New Project Management course is here!

• Posted on Anita Gisch
• in Dealing with People, Project Management
• on June 29, 2012
• No Comments.

And this will absolutely not be your typical project management course – there’s not a template in site!
It’s all about the interplay between people, structure and process.

It’s an absolute labour of love, combining my study in human behaviour and group dynamics from anthropology with the practicalities of trying to manage projects in a non-profit or corporate environment. When I first started out with project management, I was really thrown in the deep end of stakeholder management. I worked for a non-profit organisation with multiple partner organisations and government funding. To top it all off, it had recently introduced a matrix reporting structure and had no real culture of project management. So, as you can imagine, I had my work cut out for me.

Despite all odds, that first project miraculously turned out fairly well. We were only 50% over budget and 1.5 years late – which was actually considered to be ground-breaking success within the organisation. That experience burned deeply into my brain and the lessons I learned about managing complex and political relations was invaluable.

I’ve shared these experiences and skills with individual PMs, but I decided that it was finally time to commit pen to paper and share these challenges and some solutions I have found with a wider audience.