SensiblePM 001 | Four guiding principles for The Sensible Project Manager

In this episode of the Sensible Project Manager Podcast, the SensiblePM shares four guiding principles that help him be a successful project manager. In the SensiblePM 101 tip, he talks about the difference between work and duration.

Listen to the Podcast: Feature Segment:

Four guiding principles to practical project management

• Understand the Project Vision
• Build Teamwork
• Effective Efficiency
• Deliver Value

SensiblePM 101:

• Work vs. Duration

Related Blog Post:

http://www.sensiblepm.com/the-sensible-project-manager-2/

Read the Transcript

Welcome to the sensible project manager podcast my name is Mark Phillipy and I am the sensible project manager. In this episode I will introduce to you four guiding principles which drive me as the sensible project manager and how you might apply those principles in your career as a project manager. Before we get into this episode I want to take a few minutes to talk about the sensible project manager podcast in general. This episode is the beginning of what I intend to have as a long string of standing podcasts, which I will present on a very regular basis. My intention is to be able to share some experiences that I’ve had in my fifteen years as a project manager. And I have a very keen interest in sharing my stories and different activities that have happened throughout my career, that I hope will help you as you embark in your career. I intend to share information that would be both beneficial and relevant to experienced project managers as well as the novice. I particularly have an interest in helping out those that are beginning their career as a project manager and I hope to share some basic concepts that will help you as a project manager. I also hope to open up the opportunity for you to ask questions and to bring you into the conversation as well. Again I want to thank you for taking the time, if you want to hear more about the sensible project manager and to hear these podcasts as I produce you can go to www. sensiblepm.com, and visit my website there and read the blogs that I will produce as well as this podcast and future podcasts. Alright now we’ve got that out of the way let’s get to this episode of the sensible project manager podcast.

Now let’s talk about what a sensible project manager is. The sensible project manager is a PM that is always looking for the practical way for doing and leading a project success. There’s a lot of mechanics to project management all the way through the initiation phases of a project, the project planning phases of execution or the controlling of the project, and then the closeout. If you’re going the traditional type of project management you usually going to have to think about; the creation of a scope document, finding vendors, possibly securing a contract for those vendors, figuring out who’s actually going to be doing the work, whether it’s going to be built in-house or if it’s being done by a vendor. Then during the planning phase you’ll be creating the project plan, possibly putting together a communication matrix, getting and understanding your risks documenting those risks, documenting the roles and responsibilities for the members on the project. There’s the creation of the schedule and the estimating effort that goes into the creation of the schedule, requirement documents that have to be put together. And then during the execution you will definitely be tracking the schedule to understand whether you’re on time or on schedule. You’re also going to have lots of communication that happens during that reporting status. Tracking your risk and mitigating those risks, working through issues that come up during the course of the project, you possibly might have to do some vendor management. Certainly going to do something with quality assurance, making sure that what you’re producing is of good quality. There’s going to some change management portions of a project, and then ultimately you have to deliver milestones and the ultimate delivery of the solution or whatever it is that you’re delivering. There’s a lot of different components of that and of course at the end of a project you can figure out how to close that out, go through possibly some lesson learned and really putting things back into what it was like before the project and or the beginning the support activities that will happen on the project.

Now those are some of the mechanics of project management that really is something that we will be talking about later in later in further podcasts or blogs because all of those are very important. Again we will talk about four principles that I believe help any project manager be a sensible or very practical at their approach with project management. The first principle I want t...