Engage Stakeholders for Project Success

Some tips on positioning a project for success, including video insights. ... Have you identified your user community? Will you need super-users in the community? How will you incorporate user ideas into solution design? Will you need their help in the testing phase? How else can you keep users engaged before the final cutover? Have you segmented the stakeholder population, looking for evangelists or early-adopters to provide the right buzz? As project manager, you may not have time to do all of this, but identify a role on your project team to take on these actions. They'll pay off. ...

... "ensuring that the right stakeholders have been identified, particularly in an IT project – the user community, and that there's a mechanism for them to be involved in the project design and monitoring the progress of the project as it proceeds. " ...

Via Canada ITWorld: Stakeholder collaboration

Agile Project Management: Mainstream at Last?

There's an excellent writeup on the LeadingAnswers blog site about the rise, fall, and rediscovery of Agile Project Management. I like the "Universal Lifecycle of New Technology" which outlines how ideas take flight, and then, after people inevitably misapply or overuse it, it fails, only to be resurrected successfully later with a slight twist.

I've seen this happen with a variety of non-technology processes and ideas as well, including TQM, Six Sigma, Critical Chain, PMOs, and---dare I say it---Project Management in general, all of which are currently in various stages of this lifecycle.

The article is well worth reading. For fans of Agile Project Management or those curious in the concepts, LeadingAnswers is a valuable site.

By the way, as a proponent of Geoffrey Moore's Crossing the Chasm book on marketing disruptive technology, I was also interested to see that the article has a link to a white paper titled, "Crossing the Agile Chasm."

LeadingAnswers: Leadership and Agile Project Management Blog: The Rise, Fall and Rediscovery of Agile Methods

Customer Orientation: Friction-Free Process

Guy lists ten mistakes that add friction to the user adoption process, that highlights a lack of customer orientation. We've all been there before. Check it out. ...

... "... compilation of silly and stupid ways companies are hindering adoption of their products and services. ... " ...

Via Guy Kawasaki's How to Change the World Blog: The Top Ten Stupid Ways to Hinder Market Adoption