Face to face interaction provides for the most effective form of communication. The sixth Agile Manifesto principle advocates face-to-face conversation. A sticking point for adopting Agile is the dominance of virtual teams within an organization and among different organizations (in a vendor – customer relationship or within a supply chain for example). Bringing virtual […]
February 3, 2011 by Dave Kohrell
One of my favorite movie lines is from the Princess Bride. In it the hero is told he must go back to the beginning. When the movie reaches one if its many climaxes – Indigo (hero) exclaims “I am waiting for you, Vizzini. You told me to go back to the beginning. So I have. […]
January 31, 2011 by Dave Kohrell
Various technologies have various levels of media richness. Media richness means communication media have varying capacities for resolving ambiguity, negotiating varying interpretations, and facilitating understanding. Media is said to be very rich when it provides: the availability of instant feedback; the capacity of the medium to transmit multiple cues such as body language, voice tone, […]
January 27, 2011 by meryljourneybeyond
Part of the project manager’s (PM) role is to delegate tasks to resources to get the work done. Mostly these people report to functional managers, not the PM leading the project. So, what do you do when assigned tasks don’t get done because a resource’s first allegiance is not to the project, but to their […]
January 25, 2011 by Dave Kohrell
Prove it Maneuvering the political gauntlet through artful conversation and word-smithing will not resolve conflict. Nothing will stop conflict the like graceful execution and control of a project that leads to on time, on budget completion. This is the area where the project management fundamentals are a focal point. Earned value may not be glamorous, […]
January 24, 2011 by Dave Kohrell
The stage is set. Successful conflict resolution now depends on actively monitoring the three essential legs – risk, environment and team. Update the conflict elements on a weekly basis. If conflict does surface, determine the threshold for engaging the contingency plan and corrective action. Another effective way to monitor conflict is to talk about it. […]
January 20, 2011 by Dave Kohrell
Step Two of Resolving Virtual Team Conflict is to treat it as a potential risk. The advantage of looking at team conflict as a risk is it’s an easier to say “hey let’s treat team conflict as a risk element, something that might happen” rather than “gee, we’re conflicted and at each others throat, upper […]
January 19, 2011 by Dave Kohrell
Conflict. The mere term evokes a strong response. In today’s environment, examples of conflict are replete: Middle East, War on Terrorism, Political Divides. Intra personal conflict also appears to be increasing. Project managers also encounter a variety of conflicts: inadequate resources, changing organizational direction, project direction, disagreement among stakeholder groups, clash with functional teams, role […]
January 18, 2011 by Dave Kohrell
Swift Trust as an academic topic seems to have emerged by Meyerson et. al in 1991 within the context of temporary groups. Lynda Bourne shared about it recently, 2010, in a PMI blog. Philip Merry developed the RICE Analysis for improving and cultivating “swift trust” in 2002. He is a global speaker and trainer who’s […]
January 17, 2011 by Dave Kohrell
While delivering over forty Effective Virtual Team workshops at TAPUniversity since 2006, one question we encourage participants to ask is "well, OK, how does this differ from team members we see in person?" Swift Trust is one concept worth digging in to help answer the question of differentiation.
January 14, 2011 by Dave Kohrell
TAPUniversity has shared and learned with over 310 professionals concerning virtual teams since August of 2005. Those professionals completed an in-depth survey of best practices for virtual teams. As we prepare for 2011 we want to know what your opinion is regarding what makes for effective and ineffective virtual teams. The results from previous students […]
January 11, 2011 by Dave Kohrell
Virtual teams are geographical dispersed teams (GDT) who are formed for a variety of reasons. Sometimes the virtual team is formed as a result of mergers and acquisitions (M&A), or a collaboration among organizations may trigger it, perhaps a key employee moves or a company wishes to get some “boots on the ground” in a […]
December 28, 2010 by Dave Kohrell
Synonymous term or a different term, that’s a common question we receive in our course delivery for secondary versus residual risks. Those two terms do sound quite a bit a like. Are they? They’re similar concepts but are different! Secondary risk occurs once a risk event triggers and the appropriate management response strategy deployed. The […]
July 24, 2010 by Dave Kohrell
A Request For Proposal (RFP) is a common way to select for a vendor based solution or product. They are used when what is needed can be identified and described, but a detailed step by step method may not be known. RFP’s may result in a fixed bid or cost plus performance contract awarded to […]
February 9, 2011 by Dave Kohrell
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