No-Nonsense Project Management Posts


Within the Six Sigma community, it is very common and even expected that the "Belt" is in charge of running the project in addition to being the expert with the tools. Naturally, some people gravitate to the tools and analysis side of the work, and other toward the management aspects. The challenges this situation presents can directly impact the success of your Six Sigma project, and potentially your career.
Risk management is one of those titles that usually makes people think of lawyers or contract specialists figuring out how to best document an issue or contract to protect the company. However, there is much more to risk management than CYA. A S...
Dwight D. Eisenhower said, "Plans are nothing; planning is everything." Certainly he wasn’t talking about Six Sigma projects, but this little statement applies 100 percent to our process improvement efforts. The act of properly...
My previous column focused on communication with a remote located Six Sigma project team. Many would assume that co-located teams are easy to work with and require less effort for a project manager to manage. They would be wrong. A co-lo...
Being a project manager on a large Six Sigma project typically means your team will be in numerous locations. Sometimes even smaller Six Sigma projects require remote resources. This presents unique challenges for the project manager! With...
We’ve all experienced change in our Six Sigma project teams. Whether it is due to downsizing, changing priorities within an area of the company, or some other reason, your team members are likely to change beyond your control. This can be...
This column builds upon the topics covered in the April 2009 article on
Scoping a Six Sigma project can be one of the most daunting tasks a project manager can take on. It is also one of the most important. Typically, we’re given an area that needs to improve and a goal roughly indicating by how much. But where do...
The economic news may be getting a little better, but these are still fairly turbulent times. Joblessness is at its highest point since the early 1980s, companies large and small continue to scale back in nearly every way imaginable, and Six Sig...