Frank Patrick

On Reporting Project Task Progress

Percent complete is meaningless.

Why Share?

A great summary of why we socially share, beyond the obvious keeping in touch with people who have passed through your life.

How will Google Plus will end up fitting in my web routine? It seems to be distracting me from my Tumblr blog and Twitter more than Facebook (especially as my time these days is more limited due to the new gig), as far as what I share is concerned. I suspect that Facebook will remain my primary personal platform, but G has the possibility of displacing... Expand this post »

Why there’s been a slacking of content here in my Tumblr blog.

A Great Educational Program

Hey folks - if your kids are between 5th grade and 12th, pass this along to their teachers. 

I used to be involved in running this program and it’s truly a great experience that will take your kids around the world (virtually).

[Would it be inappropriate for me to hope that a lot of people share this?]

Marketing Link: The Digital Marketer's Checklist

A discussion of the things that should be taken into account in designing a digital marketing effort…

• What is the objective of the campaign?
• What digital measures align with the objective?
• What efforts outside of digital can we align with?
• What role should innovation play in this effort?
• How can we be smarter in this effort versus previous efforts?

Go read the whole thing…The Digital Marketer’s Checklist

[Originally shared in my Google Plus Marketing and Social Circle. If you circle me on Google Plus, and are interested in this topic and those like it, let me know of your interest via a 1-to-1 Google Plus post. (Other topical circles I post to are Project Management, Operations Management & TOC, and Development)]

PM Link: A Daily Project Execution Plan

The piece I’ve linked to today offers up a framework for focusing project communications on immediate tasks at hand. The author - Atul Gaur - thinks of it as a “daily execution plan”, but it bears very close resemblence to what I like to do on a weekly basis. The nature of the big single-project work domain that he works in probably makes daily worthwhile, but in the multi-project marketing agency and IT environments that I’m most familiar with, weekly seems appropriate.

Gaur lists a set of task data as the core of the immediate plan - things like current active tasks, tasks schedule to start, and issues or risks associated with them. What I like to do to gather these items is make use of an easy 1- or 2- week date range filter on incomplete tasks in MS Project to eliminate the distraction of the future stuff that’s going to change anyhow. In most cases, this ends up with a short list of current and up-coming tasks that are worth talking about.

The only additional further out tasks worth talking about are those that require an “alarm clock” to reserve or assign specific resources ahead of time. When the near term view includes a warning that this reservation might need to be made, it comes up at the appropriate time - far enough in advance to be useful, but hopefully close in enough to be confident about actually needing them when the [religiously updated] schedule say so.

In environments that accept the idea of buffered schedules, the status of the buffer - particularly whether it’s been consumed to the point that it might not protect the project promises - should be sufficient to account for the full health of the total project without overwhelming the team’s necessary focus on the immediate tasks at hand.

Since an active project is an evolving thing, the schedule needs to evolve as well. Focusing on the sequence of short-term needs makes the larger effort manageable.

[Previously shared with my Project Management “Circle” on Google Plus. Join it by putting me into one of your G+ circles and sharing a 1-to-1 post with me asking to be included.]

PM Link: The Client's Responsibility for Project Success

I’ve been known to suggest that the toughest resources to manage in a project are your boss and the project’s client. This link offers some thoughts about what it takes to maximize the latter’s contribution.

Bottom line…if you’re a project client, try to help the project team help you accomplish what you’re looking for from the project.

PM Link: On Priorities

Reblogged from idealgentleman:

A gentleman always knows what matters. He always knows what’s most important.

People talk about “priorities” and “priority lists”; they talk about “top ten priorities” and something being “a high priority”.

The truth is, you can only ever have one priority. Something is either your priority, or…[go read the rest]