The Cranky Middle Manager Show #95 Wikis and Project Management-Rich Maltzman
The Cranky Middle Manager Show #095 (MP3 9.85MB 28:39Min )
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Welcome to the show everyone. Want to help write a book? We’ll talk about a cool project involving you, wikis and project management.
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Show Notes
0:00 Welcome to show 95! Project management is one of the Four Disciplines of this show. Today’s episode is dedicated to Poliorcetes or Demetrius I of Macedonia. He loved constructing big old siege engines, but there are frightening similarities between a siege and a product launch.
2:20 The quote of the week is from Roald Amundsen who knew a thing or two about planning projects… and the costs of not planning them
3:20 Welcome my guest Rich Maltzman. Rich is engaged with his partner, Ranjit Biswas in project management in the real world. They’re also writing a book on Project Management using collaboration-specifically wikis.
6:00 Wiki 101: Using wikis is something you can do…and for free. In his case he’s using Bluwiki (again, it’s free).
9:21 His project is called Fiddler on the Project. It’s based on the Broadway play and movie Fiddler on the Roof. Yeah, I rolled my eyes too but there are similarities:here it goes….
11:00 You have to have one foot on change, the other on tradition- in your company it’s what’s changing that you need, but maintain the quality of the project. The movie even covers scope creep or gold plating.
14:00 You have to protect your project from stakeholders getting their fingers on it. Rich makes it sound very simple…and if you’re feeling particularly patriarchal, the song “Tradition” is about role assignment and stakeholder management.
17:15 You can help… many parts of the book are being written from the wiki and they want YOUR INPUT. Join in…it’s really a cool idea and you can take their survey as well.
20:15 I mock the Project Management Institute a bit but it’s a dandy outfit to learn more. Then we get into a discussion of Knowledge Management.
23:45 For a great example of collaboration, check out wearesmarter.org for a very cool site.
26:04 You can also check out The Knowledge Board. Knowledge management is critical, because people leave the organization and take what they know with them.
April 29th, 2008 at 5:01 pm
[...] Howdy, today we follow up on Episode 95, when Rich Maltzman talked about Wearesmarter.org, and how they were writing a whole book based on a wiki. Well, the book is out and we have the co-author, Barry Libert (you can see video of him) of Mzinga. [...]