Project Management

My company sent everyone to an off-site training in project management with some time management today. I'm thankful for the formal training. There was little new information for me, as I have done a lot of reading and working on my own processes in this regard, but it was very reinforcing to hear someone discuss and teach it.

The main takeaway, to me, is that most people are good at executing, but poor at planning. The planning phase sets the stage for everything to come, especially for the failure that is bound to happen if planning is poor and the project is sensitive at all. The exercises we did really showed why I get so agitated with the way my company works. Everyone jumps in and starts "working" without a clue on what they need to do, why, and how. I'm not always good with it, but it drives me frickin' nuts to work on something without a clear idea of where I'm going or at least some sort of goal.

Another topic that was good to bring out into the open was the different ways people prefer to receive and convey information. We each answered a series of questions, similar to the Myers-Briggs Personality Test. This placed our personalities into one of four quadrants on a 2-D graph. It's fun to have guessed correctly or wrongly for our colleagues. It would be errant to use it to define someone and to predict their opinions based on this extremely simplistic approach, but it is useful to gauge where they may be coming from or how to formulate information for the most efficient way to communicate with them.

The training was held at a neat place on Mount Washington. The top floor of the Urban Mountain Gathering Space was just big enough to hold the thirty-something of us and afforded amazing views of the city below.


Later, Bethany and I had a nice dinner with Becky at Sweet Basil and La Filipiniana in Lawrenceville. Mussamun curry, yum!