This is our third interview of our brand new series of Agile Interviews with agile influencers. Our previous interviews were with Joel Semeniuk and Stephen Forte.
For a long
Would you please introduce yourself?
Hello, I’m Elizabeth Harrin.
Tell us more about the idea behind A Girl's Guide to Project Management.
The blog began when I
Today, things are better. Conference
I don’t speak for all female project managers, of course. And I hope men find something of interest on my blog as well. The topics I write about evolved somewhat over the years and now I find myself writing more and more about communication and project management books. In short, I’m the Girl, and the blog is my Guide To Project Management.
Would you share
Here are my tips:
What is agile?
A way of getting things done through teamwork.
Coffee or tea?
Tea mostly. Or decaf skinny latte.
Do you scrum?
No.
Any addictions?
American procedural crime dramas – Bones, CSI, Rizzoli & Isles, The Closer, Castle, Body of Proof, Hawaii 5-0, that kind of thing. There are UK procedural crime
Favorite agile principle?
Individuals and interactions over processes and tools.
Tell us more about your new parent project. Would you share some project lessons from parenthood?
Pare down what you need: I took lots of stuff to the first new mothers’ group I attended. When I went along again I put my keys, phone and purse in a pocket, put the baby in a sling and chucked a slimmed-down nappy bag over my shoulder. The more experience you have, the more you make changes to your routine so that you only do what you need to. With experience, you learn to pare down what you need
You can’t do it alone: You can’t manage a project by yourself. That’s why we have teams. I know many people do successfully bring up children by themselves, but it’s got to be easier with some helpers around. I accept all the help I can get. Do the same on your projects. Delegate everything you can. Find a mentor or a coach. Talk to your manager or project sponsor if you get stuck. We don’t know it all and we certainly can’t do it all. Don’t be a hero – share the load where you can.
How many projects do you usually work on?
At the
Tell us more about multi-project management and your golden rule for it.
Stay organized. Use dashboards and reporting if you need to manage multiple projects. Use templates so that you don’t have to reinvent the wheel each time.
What keeps you organized? And what keeps you focused?
I love lists and I couldn’t work without them. What keeps me focused is knowing that I only have an hour before Jack wakes up so I need to get some writing done right now!
What's your favorite place on earth?
I don’t have a
What was your worst situation that agile was able to address?
I have never formally used Agile methods on projects – we use an adapted hybrid Agile/waterfall approach that works for us, but it isn’t properly Agile. The biggest problem I’ve faced as a project manager was whether to delay the launch of a software product to around 9,000 staff. We used Agile-y methods like bringing subject matter experts together to create multi-functional teams, blitzing issues with
Team or individual sports?
The sofa!
Tell us about your book "Customer-Centric Project Management"? What's coming up next?
This week my new book, Shortcuts to Success: Project Management in the Real World, was published. It’s a second edition and it’s been completely revised since the first edition came out in 2006.
We love your idea Otobos - on time, on
Project management is evolving from a set of processes to a way of working. That’s evident in the new knowledge area in the PMBOK v5 which includes stakeholders. I think that the soft skills – leadership, teamwork, communication – have been overlooked for far too long. I’ve always been interested in these and while the ‘hard’ skills like scheduling and EVA are important, you can’t do projects without people so I think we’ll continue to see an evolution towards using these skills more effectively to get things done. I also think we’ll see project managers reframe themselves as project leaders and their work as project leadership.
Elizabeth