Implementing project management

By asarkar • March 13th, 2010

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.

This is the 1st 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 1st article covers top ten reasons of a project failure and how to proactively plan in order to avoid them.

Sometimes, you have to break the rules to get things done!
As we go through our lives we are subjected to numerous rules – as kids, as students, as workers and as adults living our everyday lives.  As program managers and leaders, part of our responsibilities is to lay down some rules by which to guide [...]

We all have been in the situation where a customer or team member asks to add a feature or upgrade the quality of a certain item. We often agree to do these favors because we find ourselves unable to say “no”—driven by our desire to please or a preconceived notion that we do not have [...]

Where to Go From Here?
I realize that most of us will never face the challenges confronted by Gene Kranz, NASA Flight Director, on Apollo 13, but the mental exercise is worth doing.  If you haven’t seen the movie, or have seen it and view it as entrainment at the time, I suggest renting it and [...]

Rallying the Team from a Bump in the Night
For the rare situation where the project plan comes to an abrupt, premature end or dead stop, it is your time to show everyone what real leadership is.  At this point the whole team, and more, are looking for someone to rally them and provide direction on [...]

Process for Handling the Dips in the Road

The majority of unexpected situations that hit a project during its execution are dips in the road to closure; a leader can certainly prepare both themselves and a process for the team, to deal with these.
As the project leader you own the solution/decision process, like any of [...]

Who is Solving the Problems and Making the Decisions?
The question on the table is, will we have the right person(s) solving the problem and/or making the decision, when needed?
The volume of problems/decisions seen by a project is probably somewhat pyramid in shape, with the bulk lying with individual SMEs and, hopefully, precious few with the [...]

Are you prepared to cope when things go bump in the night?
As project managers we have become proficient in transforming the project charter (in whatever form we get it) into a project plan (hopefully, including some risk management) and then charging through plan execution to closure.  But, what happens when thing go bump in the [...]

Dear Diary -
In the “Dear Diary #2” blog I made a commitment to re-engineer my relationship with my dad – getting unstuck from the past conversation swirling around in my head about him.  (Perhaps you made a similar commitment to doing that with a colleague or boss after reading that blog?)  After recognizing that the [...]

What do Sisyphus, Attila the Hun, the Quakers, and early cartographers have in common with creating a project office?
They all represent metaphors that guide modern managers to implement a project office for organizational change.  You may decide to become a POO–a Project Office of One, or your organization may need a SPO–a Strategic Project Office.
Find [...]

I received a great question from a subscriber to my PMP Guide newsletter about methodologies and frameworks.

He cited a bountiful list with a question of whether he needs to know all of these in and out:

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 developed [...]

One of the reasons I got into Project Management in the first place is that I’ve always been interested in people – their personalities, where they are from, what makes them tick.
Growing up overseas in Japan, I attended an international school for foreigners, and there were kids from all over the world – kids whose [...]

Political issues often thwart rapid advancement.  Organizations by their very nature are political.  How can you identify and characterize stakeholder traits that need to be addressed or accommodated if, as a leader, you wish to exercise influence and be more effective within an organization?
One way to help turn potential victim scenarios into win-win political victories [...]

The results delivered by projects depend upon what you negotiate.  A “secret” employed by successful project leaders is that they explore a perspective, principles, tools, and recommendations to achieve better results through the power of negotiations. They avoid being set up for failure by recognizing and developing skills that lead to greater success.
Every day involves [...]

Are you having fun yet?  I have recently been moderating a discussion about management, leadership, and team building in a project and program environment.  Let me share a few of the comments recorded so far.  On the topic of what makes for project success—is fulfilling the triple constraints enough?—I provided a high level summary view [...]

In my last blog I mentioned that I recently received a job offer at a new company.  This started me thinking about what is my plan for getting started at the new job, so today I figured I’d share my thoughts and maybe it will help you or maybe you’ll have some feedback for me.

Technorati [...]

Recently, like all too many people these days, I found myself in the position of needing to find a new job.  Now before you give up on this blog I promise not to rant on about how bad things are; rather I’ll talk about a topic that came to mind while I was preparing for [...]

When is an Agile development effort not so agile?  When you haven’t clearly defined the ultimate objective.  I freely admit that I am not an expert in Agile development so my expectations may not be appropriate but come on now how can one expect to be successful if they don’t know what the ultimate goal [...]