On the Trails

An expert is a fellow who is afraid to learn anything new because then he wouldn’t be an expert anymore.

—HARRY S TRUMAN

Behavior that’s rewarded gets repeated.

Learn where things went right and where things went wrong, and search out new techniques and approaches to enable improvement.

In 1987 Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister Our ability to manage projects to successful completion is much more about tapping into the collective knowledge of people than managing to a predefined project methodology and set of tasks.

Projects are about people and enabling their ability to communicate and change effectively.

This application of facilitation techniques gave birth to the JAD era—that is, joint application design (JAD) work sessions where business and technology professionals came together to jointly define requirements for the design of computer systems. Use of facilitated group techniques (JADs) reduced time by 40 percent while improving the quality of design results. Fewer coding errors were made and testing cycles improved accordingly (Wood and Silver, 1989).

Means, J., Adams, T. (2005). Facilitating the Project Lifecycle : Skills & Tools to Accelerate Progress for Project Managers, Facilitators, and Six Sigma Project Teams. San Francisco, Ca.: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.