After spending the better part of a decade managing projects for large Fortune500 organizations. I recently had the opportunity to consult and project manage for some small companies. As you would expect that there are positives and negatives in both, and the disparity can generally be seen with team size/support and decision processes.

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Networking is often thought as a ‘pre or post’ by-product of attending a PMI dinner, lecture, or a business meeting. Often we skip the networking portion because we are in a hurry to get home. Instead it is important to be able to dedicate the time to improve our professional relationships, learn from our PM peers project experiences (both good and bad), and discover if there are new techniques that could be applied to your own projects.

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This month, HIMSS released the 26^th Annual HIMSS Leadership Survey, which gathers opinions of IT professionals in healthcare provider organizations regarding their use of technology.
The survey revealed that 72 percent of respondents report that consumer and patient considerations, such as patient engagement, satisfaction and quality of care will have a major impact on their organization’s strategic efforts over the next two years.

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The 2015 HIMSS Mobile Technology Survey of more than 200 healthcare provider employees’ further supports the fact that use of mobile healthcare technologies is spreading fast.

We are in the final week until the regular season the National Hockey League comes to a conclusion. Teams are fighting for playoff positions, but our attention is drawn to not the top of the standings but to the bottom. The “race” to 30^th place has caused a lot of discussion on sports talk radio and national publications. Sharp focus is on the current last place team, the Buffalo Sabres. Fans are divided on whether the team should deliberately try to loose games, in order to get a chance at the number one draft pick, or at worst the number two draft pick (per the NHL’s draft lottery rules). As a project manager, I took a broader look at this event in Sabres history, as the fan opinions steadily grow apart. Although sports fans will always have varying opinions, what has been missing is a solid project Stakeholder Communication Plan.
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The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released the proposed rules for stage 3 of meaningful use. The entire document is over 300 pages, and reads like a legal contract or legislative bill – not something you would read for fun. Stage 3 is the final stage of meaningful use, beginning in 2017, and required by all providers and hospitals by 2018.

Stage 3 meaningful use focuses on provider flexibility, simplifying the program, interoperability of electronic records, and patient outcomes. “The steps we are taking today will help to create more transparency on cost and quality information, bring electronic health information to inform care and decision making, and support population health,” said HHS Secretary Sylvia M. Burwell in a press statement.

A Project Manager does not necessarily have the luxury of picking their project sponsor. At times the cards are dealt and you have to deal with a difficult sponsor or team.

Throughout my years as a project professional, I could name plenty of examples of “difficult sponsors”, such as; being indecisive, changing project timelines, changing the scope, avoiding responsibility (e.g., not making/delaying key decisions), unrealistic expectations, not providing the right resources… the list could go on!

So, what’s the best way to handle your difficult sponsor? From day one, build a strong partnership with the sponsor! Being honest with your stakeholders is the fist step in building the trust and credibility that will make difficult conversations a bit easier.  I have learned this lesson the hard way, as I was transitioned to a few projects that had been started by other PM’s. Those PM’s, once confronted with a difficult sponsor, cowered in fear of upsetting them. They would say “yes” to everything, essentially conforming to their customer’s indecisiveness. By doing this it builds a false foundation for the project and the team, and sets it up for failure from the start.
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