Remember the book we mentioned earlier this year? Well... it’s not dead. Quite the contrary! We are in discussions with a great publisher and we hope to be able to sign a deal sometime soon. But, before we get there, we need your help to pick a great subtitle for our book. You helped us pick the title and the end result was quite awesome so... give us a hand one more time.

Project teams create deliverables and achieve outcomes, not project managers. As in an orchestra - the project manager may be the essential conductor, but the players make the music. The project manager’s work is forgotten once the project completes. What is left and of value, are the outputs from the project team - the deliverables.

There are huge variations between the effectiveness of different teams. High performance team deliver substantially more than poorly performing or even average teams, sometimes several times as much. Experiencing truly high performing teams is exciting, fun, and provides real learning. But... how can you create such teams? In this article I will try to explore this subject and share my view on how such teams work, how they can be developed, sustained and, when the time comes, disbanded.

Two of the biggest recent trends in management have been Six Sigma and Lean. These were originally separate approaches, but they are often conflated nowadays into Lean Six Sigma. In this article I treat them as one discipline, although each brings different tools, areas of focus and value.

I do not see Lean Six Sigma as a panacea for all business problems, as some of its staunchest advocates present it, but it has proven its value. Lean Six Sigma is not exactly leading edge thinking, but it has powerful lessons for project managers and project teams which are new to many practitioners.

Recently, I wrote about the problems re-organisations and management power struggles cause for projects and project managers. The article can be read in its entirety here: Come the Revolution - Managing Projects Through Revolutions.

To continue the discussion, I would like to consider a different question: Is there a way re-organisations in businesses can benefit projects and project managers?

Revolutions and counter revolutions are a central and often repeated part of history. They stretch into the current times, and will no doubt continue to happen in future. Revolutions pitch one group with existing powers, against another group who want to seize power. The stakes are usually high for both sides. And, managing projects in the middle of revolutions is, all of a sudden, a very tough challenge. That’s why, in this article, I would like to talk about the impact revolutions have on projects and how I think is best to manage your way through a revolution, as successfully as possible.

I am really interested in the development of our discipline, and how we can continue to make it better. With this in mind, I want to talk about three, possibly seemingly unrelated, project management topics: best practice, continuous improvement and the adoption of new project management practices.

We have not posted on Corporate Geek for a while because Richard and I we were busy writing our first book together. It’s a concept both of us never tried before and we are happy with the writing done so far. However, before we finish the book and talk to several publishers, we need your help: Help us pick a good title!.