I serve on the board of an organization seeking grant funds.\u00a0 They formed a committee.\u00a0 The committee meets weekly and weekly and weekly – and when\u00a0I recently asked about hte progress of their grant requests I was\u00a0told that they finally\u00a0decided to work with a Yahoo group\u00a0and some Google tool.\u00a0 Meeting after meeting took place with them working on finding the exact right tools – instead of typing up some grant requests.<\/p>\n
When hiring Project Managers\u00a0do you screen for their ability to manage people and juggle events, resources, problems -or do you worry about them\u00a0knowing the project management software used by your firm?\u00a0It’s easy to get caught up in software tools – especially in this valley where we are so sophisticated in high tech….but, in my opinion, managing projects has nothing to do with the tools we do to keep records.<\/p>\n
Who are the people we need?\u00a0 What are their particular skills?\u00a0 Where are the holes?\u00a0 How many hours can we negotiate for each of these people?\u00a0 What resources will they need?\u00a0 What are their other commitments?\u00a0 With whom else do we have to negotiate in order to get their time freed up for our project?<\/p>\n
What resources do we need?\u00a0 Equipment, labs, parts, computers, cars, trucks, vans, or whatever – we need to list them, cost them out, and decide where we get them from and how long it will take to acquire them.\u00a0 Make sure you watch for contingencies – like contracts and procurement never getting around to sending our your RFP or purchasing never sending out the purchase order.<\/p>\n
What are all the events you need to manage?\u00a0 Timelines, facilities, logistics, customer service, people problems?\u00a0 Managing a project is like being an event coordinator or a triage nurse.\u00a0 Your eyes, ears, and mind need to be in sixteen places at once – juggling all kinds of balls.\u00a0(ooooh, that was sooo trite, sorry!)<\/p>\n
\u00a0People were managing projects successfully long before the software was developed.\u00a0 Please don’t confuse the tools with the skills of an outstanding project manager.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I serve on the board of an organization seeking grant funds.\u00a0 They formed a committee.\u00a0 The committee meets weekly and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[39,110,134,97,131,38,50,132,133],"class_list":["post-318","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellaneous","tag-best-practices","tag-getting-things-done","tag-juggling-events","tag-leaderhip","tag-people","tag-project-management","tag-requirements","tag-resources","tag-triage-nurse"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=318"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13743,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318\/revisions\/13743"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}