This is a collection of useful short articles and links. It tries to collect together the thoughts of people who actually practice Project Management and Change Management.

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“Change is inevitable, except from a Vending Machine”  Robert C. Gallagher

I have to say I like that quote.

I have just completed my first PRINCE2 Training Course in New Zealand.  I lived in Auckland for 8 years and have married a Kiwi. So it’s always good to visit “my second home”.

The course was actually in Wellington, which is a very pleasant city although I recommend that you undertake professional endurance training before attempting the steep hills carrying  a laptop and a full compliment of PRINCE2 manuals and course materials.

As always, the highlight for me  of the 5 day PRINCE2 training course was the opportunity to discuss the projects with my clients. As has become increasingly common, what started as a conversation about pure project management quickly veered into people and change management. This once again shows how PRINCE2 and Change Management Training are very complementary.

I recommend a stroll down Cuba St on a sunny  Saturday morning, but an enduring memory will be the sublime fish and chips in the clients’s staff canteen at Friday lunchtime. Access is through security gates so it is not possible for many people to experience this, but if it were publicly available it would probably win international awards.

Ever tried to build and maintain a project plan across multiple sites by emailing copies of MS Project? I have and it’s not pretty.

Liquid Planner is one of  growing number of online services that allow collaboration on projects across the internet. Unlike  many of these services, this one comes with a strong planning tool and uses this as focus for its structure.  Basically this solves the problem above; managing a complex plan between several sites. It brings other features as well, but is it just too clever?

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I have just given a course in facilitation. Most people on the course were either Business Analysts or Project Managers.

I might be a bit slow, but I have just connected the dots……this is an important, perhaps critical, skill for  Project Managers. How often do we lead wokshops  for planning, risk analysis, problem solving etc? If you count up all the person hours, workshops can be expensive and we need to make them as effective as possible.

Facilitation is about setting clear objectives, selecting the right processes and using the combined intelligence and experience of the group to reach those objectives. If done well, it is hugely powerful in solving problems, creating ownership and building the team. If done badly, it will lead to frustration, disunity and poor problem solving.

There is a lot out there written about good facilitation but how many Project Managers know that is exists?

This is the process we use at Project Laneways. We lso use it as the basis for our training in facilitation.

Just lately we have been receiving an increasing number of enquiries regarding our training in soft skills, people skills. Our approach is simple and explained here

Personally, I think this is very forward looking.  Many of us are too embarrassed to admit our weaknesses area such as

• listening skills
• negotiating
• team leadership
• facilitation
• recognising and dealing with stress.

It’s as though we think everyone should be able to do all of things. actually most of us Can do these things to an extent, but that doesn’t mean we can’t get better at them. For instance, I think I am OK in the kitchen. But I also know that a few lessons would make me a lot better.  it’s just not that important to me.

However, if my sucess at work or in life depended on my kitchen skills then I would go out there and get lessons and try to be as good as I could be.

So how many people depend on their soft skills, people skills to get things done at work. Could they be better?

As you may already know, a Change Management Practitioner qualification is currently in development. The current APMG plan is for these to be available to candidates as early as November 2009.  I think its fair to say that  a task as complex as this where the quality of the deliverables  is paramount …..may get delayed.

However, it is our intention at Project Laneways to be a the forefront of this. We plan to be the first to develop a Practitioner workshop and offer qualification.

I am on the exam panel and must respect the rules of confidentiality that I have signed up to, but I am quite excited about this.

The new version of PRINCE2, PRINCE2 2009, talks about embedding PRINCE2 in an organisation. This is about getting the organsiation to use PRINCE2 effectively. This will mean

• Training managers in PRINCE2
• Briefing Execcutives in PRINCE2

Tailoring PRINCE2 so that it is aligned with other organsiational processes e.g. annual budget process, account management, financial delegation etc

Coaching and mentoring Project Managers and Project Boards so that they use PRINCE2 intelligently and appropriately. It should be seen as a useful aid to Project Management not as an impediment

Being prepared to adapt the usage as the company eveolves.

In other words this is  Change Management Initiative and sits right at the cross roads of two Project laneways fields of expertise.  I intend to write more about this over the next few months.

Well, the PRINCE 2 2009 course materials have all been lodged. Samples have come back from the Printer and we have a green light.  People who licence the material for their courses seem to be happy as well.

Actually, I am quite excited about the new PRINCE2 2009. It is not perfect (but what human invention ever is) but there are many steps forward.

Apart from anything else, the new book is smaller and that must be a good thing

(Note: There will be another soon about free project control software)

You will have heard of and, possibly used, MSProject. This is Microsoft’s project planning tool. It allows you to enter a series of activities, describe who can do them, how long they will take, and whether they need to come in a certain order (dependencies). In other words you can use it to create a project plan.

However, there are a number of free to use project planning tools available on the Internet. Here are a few of them.

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