A colleague and friend (thanks Leon) has introduced me to the Dunning-Kruger Effect.
The Dunning-kruger Effect (which is a scientific elaboration on a famous quote by Charles Darwin that “Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge”) simply states that ignorance results fairly frequently with over confidence and self certainty, even in the face of evidence and body of knowledge suggesting otherwise.
The first thing that came to my mind when investigating this phenomena were some previous discussions I’ve been party to with regard to the issue of projects’ failure rate and …

I wrote in an earlier post (“how much process is too much process?“) about the tendency of some organizations to impose overly engineered processes in a (futile) attempt to increase quality.
Further to that and having been in the Information Technology sector for almost 30 years I can confidently and comfortably conclude that innovation, flexibility and grand availability of sophisticated and feature rich technologies have resulted in substantial increase to projects’ complexity with an increased risk of project integration failures.
Information Technology project tend to include, in one way or another, a …

I got intrigued by an article in LiveScience, titled “Angry Boss Can Bring Out Workers’ Creativity“.
The gist of the article is that, contrary to simple intuition, an angry boss, telling his/her employees off about their performance, may bring about as a consequence better performance and creativity. The key, however, is the level of engagement and desire to understand exhibited by the employee, a trait called epistemic motivation.
Epistemic Motivation, in simple words, relates to the level of involvement and dedication one has towards a particular area of involvement. It is less …

It took me some considerable time to realize that there are very few circumstances (which I can’t quite recall at the moment) where an objective view can be substantiated one way or another. There are quite a few excellent project management related bloggers out there, some I enjoy reading immensely; some I read knowing that their views will cause me a mild level of aggravation. The common thing I find across all these blogs is that in the main they haven’t got much in common as they all represent a …

Commitment
If you promise you will do something by a certain date and realize half way through that you can’t make it, please let me know. Don’t wait until the last minute as it will most likely affect other people and it takes time to reschedule material delivery and contractors’ time.
Communication
If I send you a message requesting information or assistance, don’t ignore it, I know you’re busy (I’m actually busy too) but there’s always time to be courteous and send a reply (any reply) – please manage my expectations and at …

Over my professional career I’ve worked with many project managers, some junior, and some senior. One character trait I’ve come to observe with all of them was that when things got tough they were always around to make sure the ship kept steering in the right direction. Whether large scale or small scale projects; massive impact or subtle impact; project managers where always there to project authority, control and sense of calmness over their project teams. In a sense, one of the duties a project manager often needs to perform …

One of the scheduling tools at the project manager’s disposal is the Critical Path Method, the outcome of which would be:
1. A list of all activities required to complete the project
2. The time (duration) that each activity will take
3. The dependencies between the activities.
With the above, the longest path of planned activities can be identified, and the “critical” activities (i.e those activities whose combined duration dictate how long the duration is planned to be) are identified.
There are a number of methodological issues with the Critical Path Method, one of which …

A 2007 article by Young Hoon Kwak and Lisa Ingall, titled “Exploring Monte Carlo Simulation Applications for Project Management”, examines the Monte Carlo Simulation method and its uses in the field of Project Management.
Apart from being a good reference document, where a brief history of this technique is being discussed and explained, this article provides a good review of various studies published around the benefits as well as the potential complexities associated with implementing this technique in real life situations.
The article points out that one of the limitations of using this technique …

Ok, I’m having a bit of a fun with this one.
Submit a copy of your project plan (in Microsoft Project format only at the moment) and I will send back to you a high level risk assessment of your project schedule’s based on a Monte Carlo Simulation.
There’s absolutely no catch. The reason I’m doing it is because it seems to me that many don’t yet understand the benefits of using this technique to better understand the risks that lie dormant within their project schedules.
If you are interested in this FREE …

Over a week ago I came up with an offer to provide readers with the unique opportunity to run their project plans through a Monte Carlo Simulation and provide them with a high level summary of the results.
The response exceeded my expectations and up until now I was approached by 30 readers to provide them with an assessment of their plan.
Having gone through this experience I thought it would be appropriate to summarize my findings from this exercise, without, obviously, revealing the individual nature of the plans that have come …