You may recall that I had suggested a few ideas at the beginning of 2010, to which you added some more…

As we’ve reached mid-year, I suggest that you review where you stand on the ones you chose to adopt. To facilitate the exercise, I propose a short list of questions on each resolution. Please do not respond too fast, really take the time to reflect and to recall concrete examples which support your answers. Good resolutions do not guarantee success but they should be leading you in the right direction as a compass.

So, have you ?

Developed the members of your project team

• Did you find how to obtain the best from your project team members?
• Did you help them to develop?
• Did you give them the opportunity to confront with new areas?
• Did you provide them with training?
• If you completed some projects in the first semester, did your support allow the members of the project team to jump to new interesting assignments or not?

Understood the business objectives of the project

• Did you make sure on your projects that you 100% understood which business results were expected by your customers?
• That you know how they will perceive and measure these results?
• Did you establish a baseline of the situation before project to be able to actually prove the improvements or profits brought in by your project?

Respected all commitments that you accepted

• How many times did you say NO?
• No to the insufficient budget which was given to you?
• No to the unrealistic delays?
• No to the inadequate means?

Identified, communicated and managed the critical path

• On your projects, do you really understand the critical path?
• Including the parallel activities necessary for success but which may not be in your MS Project plan?
• Do you master it?
• Do your experience and common sense confirm this control of the critical path?

Anticipated and planned for changes

• Did you take the necessary steps and probably go beyond to solidify the needs of your customer?
• Did you implement a clear, simple and fast process to handle change requests?
• Including who can submit demands of change, the process to review them, the approach to evaluate the impact and clear criteria of decision?
• Did you take into account the changes outside the project itself, those who come from the ecosystem in which you and your project evolve?
• Did you discover positive changes, opportunities to produce better, earlier or cheaper deliverables?
• Were you caught by surprise by some changes?
• Were you surprised by missing features during the course of project? At the last minute?
• Did your project deviate from its initial trajectory because of a poorly defined or poorly managed scope?
• Did you systematically avoid gold plating?

Given evidence of flexibility…

• What new approaches or methods did you identify?
• Which ones did you try in practice?
• What new tools did you learn to use?
• Did you adapt well to the culture of your new sponsor or new teams?

… and been inflexible with PM ethics

• Lived up to your responsibilities?
• Given evidence of respect?
• Given evidence of justice and equity?
• Been honest with your sponsors, customers, teams and yourself?
• Lead with a positive and collaborative attitude
• Did you remain positive even under pressure?
• Did you lose your temper?
• Did you supply a collaborative environment which facilitates team’s communications?
• Did you build an atmosphere which recognizes urgency, pressure, effort required from each of us and demonstrates your confidence in the capacity of the team to succeed?
• Did you lead by example?

Concentrated on the people, on the human relationships

• Did you develop your relationships with the members of your team?
• Your customers? Sponsors? Stake holders? Partners?
• Your family?

Provided mentoring and coaching to upcoming PMs

• Did you share your experience?
• Did you provoke meetings of young project managers to help them to improve?
• Did you share openly with peers to help them to see their strengths and weaknesses?

Managed your Stakeholders

• Did you systematically spend time at the beginning of every phase of your project to identify the persons who could be impacted and who may not be in the decision-making chain, nor in the management of the functions directly included in the project (as you probably already know these very well)?
• Did you review their power and clout and how they may react to plan how to increase their support to the project and to prevent negative attitudes?
• Did it work? Why?
• Foreseen, identified and managed the risks
• Have you an up to date list of open risks for your project?
• Despite of your work on risk management, how many caught you by surprise?
• How many had an impact on one or more of three dimensions of your project (contents, delays, costs)?
• Did your mitigation plans work well?

Communicated effectively

• With all the members of the project team?
• The stake holders
• The sponsors etc.
• Do you have an effective communications plan that you execute scrupulously?

Aligned all your resources on a common goal

• Were you clear on the roles and the responsibilities of each person?
• Did you make sure that every member of the team (whether dedicated or not to the project) is committed to the same objectives and understands the business purpose of the project?

If you honestly answered the above questions, I think that you already have a good set of lessons learned in this first half of the year and thus clear ideas on what remains to be done in the second half after well deserved vacations.