A couple of days ago I had a chance to attend a project management workshop about a new project management methodology called CAM2P (Customizable and Adaptable Methodology for Managing Projects), the workshop had different people from different industries such as IT, construction, oil & gas, and marketing & media, there have been many discussions about hot topics that I will discuss in this post

Are you furious about high rates of failing projects? does it bother you? project failure has been a hot topic for many years, companies and countries lose billions every year because of projects failure, look around you will find many stumbling projects, if you are unhappy about project failure, stop talking and start acting, we need to help out first time project managers and so this is a little initiative that hopefully can make a change!

What do you do if you get asked to handle a wrong project that if it was your call you wouldn’t do it at all? I have seen many discussions about this topic on Twitter, while the main duty of the project manager is to deliver the project within the triple constraints, yet effective project managers focus on delivering value rather than a dummy deliverable!

If you are a PMP certified it is a very good opportunity to network with other professionals, learn about latest project management practices and earn 7 PDUs, SUKAD in association with Dubai Knowledge Village is sponsoring a full day workshop about latest practices in project management on February 21,2010 08:30 AM – 05:00 PM at Dubai Knowledge Village, I urge you to join it to learn, network, and earn 7 PDUs!

It’s not about the colour of your leadership style, it’s about what you can do for your people in order to make them feel valued and energize them every time they need to, RED Leadership is a style I have coined that’s cantered around three pillars: Respect, Empathize, and Develop. Many leaders use different techniques to get results through people, however a true leader has to learn how to respect people and treat them as human begins rather than robots!

I have recently stumbled upon this quote and I did like it so much, I tweeted it and found that many people have retweeted it in a short time, it is a quote of William L. McKnight (1887 – 1978), a former CEO of 3M company, who saved 3M from bankruptcy and made it a multinational and most importantly innovative company!

Have you watched Saving Private Ryan? If not it’s time to watch that great movie, in Saving Private Ryan a group of soldiers have been sent behind enemy lines to look for a solider called Ryan, and bring him back home, it was like searching for a needle in a haystack, soldiers were calling the mission a FUBAR (Fu**ed Up Beyond All Recognitions) , your project may also be FUBAR!

Do you always say YES? It’s time to say NO! many project mangers intentionally play this role of a doormat, they mistakenly think it would make them successful or at least get seen as obedient and trying to always please each and every stakeholder, being a doormat destroys the professional image of the project manager it also exhibits some stereotypes of project failure

Every job imprints some of its characteristics onto its practitioners and project management is no exception, I personally feel a real joy when applying project management principles to my life, a risk would be a great example, if you, as a project manager, try to apply risk management to all your life aspects, not only will it make you a better manager, but also it will make your life better, the following comic strip is based on a true story

In part four of Why Projects Fail series, we will examine the procurement root cause and see how it can cause the project failure, procurement involves establishing a relationship with a vendor to build the project’s deliverables, if a wrong vendor is selected, the entire project will be threatened, the project manager has to have robust knowledge and vast experience with the procurement process, in this post I will discuss procurement mistakes and how to avoid them.