I’ll be presenting to the Department of State Project Management Community of Practice on Thursday, November 13. My presentation is called Harder Choices (get it? I’m at the State Department. I crack myself up.) After coming up with the hilarious inside joke, I actually built a presentation around the hard choices PMs need to make in order to be successful. Hard choices around project selection, project execution and, if necessary, around project termination.

Sound bites for the presentation are:

• Ironically, the hardest choice about project management is made before any project management begins. It’s during the project selection phase.
• In order to start doing things right, you have to stop doing them wrong.
• The best time to do a task is three weeks ago. The second best time is today.
• Successful project teams may have difficulty transitioning to operations.
• Marginal projects may live indefinitely. You must kill these zombies.

I’m teaching Project Management Fundamentals as part of Georgetown University’s PM Certificate Program. This three-day class starts November 10 as part of the two-week intensive program.

I’ve been working overtime on the class material and I think this may be the best class ever. Sign up here: http://scs.georgetown.edu/programs/394/project-management-intensive/

I’m excited to join Georgetown University as an adjunct professor in the Systems Engineering Management master’s degree program. The program combines systems engineering courses from my former university, the Stevens Institute of Technology, and management and leadership courses from Georgetown.

The program is designed for people looking to manage or lead technical and engineering efforts, particularly in software, aerospace and defense, transportation, and healthcare. Top local employers of systems engineers include General Dynamics, SAIC, ManTech, CSC, Boeing and Booz Allen.

I’ll be teaching project management on Monday evenings in the Fall semester.