Hello all and all the very best for the New Year. I’m back at work now and powering on for a very successful 2009.

For me this week, it has been another day and another airport. I’ve been contracted to deliver Project Director services to a client in Canberra and find myself commuting from Hobart to Canberra each week. This type of life has its ups and downs obviously, one of the ups is being able to work with absolutely amazing and committed people, professionals who just want to get the job delivered with a high degree of quality. When you work with people like that in a project, it’s not about developing motivation and drive, it’s about controlling it and directing it to be used for good instead of evil. I’m not sure which job is easier, but the latter task is definitely not boring.

The project I’m on has had, it would be fair to say, its share of challenges. It’s about 12 months behind where it was planned to be, so there is a fair bit of work to get through until we see the light of day and can get it to performing stage.

I’m a firm proponent of Tuckman’s Stages, what I like to call the theory of teams.  Forming, storming, norming and performing phases of team development is absolutely fundamental team theory that every aspiring and experienced project manager should either have an awareness, if not a total understanding of, as it can help identify and attribute cause to some of the behaviours witnessed within the full lifecycle of projects. In my humble opinion of course.

I know that most projects don’t get to the utopian level of performing, but its still possible to have a successful project without a high level of performing. This project won’t ever reach utopia, but it will raise to a level of performing that is sufficient for it to be delivered successfully and reach a good outcome for the customer and vendor. On some projects, that’s the best that can be achieved.

Anyway, I’ll write more later, this post is just about getting up and going again and to say hello for 2009.