Brian Irwin

As project managers we frequently find ourselves in situations which require quick thinking, astute political skill, and conflict management ability. This is the art behind the science of project management, and what Brian Irwin considers to be the difference between a good project manager and a great one.

Brian has worked in project and program management roles for more than fifteen years for companies such as Gateway 2000, Hewlett Packard, and Rockwell Collins. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering and a Master of Science degree in Project Management, both from Colorado Technical University in Colorado Springs. He is certified as a Project Management Professional through the Project Management Institute (PMI).

Brian's experience includes roles focusing on project teaming, leadership development, assessment and recovery of troubled projects, and OPM3 organizational self-assessment and improvement implementations. He also lends his time to serve a leadership role on the OPM3 2008 update team and the Portfolio Management Standards team for PMI. Brian frequently speaks on project management topics. His book Managing Politics and Conflict in Projects (published by Management Concepts) was released in January 2008.

Brian welcomes questions and comments at politicaledge@pmteamdynamics.com.

Proactive Risk Management Prevents a Lot of Fan Cleaning
Will your risk lists help you control your project environment, or just remind you of what you already know?
Standard risk lists are filled with items like "not enough resources" or "aggressive timeline." Beyond their obviousness, risks like these fail to provide the project manager or the team any useful direction. Read more ...

Texting Team Members and Supervising Sponsors
Handling a new team member who doesn't seem involved enough, and a project sponsor who's a little too involved.
"One of my programmers, who is a recent college graduate, does not arrive at the office until around 9:30–10:00 a.m. In meetings, he will send texts and answer email on his cell. As the icing on the cake, he recently asked to work remotely." Read more ...

Disarming a Project Landmine
Mopping up after missing deliverables and messy intra-project politics.
"Recently, I discovered a colleague of my sponsor was not a supporter of my project. The dilemma I have is that my lead system engineer is the husband of my project's opponent. Do you have any ideas how I can neutralize the situation?" Read more ...

Pay Attention to Me!
Handling engineers run amok and inattentive project sponsors.
The project sponsor, the Vice-President of the business unit, remains unresponsive to my requests for information. I sometimes send two or three reminder email queries about the same thing. Is there anything I can do? Read more ...

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