Articles by Jim Owens PMP

1) Ten power Points to Powerful PowerPoints
From home businesses to corporate boardrooms, from kindergartens to lecture theatres, from "My holiday" shows to "World Domination" marketing strategies, to the unfolding of the secrets of the entire universe; they all have one thing in common -- the ubiquitous Microsoft PowerPoint slide presentation. PowerPoint is the modern-day replacement for the overhead transparency projector and of course for the... » read more

2) PRINCE2 History and Overview
I am often asked questions about the Prince2 methodology, so I thought I should jot down a few notes about it. The project Management methodology PRINCE2 started life in 1975 as PROMPT2 (Project, Resource, Organisation, Management and Planning Technique) developed by Simpact Systems Ltd, a UK company. Four years later in 1979 PROMPT2 was adopted by another UK Company CCTA (Central Computer and... » read more

3) Powerful Project Managers, their secrets revealed
I think that the Greeks are really lucky because they have a very rich language. I enjoy studying the origin of words and phrases, and I like writing poetry and stories, but what annoys me about the English language is that many words have a variety of meanings. For example I could say, “I love my computer,” or, “I love my wife,” or, ‘I love Thai food.” Obviously the word “love” has a different meaning in... » read more

4) Accelerated Learning, an Introduction
Long before man (or woman, I'm not sure which), first put grilled fatty ground meat on white bread buns, or worked out how to pressure-fry chicken in fat-laden breadcrumbs, and thus invented obesity and the heart-attack, people were already striving to do everything faster. So we got fast food, instant coffee, supersonic travel, high-speed computers and communications, and so on. Consider the massive... » read more

5) Successful Team Motivation Part 1
Einstein had an amazing ability to explain very complicated concepts and principles in very simple terms. In fact I've often thought that the ability to reduce complexities to fundamentals is key to higher thinking. An example of Einstein's reductivist abilities, and his sense of humor, he once gave this definition of Relativity: “When a man sits with a petty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute.... » read more

6) Matrix Organizations, What Are They?
Until the 1970's, typical, large organizations tended to function in "silos", logical divisions where essentially isolated groups of workers reported to a line manager or functional manager. Imagine columns on a page with a line manager at the top of each column and a group of workers inside each column under the manager. As these groups operated autonomously, it was not unusual to find functions... » read more