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By Dr. Shree Nanguneri • April 18th, 2012

Part II – Effect of High School on Final Board Examination –The Analytical Treatise Dr. Shree Nanguneri and Co-Author-Project Lead Contributor, Ms. Reethika S. Iyer*     Background: In Part I, we shared our experience on how parents make decisions to selecting high schools. Once the students graduate they are then again faced with the [...]

Part I – Impact of High School Choice on Student Final Year Performance Dr. Shree R. Nanguneri and Project Lead Contributor, Ms. Reethika S. Iyer* Background: In an earlier publication on this forum we focused our discussions on the relevance, meaning and value of LSS and PMP professionals in the industry. In Part I of [...]

Enhancing PMP with Business Process Excellence Part III (Final Part of Series) Viable Lean Six Sigma Solutions to Validate Project Timelines and Increase KPI Linkage for PMP leaders Dr. Shree Nanguneri and Mr. Gustav Toppenberg   Meandering in a World Swayed by Certification: In Part I, we addressed the vitality of the linkage of a [...]

Enhancing PMP with Business Process Excellence Part II (of an III Part Series) Validating Project Timelines against Expected Changes in Customer Requirements Dr. Shree Nanguneri and Mr. Gustav Toppenberg Background for “Changes in Customer Requirement:” In Part I we initiated discussions on how the KPI needs to link with the business goals and objectives.  In [...]

How to Eat an Elephant And close your eyes with holy dread, What was it about the number ‘3’ that is so fascinating to poets like Samuel Coleridge in his famous opium induced poem, ‘Kubla Khan’? I remember learning of a tribe in the highlands of Papua New Guinea whose language only had words for [...]

Entrepreneurial Success       Enterprise and Startup Institutions: In parts I and II, we devoted our thoughts to the industrial and academic environment on the value and benefits of LSS and PM skills for this decade. In part III of this series, our field of focus will be confined to startups, small and medium [...]

I was speaking to a fellow speaker (who was a developer from Germany). He was sharing that his company will be sending him to 15 conferences this year. I was amazed and impressed at the expense his company was investing in him. “Wow! Share with me what you are bringing back to them, that makes it worth their investment to continue to fund all these trips for you?” He looked confused. “I mean, what is there ‘return on investment’. What are they getting out of these funded trips. How are your trips accomplishing their business goals?”

Did you know Project Management is having a birthday? Well, sort of a birthday. It was 100  years ago, in 1911, that Frederick W. Taylor published Principles of Scientific Management. Early pioneers of project management, such as Henry Gantt, were followers of Dr. Taylor. Now, for historical accuracy, it should be noted that Dartmouth College [...]

What are some of the main causes behind estimating errors? And what specific steps can project managers can take to increase the accuracy of estimations?

If you are managing a project to deliver a new product or service, you’ll be making lots of decisions.  If you are doing a good job of keeping your stakeholders involved, there will undoubtedly be scrutiny about those decisions. Most companies are filled with smart, highly-trained managers who make it their job to be critical [...]

Last time, I talked about status reporting, which is commonly required but whose power as a multitool is often overlooked. Today I am going to talk about a tool that is frequently overlooked altogether – the contingency management plan. Projects are initiated for a reason – in a business setting, to create something of business [...]

Status reports (or whatever your particular methodological school calls them) are frequently maligned – c.f. “TPS Reports” in the movie Office Space – and misused. They are the weekly report that you just have to grind out for your project or program that shows you have been doing something, that you suspect no one reads [...]

When you first start out as a professional project manager, you typically have had some informal project management experience as part of your other professional responsibilities. Then you take a serious PM course or two, maybe get a PMP and suddenly you find yourself equipped with a giant tool chest full of powerful and complex [...]

“Have you included the depreciation in your budget plan?” Those words or similar ones is what I’ve heard from some accountants when I’m running projects. Honestly, what does depreciation have to do with running a project? What’s really important from a project stand point is how much money you have and how much are you [...]

The triple constraint, in many cases, is a given to project managers. Regardless of approach, methodology, or industry, most PMs are not involved, or involved enough, in the early stages of the budget to properly set it. And although we all know that a business case estimate is a ROM (Rough Order of Magnitude) which [...]

- a case for project metrics. The right metric, driving the right behavior aligned with the right strategy. Think of the last project or program you managed, or the portfolio of projects or programs in your PMO. How successful are they? How much value are they generating for the company? How are they performing against [...]

When project managing for innovation and change, three important steps are getting great inspiration, having an effective idea generation session, and then moving your ideas forward with prototyping. Consider your personal and organizational prototyping practices: do you prototype across a wide range of levels, from rough to real? Do you prototype both your tangible and intangible concepts, as you might for service design and organizational change? Take a look at the following post to imagine your path this year on what and how to prototype – for yourself or across your company.

This is the 3rd of the three articles that discuss about strategies for new project managers to function effectively. The three steps are; understanding top ten reasons of a project failure and how to proactively plan to avoid them, how to have a solid communication plan and how to manage changes. The 3rd article covers the importance of impact analysis and how to manage changes.

This is the 2nd of the three articles that discuss about strategies for new project managers to function effectively. The three steps are; understanding top ten reasons of a project failure and how to proactively plan to avoid them, how to have a solid communication plan and how to manage changes. The 2nd article covers the importance of communication and how to create project communicationmanagement plan.

Project Conference 2009 continues through this week in Phoenix, AZ.  As Microsoft prepares for the release of Project 2010, it’s a good time to reflect on some additional best practices that project managers should keep in mind when using their current version of Microsoft Project. Know the Limitations of Critical Path Methodology – CPM was [...]

Jim Sloane is a particularly adept person to provide an executive primer on organizational project management maturity.  There are a multitude of models and approaches for measuring organization maturity and the associated business benefits.  With the increasing number of tools and models available to organizations, it can be challenging to choose the best strategy that [...]