Holidays Happier with Project Management?

With the holiday season fully upon us, I have to wonder, how many of our readers find themselves putting their project management skills to use for personal projects?

Be it planning your gift choices or organizing a holiday party, there are many moments during this busy season when those skills can come in handy. For example, do you find yourself identifying your holiday requirements say, sometime around Thanksgiving? What about having a daily scrum over breakfast with family members ("Yesterday I purchased stamps, today I'll be writing and addressing cards.")? Certainly project cost estimating and cost management skills can be extremely useful during this period and New Year's resolutions look a lot like retrospectives to me.

This post on Project Management Essentials links to a more in-depth exploration of this concept, with diagrams and all!

So, do you project manage your holidays? Or does the idea seem too cold to you, and you would rather use this time as an opportunity to relax and let go of the reins? Share with us in the comments and happy holidays to all of our readers here on the ProjectWorld® & World Congress for Business Analysts® blog!

Michelle LeBlanc is a Social Media Strategist at IIR USA and the voice behind the @Project_World twitter. She may be reached at mleblanc@iirusa.com

Are you using Agile on personal projects?

Great article today from Michele Sliger who asked her Twitter followers whether or not anyone was using an agile technique to help them plan their individual efforts and if they were, what were they using. Sliger found that many of the respondents were using Personal Kanban. Find out more about Personal Kanban here. What is interesting about Sliger's piece is that she showcased a very practical, very "old school" way of organizing our personal time. As project managers, we are inundated with the next software, planning system or meeting style to get our project done on time and on budget. But how awesome is it to have something as simple as a Personal Kanban to keep track of all of the little projects that may not fall into the digital sector? What other techniques to you use to keep your personal projects going?

Be sure to check out Michele Sliger's blog for more information.