Gren Gale’s Remote Work and Project Management Blog
Named as one of the top 19 Key Opinion Leaders globally in Who’s Who in Remote Working?
How to get best value from your suppliers
Generate a competitive environment To get best value from your suppliers, you have to generate a competitive environment. That’s not necessarily quite as easy as it sounds. Getting a few potential suppliers to bid against each other is of little or no value,...
The best way to survive failure? …revel in it!
OK, with a heading like that, maybe you think I’m ever so slightly insane, but with all due apologies to Benjamin Franklin, nothing can be said to be certain in this life except death, taxes and failure. Anyone who says they haven't failed is lying through their...
How to Estimate Costs
If you don't estimate costs well you'll run out of budget Estimation is one of the most important parts of a project, but also one that people often feel the most uncomfortable with. If you estimate costs poorly then as the project progresses, the whole...
How to hold effective meetings
Meetings, like them or not, are a means of communication, a way of resolving issues and should be used for reviewing documents and deliverables. Meetings won’t go away, but they can be made to be a lot more effective. I’m sure we’ve all been to meetings where...
Elephants are hard to swallow in one go
Don't get too carried away People get carried away with the excitement of new projects, especially where they involve product launches. As a result, too many people want to go for the full scope from day 1. Add in a bit too much optimism about when it can be...
Can you be Half-Agile?
A lot of companies I’ve come across in my consultancy life have heard all about Agile and think they should be going there. It’s new, it’s exciting, it’s faster, it’s cheaper, it works and just about everyone is doing it. They want some of that too! Well let’s first...
How important is good memory?
Is the importance of a good memory starting to diminish? If I forget the name of a colleague or a customer, I can look at my e-mail, search the web or consult social media. And what’s more I can have all of these sources of information and more, ever present, with my...
The Art of Negotiation
Newsweek magazine called negotiation ‘the game of life’ and indeed most wars come about as the result of failed negotiations. Negotiations between men who were desperate to avoid bloodshed after the carnage of the first world war and a man who cared little about how...
How to develop new products
Trusting your gut rarely works Many small and medium businesses experience issues developing new products. While they are likely to know their market well, they often lack the disciplines to determine how long it will take to bring a new product to market and...
Value = Benefits – Costs
A ridiculously simple formula that if applied more frequently and more exactingly would go a long way to preventing the hundreds of thousands of disaster projects that happen worldwide each year. If you can't show Value why are you proposing doing it? It's the most...
