Project Manage This holds a unique spot in PPM Community: to date, it’s the only one we’ve come across that posts on a purely anonymous basis. We intend to protect the anonymity of its editor-in-chief whilst opening your minds to what this PPM blog can bring to the table, primarily as a blog with an unmatched perspective and narrative.

“The voice isn’t meant to be me; instead its a conglomeration of PM types,” says the editor, who we’ll respectfully refer to as PMT. “I’ve been managing projects and programs for over a decade. I currently manage 12 pm types and am inspired each day by them. Watching the challenges they face, and witnessing them overcome each with grace is what keeps me going.”

The blog is the newest on the PPM Community, premiering on a weekly basis 8th October 2011. PMT effectively deals with the ins and outs of project management, tackling the Yin and Yang inherent with such a job.

“Simply put – it’s an outlet. I wanted to create a space to post tips, tales and observations about the career I love and hate,” PMT says. “Project managers, program managers, producers, account managers, coordinators, and the like. (They are) the unsung heroes. We’re the ones that keep things moving and get it done on time and on budget. We keep our teams motivated and on track, make sure our boss and/or client is happy, and ensure that the community we’re building for get the best product possible. You never see us sweat, rarely hear us swear, and are amazed at how calm we are when fires erupt. That’s because we’re good at what we do.

“We absolutely love our job. Making things happen, getting things done, that’s our nature. We never ever vent at work. Ok, rarely do. But we do have tales to tell. ‘Project Manage This’ is a place for PM types to love and hate the career we’ve chosen.”

The brief time away from the job – weekends – allows PMT the ability to reflect on what would make for good content in the blog.

“When the weekend rolls around, I simmer on the events of the week,” PMT says. “Instead of just thinking about it, I’ve decided to type something up.”

As PMT wants to protect their anonymity, the most we can tell you about their professional background is that PMT “was born a PM type, as I’m sure most people visiting your blog were.” PMT also made clear that the blog “isn’t about me. It’s about PMs.”

Considering that Project Manage This is in its early days, PMT had only one post they could really shed light on:

Top 10 Plus 1 – Personality Traits of a PM

Follow Project Manage This by way of the official Twitter handle – @pmthis

URL: http://projectmanagethis.wordpress.com/

RSS: http://projectmanagethis.wordpress.com/feed/

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PM Notes is a blog hosted by Nina Braschler, a senior project manager based in Switzerland. A bilingual professional, Nina blogs in German, but English translations are available through Google Translate.

“I do some coaching for project management in my company,” Nina says. “The questions of the ‘coachees’ inspired me to write about project management issues.”

Nina offers up to two posts each month since she premiered PM Notes in October 2010. She describes the blog thusly: “The posts highlight some stories of my project management workday life. It’s intended for everyone who is interested in project management.”

With modern translation tools like Google Translate and a strong command of the English language, Nina has crossed over between two leading EMEA languages and cultures, due in part to her Tweeting practises (@ninusch01) in both English and German.

Nina currently works as an FH Information Specialist & Senior Project Manager for Namics, a internet company based in St. Gallen, Switzerland. Previously, she’d worked at the Social Security Institute and Helvetia Gruppe, also in St. Gallen.

Her most popular post talks about a communications matrix:
The trade-off matrix as a basis for communication in the project (German original)

Some of her favourites include these three:

Project management on the road to Web 2.0 (German original)

Caution in dealing with rough cost estimates (German original)

The unpleasant Project …. (German original)

URL: http://pm-notes.blogspot.com/

RSS Feed: http://pm-notes.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

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Agile Product and Project Management is a blog run by Voximate Founder/Chief Marketing Officer Eric Krock. The blog premiered in August 2010 and normally publishes on a weekly basis, though the site underwent beta testing in the middle of the 2011 summer.

The blog was named one of the top 200 Agile blogs to follow in 2011 by AgileScout.com, as Eric gets Voximate off the ground after high-end corporate stints (see below).

Voximate is a recent startup that Eric told us “is working on a new solution for Agile project management and team collaboration.”

With two decades of experience in product and project management, Eric uses Agile Product and Project Management to publish regularly real-life experiences that can apply to the everyday project manager.

“Our blog provides practical advice to the in-the-trenches product or project manager on how to avoid common mistakes and improve your outcomes,” Eric says. “It highlights ubiquitous bad practices in the industry so PMs can anticipate, recognize, and stop them, and it provides practical solutions for common problems everyone faces. It has a special emphasis on how planning, discipline, and understanding of human psychology can make a PM more effective.”

“After 19 years of working in high technology, we’ve learned a lot the hard way about product and project management and would like to enable others to learn the easy way–by reading! We hope that by shining a bright light on bad practices in the industry, we can help to stamp them out and make everyone’s life better as a result. There’s so much needless waste in the high technology industry due to poor communication, bad planning, and lack of discipline. It doesn’t have to be this way!!!”

Eric has applied project & product management for over 19 years at some of the pioneering Internet and software companies of the world, including Zvents (Vice President of Product), VeriSign and Kontiki (Director of Product Management) and the Gecko browser engine at Netscape (Group Product Manager). In addition to his wealth of project & product management experience on corporate-level strategy, Eric holds Bachelor’s degrees from Stanford in both Computer Science and Japanese. In his free time, Eric has used his talents for philanthropic developments, producing HIV/AIDS prevention education videos in many languages, which are available free online at www.AIDSvideos.org/

Now with a new start up on his hands, Eric is using his name (Social Media Marketing Magazine named him one of the top 85 CMOs on twitter in May 2011) to get Voximate out front through the blog.

“As we develop it, we want to share with the product and project management community what we’ve learned in our own work experience, training, and certification courses. Obviously, we wish to build an audience and raise awareness of our solution in advance of its launch, but the blog also serves as therapy for me after almost 20 years in the trenches of the software industry!”

Eric points to a wealth of professionals that he feels would benefit from Agile Product and Project Management, including product managers, project managers, program managers, and engineering managers at companies that develop products.  “We’re particularly focused on software and Internet companies that use Agile and Scrum to manage their projects and deliver their products,” he says.

With straight-forward, eye-catching titles, Agile Product and Project Management posts certainly capture the eyes. Eric says the most popular post on the blog concerns the sharing of information:

Winners Share Information, Losers Hoard It

Amongst his three favourites are these:

Most Software Product Road Maps Are Harmful Evil Lies!

Product Management Tip: How to Piss Off Customers

Product Management Tip: How to Piss Off Engineering

Keep tabs on Agile Product and Project Management and what Eric is up to on Twitter @voximate

URL: http://www.voximate.com/blog/

RSS Feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/Voximate/

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SpanishPMO is a Spanish-language project management blog run by Fermin de Rojas that focuses on elements within PM, namely methodologies, tools, jobs and coaching. A bilingual project management expert educated at Brighton University, Fermin was startled to find a wealth of PM blogs available in English, compared to the relative lack in his native Spanish, and decided to take care of such matters himself as a major audience seemed to be missing out.

“I took for granted that everybody could speak english or at least could read it, but realised that there were very little information regarding Project Management in Spanish,” Fermin told us. “Bear in mind that there are 350 million Spanish speakers, mainly in Latin America, EEUU and Spain.

“This is the main reason why SpanishPMO.com was born, a website focus in project management in spanish, specialized in articles of how to set up a PMO, methodologies like Prince2 and PMI, tools, cyber security, coaching, negotiation and leadership skills.”

Fermin uses SpanishPMO as a portal in “specialized in articles of how to set up a PMO, methodologies like Prince2 and PMI, tools, cybersecurity, coaching, negotiation and leadership skills.” He says his audiences not only centers on those practising or interested in practising project management and leadership, but also those who work in an office environment.

“I motivated to blog through my own goals of personal self-improvement and self-satisfaction. I want to evangelise the word of Project Management and Agile method in the Spanish mentality.”

Fermin says his most popular post concerns Spanish-language books fellow speakers can turn to as PPM-related resources (links in Spanish only)
Libros

Among his favourite posts are:

• Creacion de Una Oficina de Proyectos (PMO)
• JIRA la herramienta perfecta para la administración de proyectos
• Funcionalidad Frankestein

Be sure to keep track of Fermin and SpanishPMO on Twitter @spanishpmo

URL: http://spanishpmo.com/

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Project Professionals is a blog engineered by professional project manager George T. McLaughlin, who’s worked in a varied amount of project-related roles since finishing his days as a nuclear submarine officer in 1980.

“In the 1980’s I provided PM consulting services worldwide (Venezuela, Italy, Korea, and others), predominately for owner companies,” George says. “For five years, I ran an engineering and construction company with annual sales of +/- $35 million USD. We have operated McLaughlin and McLaughlin since 1990.”

Project Professionals is also one of the newest kids on the block, offering several posts a week only since January 2011. Front end and back end project management is a part of George’s life, although he’s quick to talk in a collective, team-oriented, “we” manner when discussing project work. The supporting qualifier is a smart, because George wants to use the blog as a chance to approach troublesome matters, not avoid them.

“Since we provide both project planning and management as well as claims and litigation support services, we see both ends of projects. That is to say the beginning and the end. The composite perspective provides unique views of key project management issues,” says George. “We blog about both project management and claims / disputes topics. We choose topics that are troublesome and not necessarily commonplace in the trade literature.”

“We have two objectives:

1. “Bring high end discussions to the project management market place;”
2. “Upgrade our own level of expertise from research and comments by others.”

George lists the following three posts as his most popular thus far at Project Professionals:

Notice and Recognition
Claims and Disputes
Change Order Impact

Follow both George and Project Professionals on Twitter @project_profess

URL: http://projectprofessionals.org/

RSS Feed: http://projectprofessionals.org/?feed=rss2

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The AFA blog is one of the most recently established blogs on PPM Community, premiering 1st November 2010. It’s company blog for AFA, established as a management consultancy organisation 15 years ago and since developing into a reputable training course provider.

Alan Ferguson suggested AFA to PPM Community, as the blog updates 3-5 times per week.

“As one of the most successful and well known project management specialists throughout the UK and Europe, AFA would like to give a unique insight into the mind of some of the most respected managers within the community and a unique ‘all access’ view of our organisation,” he says. “We hope the AFA blog will give people an insight into practices for delivering change, including portfolio, programme and project management as well as AFA as an organisation.

The newness of the blog creates an uncertainty as to where the content of the blog will lead over time, though change could be a key area of focus.

“What will we be discussing? Of course we don’t know – that is the beauty of a blog,” Alan says. “When AFA was founded by me over 15 years ago the world was simple – we used project management. But as time has moved on we have all realised that we need more tools, methods, methodologies, disciplines, practices… Then there is programme and now portfolio management, offices, maturity models and a whole range of super-techniques: benefits, risk, value. And below all this sits the softer side of achieving change – change management. Well we have found ourselves referring to this set of methods as Practices for Delivering Change. So I think the theme of the blog will be Practices for Delivering Change.”

Alan’s experience includes updating the most recent Best Practice management guidance. AFA, he says, is in demand to deliver master classes and other training events throughout Europe. Since founding AFA, Alan has delivered assignments in numerous locations as far afield as New York and Canberra; he has experience in working with both public & private sector organisations.

“Here at AFA, we are having more and more fascinating discussions on blogs and discussion groups and thought we would like to pull these debates together in one place,” he says. “The best way to do this was to a create a blog, which we hope in time will become a community, a place like minded colleagues can share their views and ideas.”

The most widely read post on the AFA blog is:

Are you a true Project Manager?

Some of Alan’s favourites include these three:

PRINCE2 with UNIFIL in South Lebanon

Evaluating a P3O Initiative

Are you a true Project Manager?

Follow the AFA blog on Twitter @AFA_Alan, on LinkedIn and on Facebook.

Blog: http://www.afaprojects.com/blog/

RSS Feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/AFAblog

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Manage By Walking Around is one of the more established members of our PPM blogosphere, having premiered in July 2006. The weekly-updated blog is run by Jonathan D. Becher, an active participant in the performance management community, a frequent speaker at industry conferences, and a published author on a multitude of subjects.

“A primary goal of my blog is to provide information about performance management in a vendor-neutral way,” Jonathan says. “The inspiration for the title of the blog, Manage By Walking Around, can be found in the inaugural post. Because the term performance management gets bandied around by many different people to describe many different things, in some of my earlier posts (“Operational, Financial or IT” and “What’s In A Name”) I try to disambiguate the different uses, but in reality confusion still reigns in the market. Perhaps it’s a small consolation that continued confusion means continued reading of this blog…”

An EVP of both Enterprise Solution Marketing and Global Field Marketing at SAP, Jonathan is responsible for championing SAP’s strategy of helping organizations close the gap between strategy and execution so that they can optimize business performance.

“Manage By Walking Around focuses on how to systematically improve performance in an organization, using a combination of management style, strategy, processes, and technology,” he says. “In terms of motivation to blog, my not-so-secret passion is writing. I write on a variety of technical and non-technical topics, including fiction. This is an outlet to express myself.”

He says his audience is “primarily performance management enthusiasts but anyone interested in general management will also be interested.” In terms of his credentials, Jonathan has held a variety of CEO and other senior management roles for SAP, Pilot Software, Accrue Software, NeoVista Software and MasPar Computer Corporation. He earned his B.S. in computer engineering from the University of Virginia, and an M.S. in computer science from Duke University.

Jonathan says that if you don’t count a Dilbert comic he once ran, the most read post is

Scorecards vs. Dashboards

His three personal favourites include

Dirty KPIs

Measuring Lack of CRM Usage

My Management Guidelines

Follow Manage By Walking Around on Twitter @jbecher

Blog: http://alignment.wordpress.com/

RSS Feed: http://alignment.wordpress.com/feed/

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EarthPM’s oft-mentioned slogan is “at the intersection of Green and Project Management,” a power-packed credo for two veteran project managers left with an indelible imprint on the importance of resource sustainability.

Rich Maltzman and Dave Shirley have worked primarily as project management practitioners in their respective 30 years of field experience, and in launching EarthPM they both have undertaken a regular publication they describe as “part altruism, part business idea.” More than that, environment-oriented projects and sustainability tap into a growing concern in world economic growth and prosperity, giving that business idea an opportunity like never before. Rich says that project management principles remain central to the goals of EarthPM because of their closeness to the medium.

“We’re motivated to blog by news stories and other pm blogs,” Rich says. “Our site is devoted to the intersection of Project Management and “Green” – where green has to do with preventing climate change, preserving resources, and getting things done effectively and efficiently, which should already be flowing in the ‘green’ blood of any project manager worth their weight in risk registers.”

While they are unable to cite favourite posts or a most widely read post – “We have 125 posts, all with roughly equal readership” – they describe the blog in buzzwords that tap across all mediums affected by sustainable project management. Or – considering the buzzwords they used included “Eclectic”, “electric”, “executive-level”, “energizing”, and “engaging” – all the relevant ones that shared the same first letter as “EarthPM”!

You can follow EarthPM and Rich Maltzman on Twitter @RichEarthPM.

URL: http://earthpm.com/

RSS Feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/EarthPm

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Project Management Reviews is a recent addition to the PPM blogosphere from Nguyen Son, a veteran project manager with experience in handling ERP projects in transport, chemical and telecommunications. Beginning in June 2010, Son devoted two new posts each week to the blog.

“I would like to be involved more in project management communities, both online and offline,” Nguyen told us. “I’m motivated to blog because I want to be involved more in project management communities. To propose proper project management practice.”

Nguyen’s intended audience consists of both project and programme managers, plus those budding PMs hoping to successfully find an in-road as a practitioner. He says that the lessons his learned in his own career guide his posts.

“In my blog I write about my experience, insights and personal thoughts about project management as a profession,” he says.

Son says the most popular post at Project Management Reviews deal with Project Scope:

Project Scope Management – The Basic Principles

Two other posts join the Scope post in ranking among his personal favourites:

Do You Really Plan Your Project?

Look Back Not Just Forward

You can find Nguyen on Twitter @nlongson

URL: http://pmreviews.org

RSS: http://pmreviews.org/feed/

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Peter Simon’s Blog is a new PPM blog from the Managing Partner of Lucidus Consulting. How new? The month this profile went live was the same month Peter inaugurated it.

It’s a welcome addition, as Peter’s experience lends itself to a solid first-hand relevance for PPM know-how. Consider his credentials:

• 30 years of project management experience
• Contracting experience from his planning engineer days
• Expanded his clientele to oil companies
• Original founder of PM Professional in 1985 (now merged with The Projects Group, known as Aikona)
• Consulted, trained for major international companies
• Visiting Fellow at Cranfield School of Management

It’s a strong background, one the PPM Community needs. Peter is happy to oblige, as his first month has seen a regular dose with daily posts.

“My blog is filled with musings on current project and programme management practice,” he says. “I have lots of experience and lots of things to say to anyone in project and programme management.”

Though Peter has published but nine posts – making him reluctant to choose favourites thus far – his premiere post may be a symbolic signal of his effect on the PPM blogosphere. This post featured an attention-grabbing header that managed that allow him to write about resistance to change and company entrenchment.

Project management training in a major oil company

You can monitor Peter Simon’s Blog and Peter’s work on Twitter @LucidRus

Blog: http://peter.lucidusblog.com/

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