recorded in the database with comments
Workflow and e-mail notification integration

I must admit after finding my major requirements fulfilled I must take a look at the requirements list I made over 2 years ago for the prospective tracking tool to see if there’s anything missing… my gut feeling says that time-tracking, accounting and invoicing might play a minor role, so i’ll check out features for that and integration into existing systems out soon.

They offer a hosted solution at $40 / month for the professional edition for 20 users AND there’s a 30day trial available – so I have nothing to lose but signup and learn more…

PS: these guys mentioned that if you find a tool that covers their functionality, they will link and advertise it own their own site… cool

TrackStudio – found what I’ve been looking for? is a post from: Enterprise Project Management

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Project Management Comes Of Age

tom — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 20:39:02 +0000

Setting the Standard: Project Management Comes Of Age

In the overall scheme of the world at large, project management is a relatively young concept. It dates back to the late 1950s, when the U.S. Department of Defense decided that things just weren’t developing quickly enough. To nudge things along, they assigned experts to discover the most efficient processes for getting work done with the highest possible quality. The result: a whole new field was born – project management.

So What the Heck IS Project Management?

In a nutshell, project management is a self-defining term. It’s the ultimate combination of all the activities necessary to successfully shepherd a project from initiation through completion. Those activities include planning and organizing the work; assessing, acquiring and allocating the resources needed to complete the work; assigning, supervising and managing the tasks associated with project goals; and defining and meeting quality standards at every step of the process. In the fifty years since those early days, the science (or is it an art?) of project management has grown as various organizations developed their own designs for assuring that projects under their control meet the highest standards of efficiency and quality.

Why Choose a Standards-Based Project Management Methodology?

Over the years, there have been numerous attempts at standardizing the project management process with best practices, processes and theories – and because the process that works best in building submarines may not be the most efficient method of building a content management system, there are differing standards for different disciplines. The end result is that no matter what type of project you are trying to pull together, a standard framework of best practices approved by a professional body already exists. While it’s possible to develop your own standards from scratch, it’s an exercise in reinventing the wheel – and your organization’s time is far better spent in choosing an applicable framework and adapting it to your own needs ( see also Turbit, Neville, Project Management and Software Development Methodology (6/1/2005) )

The real trick is to sift through the various sets of standards to find the one that best suits your organization and needs.

The Role of Standards in a Maturing Industry

Jeanette Cabanis of the Project Management Institute said in an 1999 article:

The dictionary lists these synonyms for standard: benchmark, criterion, measure, and touchstone. The central meaning shared by all these nouns is “a point of reference against which individuals, organizations, products and processes are compared and evaluated” (from Cabanis, J. (1999) Standards: The Rallying Cry of a Growing Profession )

As an industry matures, its members begin to evolve standards – a set of best practices by which to measure the quality of work done by those in the profession. These standards involve processes that ensure quality, ethical treatment and the safety of the general public. At the half-century mark, the industry of project management has reached that stage in its maturity. Sets of standards like the PMI’s PMBOK are a step toward declaring ourselves professionals in a growing and mature field.

Project Management Comes Of Age is a post from: Enterprise Project Management

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Competition and Cooperation: Two Great Tastes That Taste Great Together

Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

Team building has become one of the biggest buzzwords in management circles with good reason. It's difficult to refute the advantages of having a well-oiled workgroup team that supplements and supports each others' skills and competencies. The prevalence of the team work concept has led management to toss out competition as a motivator on their projects – an unfortunate loss, rather like tossing out the baby with the bathwater. Let me digress a moment.

I have a young friend who works for a cooperative grocery store chain that emphasizes teamwork and cooperation among its workers. The business is built on the concept of teams – each store in the chain is its own team, and within each store there are multiple teams, each responsible for a shift, and on each shift, there are teams responsible for each aspect of the work that needs to be accomplished each day. The various teams both cooperate and compete with each other – they compete between store sites for best performance, they compete between shifts for attendance and accomplishment, they compete within teams to contribute the most – with all this competition going on, one would think that the entire team cooperation concept would be, to put it bluntly, shot to heck.

In practice, though, it works. It works to the extent that the company is one of the fastest growing supermarket chains in the country, and it works to the extent that the company has built a customer AND employee loyalty rating that is hard to beat anywhere. So why is it that an organization that should be fragmenting itself by encouraging competition among its staff is instead succeeding in creating and building a team-focused enterprise that is beating the competition?

The secret? The model of teams within teams maximizes on the concept of "cooperate internally – compete externally". Every employee of the grocery chain is a member of multiple teams at once, all of them with a common goal. At the same time, my friend is the member of the overall team, of his store team, of his shift team and of his workgroup team. While his shift team may be competing with other shifts to move the most product, they are also cooperating in the store team’s effort to post the highest profit and the overall company goal to provide the best service to all of its customers. This has the effect of discouraging sabotage of other teams and encouraging the inter-team cooperation to advance the overall goal of the larger team.

Cooperative team building can benefit from strategic implementation of competition in the same way. Keep in mind that both competition AND cooperation are natural to human beings – the trick is to manage them both so that one supports the other rather than diminishing it.

Competition and Cooperation: Two Great Tastes That Taste Great Together is a post from: Enterprise Project Management

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Working With Subcontractors To Get The Job Done

tom — Sat, 10 Jun 2006 20:31:53 +0000

When working on a wide variety of projects, it is impossible to always have the exact expertise that you need in house in order to get the job done. If looking for outside help on a temporary basis, a subcontractor may be the best way to go. A skilled subcontractor will allow your regular staff to concentrate on projects that they are proficient in, and that can often be the best way to keep your staff on track and working at their optimal speed.

By using subcontractors, usually freelancers, you can allow your team to focus on the things that they do best. This will reduce the stress associated with working on a project that they are unsure of or that they lack the skills or knowledge to complete. Let’s face it, there are bound to be projects that need a bit of outside expertise, and this is especially true with smaller companies. It is not financially feasible to keep a large staff on hand, by using skilled subcontractors, you can make your firm appear much more capable to potential clients.

When using subcontractors, it is a good idea to have a contract that outlines the exact details of the job that the subcontractor is being hired to do. The contract should contain the amount of compensation that the subcontractor is going to receive as well as a non-disclosure statement. When you bring an outsider into your teams environment, you want everyone to feel that you are looking out for their best interests.

Many small companies find subcontractors to be a great resource, including my own one-man show.

Subcontractors tend to be much cheaper than traditional, long term employees and can often be of a great benefit to a company even if only for a very short period of time. You can pick subcontractors based on their knowledge and opt for different subcontractors as the need arises.

However hiring subcontractors is nothing different to hiring normal personell… it’s the “human factor” that should work out in the end… the best subcontractor can be a one-time hire if you find that your personal communication is not effective enough. This especially when hiring offshore subcontractors from overseas…

and for my own company I recently started making my own experiences with off-shore workers just these days…

Working With Subcontractors To Get The Job Done is a post from: Enterprise Project Management

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