Where my PM day goes

From time to time I try to track my productivity to get a clue what tasks my work time is spent on. Project Manager usually has a lot to do during the business day and sometimes analysis of the workload is good to avoid non-management activities. You know what I mean... Not to forget delegating tasks that are not inherent in PM's schedule like operational routine. 

I decided to do this after I caught myself updating some manual for a new version of some software instead of diving into a scope planning of the delayed but vital project. 

As my Company requires the employees to report their tasks daily in a special time-tracking system it was not a big deal to retrieve data and visualize my recent week in a pie chart. And here is what I got:

To have better understanding of my tasks I also use a free time-capture tool RescueTime that lets me keep track of the time I spend on various activities, so I can have an accurate idea of where my day goes :). 

Building The Team by Making Sushi Rolls

This post was inspired by my team lead's affection towards sushi rolls that has become a strong tradition for the part of our large team. We usually have a team-building session at our office kitchen every two months. I would say that was the place where I tried to make sushi roll by myself for the first time. 

Actually, sushi has become one of my favorite tool to develop my project teams. This allowed me - who was managing 3 different teams simultaneously at that time - to look at teams' players from a new perspective.

As I mentioned in my previous posts, my professional arenas before the IT-industry were insurance industry, sales and teaching activities in the university. All my previous team-building workshops contained some standard for Ukrainian market items: bowling, outings with a few team games. They were efficient enough increasing team's performance for some time, but it always was a big headache to get $400-500 from the top-management to organize that. No, they were not greedy for money, not a jot :). This is how the things always go in most Ukrainian companies whether they are in sales or in engineering industries. 

Processes Flowchart: Rita Mulcahy vs. PMI PMBOK 5. Project Initiating

Here is a short comparison of two popular charts of project management processes. One flowchart was taken from Rita Mulcahy - a recognized expert in PMP studies. The second comes from the latest PMI PMBOK 5th Edition. 

I know that "every man to his taste", but at the same time this comparison helped me to memorize all inputs, tools and techniques and output for each process. 

Many certified project managers confirm that memorizing and understandings of these charts are the keys to the successful PMP exam pass. At least 70% of all questions are within the processes flowchart. 

What Project Manger should know to accomplish projects