Project Management Articles > Geof Lory

Geof Lory

Geof Lory, PMP is a Partner for GTD Consulting, LLC, an information technology consulting and training firm based in St. Paul, Minnesota. Through daily practice leading information technology projects and experiential training and on-site consulting and coaching, Geof helps organizations develop best practices for successful project delivery. His special emphasis is helping project managers improve team productivity by focusing on the people and processes rather than technology. Geof maintains project management certifications to deliver curriculum for the Microsoft Solutions Framework, the entire CompTIA IT Project + curriculum, and other project management curricula. He has authored many articles, papers and a book on a wide range of project management topics. As a curriculum developer, Geof develops customized workshops that integrate common sense project management principles and disciplines with an organization's specific culture, processes and tools. Through these workshops and his seasoned consulting background, Geof helps clients maximize project performance through appropriate integration of practical and adoptable best practices.

Geof has worked with numerous formal industry accepted and internally developed methodologies. His strength is his ability to compare, contrast and integrate the inherent principles and project disciplines of project management to diverse environments. With 20 years of project management experience, Geof clearly reveals a passion for his craft in all settings and applies his experiences in a fashion that is productive, educational, and motivational.

From Process to Discipline
Process isn't all or nothing; but when less is more (as it often is) your team had better be disciplined.
Somewhere along the curve, for every project, lies the point where process enables productivity. That’s the sweet spot a project manager needs to find and apply. Read more ...

Archived articles -- Accessible to All

Measure What Matters
We spend a lot of time measuring things like schedules, budgets, and requirements. But is that really what's most important to our projects?
"Lately, it is almost impossible for me to have a conversation with a company or potential client without talking about a Project Office of some sort. Everyone is looking for that organizational magic bullet that will assure projects are done well—whatever that means." Read more ...

Every Plan is Wrong
The plan is not reality. We're not that lucky.
I have yet to see a project follow a plan, so what is the value in creating one? Wouldn’t the time be better spent just doing the work? Read more ...

Speaking in Absolutes and Demands
Are you still speaking in absolutes? A simple (though not easy) change in vocabulary could open up a whole world of possibilities for you and your team.
"It is a common human trait to want to see things in black and white, without the uncomfortable gray space of uncertainty. Speaking in demands reinforces this absolute mindset, solidifying personal assumptions." Read more ...

Making Trust Personal
The abstract value of trust is easy to understand. But there's nothing abstract about the fear that's involved in truly trusting someone.
At this [abstract] level, trust is easy to understand. However, in this article I would like to speak more to the subjective or heart-oriented value of trust, specifically as to how it feels to trust. Read more ...

Extending Trust Wisely
When it comes to trust, we get in our own way far more often than we think we do.
The challenge is extending trust and exposing our underbelly in a wise and judicious way. To do that, we must understand how we stand in our own way of taking the calculated risks and managing them to the desired outcome. Read more ...

Be Credible To Build Trust
Why a common understanding of deliverables is critical to developing trust.
We may have good intentions, but others cannot read our minds. So, how do we go about building trust? Read more ...

Vulnerability-Based Trust
Trust isn't about knowing the other will get it right. It's about letting them do it anyway.
In general, I consider myself a trusting soul. When reasonable and prudent, I am pretty free in trusting others. But what constitutes reasonable and prudent? Read more ...

Agile Parenting: Focus on the Environment
Surprise! Evaluating your team's psyche really is part of your job (but probably not for the reasons you think).
Just as the creation of a safe environment is necessary for children to learn and grow, it is required for teams. As a project manager, I have a similar obligation to foster an environment that is wonderfully safe and supportive if I want the teams I work with to maximize their potential. Read more ...

Agile Parenting: Progress Through Practice
How does a team get to Carnegie Hall?
From an early age to pre-adulthood children spend a large portion of their time in school, but they spend almost all of their time learning. Their exposure to new ideas and the time spent developing new skills is greatest during these early years. Academic progress is measured with grades and scores, but how do we assess the progress made in other areas? Read more ...

Agile Parenting: Compassionate Courage
True leaders can't risk the easy route of complacency or social compliance.
The first two values of Agile Parenting set a solid foundation for execution. Leadership and parenting that emphasize goals, purpose, curiosity and adventure will properly position children and teams for success. However, without courage there can be no execution, and in the end, we are all looking for results. Read more ...

Agile Parenting: Curiosity and Adventure
Assumptions may turn out to be your most valuable tools, as long as you challenge them regularly.
Project management, like parenting, requires no specific industry knowledge. People from every walk of life do both. You can learn project management theory in a classroom, and most of these PM classes are like Lamaze classes for new parents: The real learning is in the doing. So, how can we stay in a state where we can optimize the learning while doing? Read more ...

Agile Parenting: Purpose over Process
The first principles of the Agile Parenting Manifesto, and an invitation to contribute.
In preparation for this series of articles on Agile Parenting and the creation of an Agile Parent's Manifesto, I thought about the many conversations I have had with seasoned project managers. Many have asked me, "What's the big deal with the eXtreme/Agile movement?" Read more ...

Agile Parenting
An invitation to contribute to the Agile Parenting Manifesto.
Over the past several years, there has been an increasing emphasis on a diversion from the traditional approaches to project management in favor of something less rigid and more adaptive. This continues while membership in PMI and PMP certification are at an all time high. Read more ...

Goal-Driven Communication
Why am I telling you this? Improving communication by sharing your goals.
We often hear how a project manager's job is 80% communication and as such, communication is the most important skill of successful project managers. I couldn't agree more. Read more ...

Your Favorite Radio Station: WIIFM
Everyone has an inner voice that will motivate them better than you ever could. Are you tuned in?
In the last article I talked about providing motivation, along with creating commitment and instilling confidence. These three elements of leadership need to tap into the personal drivers if people are going to bring their best to the team. In this article I will explain further what I believe motivates team members and some techniques for providing that motivation. Read more ...

Confidence, Motivation and Commitment
High-performing teams need Confidence, Motivation and Commitment. Here's how effective leaders provide and guide them in order to better prepare their teams for success.
Three things leaders can do to better prepare the team, and thereby improve the conditions and likelihood of creating high performing teams, are: instilling confidence, providing motivation and creating commitment. An in depth explanation of how effective leaders do this will hopefully give you some techniques for increasing the fertility of the environment in which you lead. Read more ...

Readiness—A Framework for Leadership
When leaders understand readiness (ability and willingness) it is easier to apply a positive and productive approach that fits the situation.
Throughout a project life cycle, teams and people will vary considerably in their collective and individual states of readiness. This readiness will govern the approach or style of leadership and to a large degree the success of the leadership experience for both the leader and those being led. Read more ...

Leadership Styles through the Team Stages
PMs (and parents) must learn to shift leadership styles as teams (and children) mature. The catch? The right style for the situation may not be the one that comes naturally.
To keep the team on track and moving from one stage to the next, some level of leadership, either from within or outside the immediate team, is required. If this leadership is absent, the work group may become effective, but will never reach its potential as a team. Read more ...

Learning and Feedback
Learn how to give constructive, forward-thinking feedback by playing The Perfection Game, and find out what it takes to "get a 10."
In my last article I referenced a protocol to create a learning environment and provide structure to the review process. This protocol, called the PerfectionGame, ... is part of a larger set of team protocols presented in the book Software for your Head by Jim and Michele McCarthy. Read more ...

Lessons Learned
A conscious approach and safe environment can move any milestone review -- even the dreaded parent/teacher conference -- from a blame-game to a time of deliberate learning.
The dynamics of creating and presenting a status report to executive management reveals interesting insights into the organization's culture and people. As different as the presentations are, several things are common in almost all status reports. Read more ...

Practice versus Experience
Experience isn't the best teacher. Evaluated experience is.
We all have experiences that would qualify as practice. All we need to do is take the time to interject the evaluation that allows us to learn from them. Read more ...

Why Ask Why?
Why "why" should be a four-letter word.
It surprises me how many project team members perform tasks, follow processes, fill-out forms or templates and create reports that provide no apparent value. With most people having more on their plate that they can handle, why are we willing to spend energy on things when we don't understand the reason behind them? Read more ...

Common Sense Governance
Rules can seem logical, but logic is not always applicable when talking about governance.
It seems that this time of the year more Project Managers are on vacation leaving teams without anyone to nag them about schedules and budgets. Perhaps that is why I have recently been having a lot of conversations about governance on projects. Read more ...

Portfolio Parenthood
Geof Lory outlines his critical questions for getting data that's actually useful at the portfolio level, so you can concentrate on managing the portfolio (rather than the projects).
... don't ask for information you don't need, won't use, will be out of date by the time you get it, or is excessively burdensome to obtain. More data is not better, it just creates data-clutter. Most project data is truly useful only at the project level. That's why it is called project data. Read more ...

Learning By Layering
Instructor-led training is rarely the end of the learning process. Patient practice and feedback on applied skills allows you to have your cake and eat it, too.
Some of the work I do with companies is straightforward training; learning in the academic environment where I, as the instructor, am expected to know everything, or at least a whole lot more than they do, and then crack open their brains and pour my infinite knowledge in for hours or even days. There may be some skills that can be learned this way, but I believe they are few and far between. Read more ...

Make It Personal
Are you a PM consultant in name only? Columnist Geof Lory shares his thoughts on the necessity of personal engagement in your projects, and why "going native" isn't necessarily a bad thing.
No question, there is no substitute for practice and experience in anything we attempt to excel at. This is true for both project management and parenthood. I believe that is why most parents struggle with their first child but then seem to have fewer problems with subsequent children. I know that I have. Every experience the first child goes through is not only the first time for him, but also the first time for the parents. Sometimes we guess right, sometimes it is a learning opportunity, and sometimes we aren't even aware of what is going on. If that doesn't sound like project management, I don't know what does. Read more ...

Improv Your Team
A game of charades illustrates the need for dynamic, multi-dimensional communication in our teams (starring Colonel Mustard, in the library, with a stick of celery).
No, this is not a typo, I'm referring to comedy improvisation, á la Second City or Saturday Night Live. Last week I watched my oldest daughter, Jenna, perform at a team comedy improv competition. Jenna is really into the whole theatre and drama scene (like we don't get enough drama with two teenage girls in the house, one of them has to go cultivating it, deliberately) and she is quite good at it. Read more ...

A New Year's Resolution to Review
Creating resolutions that look ahead rather than behind.
This year I have the honor of writing the first article of the New Year and I feel a certain obligation to write about making resolutions for project management practices in 2004. After all, there are many things we could be resolving to do, or do better, as project managers. Read more ...

A Thanksgiving WBS
A parable of preparation for holiday togetherness: starring a reluctant manager, a skeptical project team, and the elimination of FUD.
I love the flavors of Thanksgiving, yet I don't deliberately recreate them any other time of the year. Therein lies what I like most—the anticipation. The gradual imbuing of the house with the smell of sweet potatoes, turkey and homemade pumpkin pie evokes a Pavlovian response that is worth the 364-day wait. Read more ...

Time and Estimates are Relative
It only seems like missed project deadlines are taking years off your life. Lory's Corollary to Einstein's Theory of Relativity: You're only as late as you feel.
For a few years during my childhood, my father taught math and science at a vocational tech school. He had a great love for the hard sciences, and particularly enjoyed physics, something we share even today. Read more ...

Accountability
Winning the Laundry Lotto puts a shared vision to the test: nothing teaches accountability like living the consequences of your actions.
Many of the organizations I work with are developing cross-functional teams that require a level of group and personal accountability that may not have been a part of their culture under a more traditional control based team structure. Developing accountability is difficult if we have been culturally trained and conditioned conversely. Read more ...

Ownership of Outcomes
Ownership means putting your name on the by-line. What do you deliver on projects that you "own"?
Recently I have been working with a group of project managers and software developers trying to settle on a lean yet effective team and process model. They want a framework that guides the activities of the different roles on the team throughout the project without becoming too prescriptive. Read more ...

Family Sync-Meetings
Sometimes the very best project management tools at your disposal are (nearly) free.
One of the key elements of highly effective teams is clearly defined roles and responsibilities. In many books, articles and talks covering the topic of teams, this is a recurring theme. Read more ...

Project Management Pubescence
PM/client relationships go through awkward phases, too. The rewards of working through the pain are worth it.
In all of my articles I make references to the many analogies that can be drawn between project management and parenthood. Usually the relationship focuses around a specific topic or situation where lessons learned or behaviors practiced in one area can be applied to the other. With so many similarities in specific situations, it is impossible not to notice the relationship between the general maturing of the parent/child relationship with that of the project management/client maturity in the IT industry. Read more ...

Premortems
The best decisions employ the collective knowledge of the team -- even those pesky customers or users -- in the decision-making process.
I'm sure that most project teams are familiar with the concept of a postmortem. It is a deliberate review at a critical stage of a project, a milestone or the completion of the project. Postmortems are effective in raising the consciousness of a team and are essential to the creation of a learning organization. Read more ...

Stuff the Ego with Purpose
On project management, ego, and the stifling of creativity; humbly featuring Geof's Corollary to the Peter Principle.
I have a problem. I mean it, I have a problem and it is me, or at least a part of me, according to Sigmund Freud. I continually struggle to act with egoless intent. It affects the quality of leadership I can provide and interferes with effectively building great teams. Read more ...

Reframe for Clarity
"Let me understand this..." Inserting a small dose of reality in your project communications.
... When we see things exclusively from our own perspective, looking at it from someone else's perspective can be surprisingly humorous, disarmingly ridiculous or perhaps even insensitive. Regardless, someone else's perspective is not typically the same as your own. Read more ...

Practice Patience for Productivity
With patience, project managers and team leaders can often do their best work by encouraging learning rather than by coaxing or coaching desired behaviors.
I recently read a quote from General Norman Schwarzkopf: "Great leaders never tell people how to do their jobs. Great leaders tell the people what needs to be done and establish a framework within which it must be done. Then they let the people on the front lines, who know best, figure out how to get it done." Read more ...

Are We Having Fun Yet?
Are you serious about learning from project mistakes and improving the next effort? Here's how to prove it.
This article is about closure. Bringing things full circle. Finally being done. Punishing the innocent and promoting the guilty. However it works at your organization, success or failure, something can be celebrated and learned from every project. Read more ...

Go with the Flow
Managing project teams successfully means maintaining Consciousness of your choices, and the Courage to exercise them.
Recently I was having lunch with a friend and fellow project manager and we talked about why people, ourselves included, don't do the things we know need to be done on projects to make them successful, and why we do things we know should not be done. Many a retrospective (I prefer this term to "postmortem") has revealed opportunities for improvement that we vow to do on the next project but somehow forget during the next project. Read more ...

Just Do It!
No one knows more about managing deliverables and risk than a seasoned PM - a 2nd grade teacher, for instance.
When my daughters were in second and third grade, parents were invited to a class Poetry & Punch event a couple times a year. At Poetry & Punch, each student read their literary creation in front of about 40-50 classmates and parents. After the presentations, cookies and punch were served. In a micro-business way, I guess you could call it a product launch of sorts. Read more ...

A Man with a Plan
How much planning is enough? That depends on why you're creating the plan or schedule in the first place.
OK, I confess. All my 35mm slides are sorted, cataloged and cross-referenced by person, date and category. Organizing is just something I like to do. ... I don't do it because I'm obsessive, I do it because I hate wasting time hunting for photographs. Read more ...

Are We There Yet?
Does your team even know where "there" is, or is it just anywhere but here?
I've recently seen a commercial for a certain SUV where the children in families of different cultures continually pester their parent with the age-old question, "Are we there yet?" I had to chuckle as I let that thought rattle around in my head. Read more ...

CPM - Conscious Parenting Mindset
Balancing structure and freedom is a delicate art for a parent, or a project coach.
Many who have read my articles or listened to me speak snicker at the thought that I would actually employ project management practices in my role as a parent. They may laugh just because they find what I say humorous, but they don't usually believe that I really do think and behave that way. Read more ...

Who's In Charge Here?
Exposing the two great myths of project management: you're never in control, and you can't force an infant to eat peas.
Welcome to parenting, a state where in spite of your size, power and knowledge, you are helpless to get the simplest things done if your child is an unwilling participant. Read more ...

Project Parenthood
Need real-world training in risk management and mitigation? Try raising two teen-aged daughters.
Some twenty years ago, I was minding my own business, happily writing code and designing systems for a consulting company when the project manager on a critical project for a high profile customer resigned. I drew the short straw and got the job as his replacement. Read more ...

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