Each month Mindavation will offer a template from our Project Templates CD free of charge. Don't miss out on this opportunity!

This month's download is the Business Case Template. This overview tool provides us with common categories from which we can build a business case for a project before initiation. It also contains categories that can be used to assess the success of a competed project, both in the short and longer terms. This tool not only helps justify a project but also can help each of us engage in "intelligent disobedience" and be a "courageous follower" (see our book review below) and stop a project from harming our business.

The Courageous Follower: Standing Up to and For Our Leaders (Revised 2003 Edition) by Ira Chaleff

For fans of Intelligent Disobedience, this book is a must read. As project managers we must embrace "followership" in two ways. We are followers for our senior leaders and sponsors, and as leaders of our teams, we need to provide guidance to, and accept input from, our followers. This book aides the reader in these scenarios and others. Chaleff defines follower as "not a term of weakness, but the condition that permits leadership to exist and gives it strength." As stewards of our businesses, this is the core of what we do as project managers.

Addressing items such as groupthink, working with courage, when and how to "break the rules," and providing coaching to the leader, Chaleff is demanding of his expectations of the follower. However, as the title suggests, it is the "Courageous Follower" who is most valued by the good organization and who best represents, and lives a life of, truth. This book will inspire, challenge and reshape your views on what it is like to be a person with responsibility, but not authority. It turns out, for the courageous, that we actually have a great deal of power, just by sharing our observations and supporting our view of the truth. In fact, one of the last sections of the book talks about "our duty to disobey." Making the choice to follow our leaders or push back on their directives can give us a great deal of power. Chaleff helps us manage this with his well written volume.

July 19-20 Denver, Colorado "Critical Judgment"

September 12-14 Denver, Colorado "Complex Project Management"

September 20-21 Richmond, Virginia "Recovering Troubled Projects"

Looking for a class to attend? Would you like to meet us face to face? If we are in your area, feel free to contact us to schedule a meeting.

By Denise DeCarlo, PMP

Project management is never easy - but it sure is a lot more fruitful and rewarding when people around you WANT to be successful and want to work together toward a common goal. So what happens when you have a customer that DOESN'T want to be happy and/or satisfied with the results the team is working so hard to produce? What if, no matter what you do, they just aren't satisfied? This certainly brings some challenging situations to the surface-but it doesn't necessarily mean the project will be a failure. In this article we will discuss ways to deal with this very frustrating scenario.

Mindavation offers more than 30 customizable project templates and tools to make your life easier! The CD includes full project lifecycle templates and tools.

Documents are in MS Word, MS Excel, MS Project 2003 (and Adobe). Modify each template to suit YOUR business and project needs.

Price (including shipping & handling): $100

Mindavation will be presenting at PMI's Professional Development Symposium being held in Scottsdale, Arizona June 2-5.

Jayne Gnadt, Mindavation's Manager of North American Operations, will be presenting a one day workshop on Intelligent Disobedience. The workshop will be aimed at experienced Project Mangers and will focus on the same ideas as Mindavation's popular course. Topics that will be covered include examining methods for proposing potentially unpopular directions or opinions, approaches for successfully dealing with senior managers and other concerned parties, and techniques for leveraging common sense over common processes on an exception basis.

Click here for more information, and to register for PDS '07.