A while ago I asked a group of you, my readers, my beloved, loyal readers, "If you have 10 minutes, how do you judge a project manager?" I have used the answers to that question for my monthly column at TechTarget… (you might have to register, but its free, and you have access to a lot of other interesting stuff).

The best summary of the responses is given by this statement: "If they just use jargon from the PMBok, I put them on the lower end of the scale. If they talk about the importance of stakeholders and people in general I put them on the high end of the scale. The PMBok hardly covers stakeholders, so they must have been in the trenches."

This summer I asked myself two questions (well, some more, but who cares about my favorite pizza):

1) why is the most popular way of doing Project Management plan driven?
2) why did agile methods pop up during the mid-nineties and not earlier or later?

My answer to the second question is this months featured paper in PM World Today: "Why Agile Popped Up on the Radar When it Did"

For those who missed it, I answered question number one in last months issue.

Sometimes I amaze myself how good I am. I keep bugging you guys on using all kinds of fuzzy models and theories for Project Management. Even torture you with concepts of complex adaptive systems and system dynamics in general. BUT IT SEEMS I AM RIGHT! If even a PhD coins this subject… WOW! Me so great! Paul Giammalvo, the PhD I am referring to, also makes a plea to set the PMBoK free… make it free for the public. I really like this guy!

While you are at it, reading this months issue of PM World Today, you might check out my article "How Male Machismo Shaped Project Management"… I love to steer up some controversies… sorry about that. Hehehehehe.

For all Dutch people out there that want to see me live and unplugged I will be speaking at the Real Time Collaboration summit in Utrecht (The Netherlands) on September 18th. If you are interested in attending this seminar, please drop me a comment.

And if you are curious, my presentation is entitled: "Clothing Optional, and other benefits of the virtual workplace". It will be tremendous fun! My presentation is sponsored by ProjectPlace.nl.

Hope to see you there!

Mike Ramm from the Stop And Think blog tagged me for the 8 Random Facts meme. In it I have to tell 8 random facts about myself on my blog.

First I have to post these rules:

• Each player starts with 8 random facts/habits about themselves which others do not know about them.
• People who are tagged need to write in their own blog and post these rules.
• At the end of your 8 random facts post, you must select 8 more people and leave a message at their site that they have been tagged.

It is a nice change after the previous heavy conceptual postings

So, here it goes, 8 facts about me:

• My official first name is Sebastiaan. However at the age of 5 when I had to learn to write my name Bas was easier to write. That is how I came to my first name.
• I married in Las Vegas in 2000.
• My kitchen has two colors: apple green with deep purple.
• My goal is the life style outlined in "The 4 Hour Work Week" by Tim Ferris.
• A nice algorithm to me is better than a painting or picture. But it is too geeky to say out loud.
• I drive a Fiat Stylo, which is a typical Italian brand car: looks great and spends a lot of time at the car repair shop.
• I met my wife at a birthday party of a relative. Really.
• When the World Wide Web was invented I was studying at the Free University in Amsterdam. I totally missed that event! I missed the birth of the web!

There you have it. Totally random facts about me.

Finding 8 bloggers to pass this meme on to turned out to be a disaster. Most of the blogs I read are tagged already. I might come back sometimes and edit this post to add a new person to come up to the desired amount.

I tag..

• Thushara Wijewardena from Projectized
• PierG
• Hal from Reforming Project Management
• Dina Scott from Controlling Chaos Podcast
• Cornelius Fichtner from PM Podcast
• James McGovern
• James Robertson
• Anne Zelenka

I included some podcasts in the hope that they mention it on an episode.