Mi part on the report

• The best Project Manager is the one who can get the job done
• Project Manager's role in maintaining a solid information network

  Being aware of customer complaints and department head criticism, knowing when vendors are planning to change prices, and being alert to potential crises
• Negotiation

  Highly skilled negotiation is crucial for acquiring resources, motivating personnel, dealing with obstacles, making project goal trade-offs, maintaining a balanced outlook, and establishing communication networks
• Soft skills are crucial for project managers, even in seemingly mechanical tasks like requirements gathering
• Project Manager

  • Must have a reasonable understanding of the base technologies on which the project rests
  • Must be able to explain project technology to senior management
  • Must be able to interpret the technical needs and wants of the client (and senior management) to the project team
• Project Managers must persuade team members to cooperate, set aside personal feelings, and focus on achieving project goals
• Project Manager

  • Must be administratively credible
  • Must have effective time management and organizational skills
  • Must keep the project on schedule and within cost
  • Must ensure project reports are accurate and timely
  • Must ensure material, equipment, and labor are available when and where needed
  • Must represent the interests of all stakeholders to one another
  • Must make tough trade-off decisions for the project
• Project Managers need a sensitive set of technical sensors to detect failures and ensure progress
• Leadership: 'Leadership is a process of social influence, which maximizes the efforts of others, towards the achievement of a goal'
• The competency school has combined parts of all earlier “schools” by defining various leadership qualities with three major areas of competence: intellectual (IQ), managerial (MQ), and emotional (EQ)
• Many approaches have been postulated to develop a coherent leadership theory: the trait school, the behavioral school, and the contingency school
• Daniel Goleman: 'EQ is a critical factor in explaining differences between the best leaders and mediocre leaders and that EQ accounted for approximately 90 percent of the success of leaders'
• EQ skills

  1. Self-awareness: observe and recognize own emotions

  2. Self-management: positively manage thoughts, behaviors, and actions based on understanding of emotions

  3. Social awareness: understand the emotions of others

  4. Relationship management: manage emotional reactions given the situation or circumstances
• Developing social awareness skills


  Requires developing listening and observational skills, focusing attention on the speaker, letting the speaker finish before responding, giving feedback, paying attention to main points, tone of voice, speed of speech, body language, and asking questions based on sincere interest
• There are proactive steps to enhance EQ
• Objective observation of emotions helps in choosing effective courses of action
• Swanson (2012): 'EQ will lead PMs to ask questions such as: How can we collaborate more effectively with one another on this project? Or, What reservations do you imagine the client will have, and how can we address them? Or, How has this project addressed the needs of all the stakeholders involved?'
• When it comes to emotions, there is no right or wrong
• A strong sense of ethics is an important trait in a project manager
• Social awareness


  Developing effective listening, empathy, and observational skills to truly understand what the other person is feeling
• Relationship management

  Based on using awareness of own and others' emotions to positively manage interactions and build quality relationships
• An "ethics audit" has been recommended for nonprofit organizations
• A similar audit is recommended for any firm
• Shenhar (1998) classifies projects across two dimensions: technological uncertainty and system complexity
• Management style should be adapted to differences in the type of project
• Effective time management tips

  Divide tasks into small steps, prioritize tasks, be proactive, leave notes for interrupted tasks
• New code focuses on behavior that will lead to a high trust level between the PM, project team members, senior management, the client, and other stakeholders


  • Honesty should be emphasized and revisited throughout the book
• There are four major causes of stress often associated with the management of projects: inconsistent procedures, having too much workload
• Kent (2008) identifies six signs of excessive stress in the workplace
• Comparatively little has been written about the proper management style for a PM
• Four major causes of stress associated with project management

  • Some PMs never develop a consistent set of procedures and techniques
  • Many PMs have "too much on their plates"
  • Some PMs have a high need to achieve that is consistently frustrated
  • The parent organization is in major change
• Cooperation in projects may involve individuals and groups from different countries or industries, leading to cultural differences
• Twitter's operations project manager, Kathy Norlen, deals with crisis situations by establishing an "on-call" roster of top managers
• Twitter's environment for leading projects is chaotic, with no set model to follow, requiring creativity from project managers
• Project management software packages signal when a project plan calls for a resource to be used beyond its capacity
• Stress results when demands exceed an individual's ability to cope, particularly for those with a high need for achievement
• Twitter faces challenges in managing the site smoothly with the growth and volatility of demand
• Dealing with and reducing stress from everyday life and worry about the future is beyond the scope of this book