4 Project Management Anti-Patterns

Anti-patterns are – in a way – lessons in recognizing what approaches to a given situation are ineffective or even counter productive. I look at them as the generic lessons-learned of life that are worth noting down and foremost worth sharing.

Last weekend I gave a presentation at Barcamp VRT 2012 in Brussels, hoping to help out other online project managers and everyone who was interested in hearing me out with some project management anti-pattern expert advice.

I talked about 4 anti-patterns I discovered based on my notes.

1. Fighting Visual Priority
2. Black Hole Planning
3. Quality Cover-up (aka Is That a Triangle in Your Pants?)
   
4. Delegation without Authority

Please, check out the slides, I’m curious to see what you think …

You can download the whole presentation here on SlideShare too.

Sometimes when life throws you lemons you have to make lemonade, but just before that can happen you’ll have to eat at least one of those darn lemons, and in the sour aftertaste of that first lemon lies the seed of experience.

I might do a few anti-pattern specific posts in the future.

There’s a book on project management anti-patterns too called “AntiPatterns in Project Management” if you’re interested, not sure if it’s still on print.

If you’re struggling with something in your online project management work, really anything, be it big or small, don’t hesitate to drop me a line on Twitter @JourneymanPM.

I’ll get back to you via direct message and we can mail or plan a talk on Skype if you like.