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Which has me thinking about the process of moving. (Trust me: Thinking about the process of moving is infinitely more fun than the actual work of attacking and packing up that junked out storage closet.) So go with me here....    In a fundamental way, the act of selling your house, packing your stuff, finding a new place to live, moving your stuff, and unpacking your stuff so you can settle in and get back to your life again, well, it’s fundamentally just another project. It has mission and goals tied to overall strategy, and it has phases and methods and detailed tasks that must happen in a specific order. And just like any other project you might work on in your professional life, the process of pulling up sticks and moving your household will run more smoothly if you obey and organize around the principles of effective project management. Every project has specific phases. These are initiation, planning, implementing, controlling, and closing. If the project is long and...

Resist the urge to produce something, anything before the team understands the goals of the project. At the beginning of every project, there is pressure to show something, anything to prove there is movement. The pressure can be subtly cultural or overt and obnoxious, as in “So what has your team actually been doing??!!” The best project managers push back against creating any work product until the goals and objectives of the project are well understood. I’m not suggesting waiting months to show progress, but taking an extra few days or weeks at the very beginning to set a proper direction is always time well spent. Project managers have a responsibility to their teams to shelter them and to seek the answers required to move forward. About the author Karen Creditor teaches Quality in Project Management: Navigating ISO 21500 Training Course @ Centauri Business Group Inc. More project management tips in the free download . Let us know what you think:   • W...

Karen Creditor For quality professionals, interacting with project managers is undoubtedly the most frustrating part of their job. It’s not that project managers are bad people. In fact, I must confess that I am a project manager myself, and I have sometimes done my best work while making my quality colleagues crazy. For that I am truly sorry. Well, mostly sorry. Why are project managers so frustrating to quality professionals? I believe it’s because of the differences in world view. Concepts like value, frameworks, goals, and speed, along with the inherent differences in personality types drawn to each profession, make us view each other from slightly different perspectives. At our worst, we tend to look at each other like we live on different planets. Here’s an example I share with my students to illustrate the differences. Once upon a time I managed a team of project managers in a technology company. I had just hung up the phone from a planning call for the upcoming ISO audi...