Best Practice
Let's Make Those Project Meetings More Effective
I was trying to get hold of the project manager. Or rather he was trying to get hold of me. However, I had tried 3 times already so I sent him an email knowing it would sink to the bottom of the pile. I got to thinking that it wasn't just this project manager who always seemed to be in meetings. Several people I have been trying to get hold of always seem to be in back to back meetings. Project Agency has been collecting statistics for several years. Some 1,120 people have completed our questionnaire and one of the questions is quite revealing.
Get Maximum Benefits of Merging Top-down and Bottom-up Project Management
Nowadays, the bottom-up approach to management is becoming more and more popular. More and more, organisations are abandoning the top-down management style. Among them are the New York Times, Tribune Co., Ernst & Young and many others. Even the world biggest corporations, such as Toyota and IBM, are trying to implement bottom-up management style elements in some of their departments. However, managers are still arguing over which approach is more beneficial for organisations. To understand the reason for the ongoing changes in management processes, we need to compare the two management styles.
Having a Robust Governance Process
So, you are organised, have identified the stakeholders as well as project risks (and you are actively managing both), you have planned the project and you are all ready to deliver. But, have you developed a monitoring and control process for your project - an essential part of project management and work generally?
Technology Vendor Contracting: Breaking the Mould
Commercial buyers of information technology products and services are locked into a self-defeating pattern of behaviour when it comes to negotiating contract terms and conditions with technology vendors, and it is time to move on to a better approach. Better technology vendor negotiations produce better contracts for a technology project, and better contracts produce better project outcomes. So, break the mould and move on to a better way of negotiating contract terms and conditions for your next technology project.
The Purpose of Project Management and Setting Objectives
Project Management has developed in order to plan, co-ordinate and control the complex and diverse activities of modern industrial and commercial projects. All projects share one common characteristic - the projection of ideas and activities into new endeavours.
Avoid the Same Old Mistakes by Focussing on Lessons Learned
It's said there are no new project management sins, just old ones repeated. It's also said that we don't learn the lessons from past projects and this must be true, otherwise why would we keep making the same old mistakes.
Real World Project Management - Communications
Communication is more than just talking. Communication is also listening. When it comes to project management, communication takes up 90% of a project manager's time. That's right, 90% of your time.
When Do I Turn on Project Management?
The problem with project management and IT is that all too often, project management is an afterthought on a project. It is often perceived as "project control" or an administrative function that tracks issues and schedule dates based on best guesses. We are lured to "just get it done" and leap into development without adequate planning. With this approach, project management is seen as providing little or no value, which is understandable because it is inherently reactive when applied this way. Inevitably, projects will exceed prescribed time and budget parameters. To be effective, an organisation needs to invest in project management at the very beginning of the project life cycle.
Project Management Basics
If you have ever had responsibility for managing a project, regardless of how little or how big, you will understand the many nuances and special considerations that have to be taken into account behind-the-scenes. Project management success stories rarely show the struggles, problems or weaknesses of the project or team to the public. One author, Herbert Lovelace, likened this to the kitchen, which "...tends to be cleaned up before it is shown to guests!"
17 "Must Ask" Questions for Planning Successful Projects
Why do some projects proceed without a hitch, yet others flounder? One reason could be the type and quality of the questions people ask at the very start. This article suggests 17 insightful queries that can expose the uncertain aspects of your project, and thereby help you avoid expensive surprises later. You can thus achieve your project goals with much less guesswork and far fewer problems than you may have experienced in the past.
Setting Measurable Project Objectives
Examine ten projects at random, and you will see some of the worst written objectives. Project objectives are often hard to track, vague, and lacking in depth. In project objectives, people need details to help know where they are in the process, and data helps them make informed decisions. I like to recommend "DISCO" when forming objectives. "DISCO" can be spelled out to point us in the proper direction for creating project objectives and tracking their progress.
Let Project Management Boost the Bottom-Line
The next time you hear the words "bottom-line" when you're sitting in the audience at a company meeting, don't roll your eyes. Instead, think about all the ways that you as a project manager can help to boost that bottom-line.
Quality Projects Take Time and Money
In project management, as with most things in life, quality is planned in, not inspected in. Quality, and the expectations for acceptance, must be defined up front.
Developing a New Project Scorecard
For many firms implementing a new project is not an easy endeavour. This may come with a lot of risk, which is why it is always a good idea to use a new project scorecard. This way, managers have a more accurate idea of what needs to be achieved for a project to become a success.
Obstacles to Project Communication
Communication is so important to project success that it has been referred to as the lifeblood of a project by more than one practitioner. Jack Vinson talks about the importance of communication across project interfaces - interfaces being boundaries between different groups within an extended project team. He views interfaces as constraints that limit project success. On reflection, I realised that many project communication issues I've encountered have, in fact, occurred at interfaces. In this post I explore the notion of an interface as an obstacle to project communication.
Lessons Learned - Why Don't we Learn From Them?
In looking at lessons learned, many times we find things like - should have had a better schedule, or better budgeting, or more communications, spent more time on requirements, etc. All of these things relate to how we do the work, not what we work on. Talking about how things get done or working on how things get done does not, in and of itself, get anything done. This is one of the reasons so many people hate planning - planning is not doing and we all like doing.
Real World Project Management: Procurement Management
Projects typically need stuff: servers, software, subject matter experts, pizza, etc. And to buy all this stuff, you need to go through procurement processes. That's just a fancy way of saying you need to follow some rules and procedures within your organisation to get the things you need to complete your project.
A Project Management Primer - Basic Principles - Scope Triangle
The project management Scope Triangle or Quality Triangle shows the trade-offs inherent in any project. The triangle illustrates the relationship between three primary forces in a project. Time is the available time to deliver the project, cost represents the amount of money or resources available and quality represents the fit-to-purpose that the project must achieve to be a success.
Controlling Project Costs Through Interactive Planning
I have observed that successful project leaders have made a paradigm shift in their thinking as compared to the more traditional school of thought I call "thinking in a silo." The silo thinking process waits and holds off the construction management team until the detailed design documents are about to start or, even worse, when the detailed design documents are completed. This is too late in the project's life cycle. At this stage, there is a preliminary estimate and schedule developed.
Step-by-Step Beginners Guide to Project Management
Projects must; actively involve all the group members, have excellent communication and access to project information, have a shared desired outcome, have specific dates for completion of tasks, and have all the required tools (when needed) in order to finish. If there is no enthusiasm in the group, your project is dead or doomed to be incredibly dull and tedious.
7 Steps to Project Success
The successful completion of a big project should bring big benefits for your company - otherwise, why bother? Here is a seven step procedure to manage projects from inception to success. It guarantees the best chance of achieving maximum project benefits. This checklist should also be useful to senior company executives, functional chiefs and project managers alike.
How to Keep a Design Project Moving
It happens all too frequently. Everyone read the Creative Brief and gave their sign-off. The design team was selected because they had the most experience in your industry. The project schedule had plenty of padding built into it. But your web or graphic design project is nowhere close to final and you're a month past the deadline. How does this happen? Following are seven common causes for a design project to get held up, and suggestions to help you meet your deadline.
Tips for Project Management Success
Bringing projects in on time and on budget is always a challenge. With the competing demands for labour and capital, projects have many internal and external forces that can contribute to a derailment. It takes a strong sense of direction, efficiency and leadership to keep the project on track. The following guidelines are some helpful tips that every project manager can use at one time or another.
Project Management As it Ought to Be
Most of us are beyond the point where we believe that successful project management can be accomplished by following a formula or merely using the right system. It's not that the tools are unimportant, or that the systems don't work, because they do. However, the systems and the software only make the job easier; they aren't the elements of success.
Flexible Project Management
In a study by TBC (Tylee-Birdsall & Co) it was determined using the value mapping procedure that most technical design projects could theoretically be completed in half the time if they were managed perfectly and there was no rework required. If we therefore assume that most projects are 50% efficient we can easily bring this up to 80% or even higher if methods to reduce rework and delays were put in place.
People, Process, and Predicting Project Success
Great people, people with sufficient functional skills and domain expertise can trump process, good or bad. Good process, process appropriate for the context, will help those people. But great people can overcome bad process to deliver a good product.
5 Tips for Successful Projects
On a regular basis we are constantly reminded that an overwhelming majority of projects are completed over budget, past the desired deadline and outside the original scope. Best practice project management reminds us that if we successfully initiate, plan, execute and close out our projects - our metrics will illustrate greater results. However, there's more to project management than just a simple methodology. With this in mind, here are five simple tips for completing this challenging process and improving your project outcomes.
Communication: The Lifeblood of a Project
The communication plan like the project plan is a necessary part of the project. However, when thinking of the project manager's role in communication planning look beyond the written word and the outline prepared in the early phases of a project, otherwise you are setting yourself up for project losses.