Implementing project management

By Rich Maltzman • June 4th, 2009

I’d like to start things off in this posting with a joke I heard on the US Television show, Two and a Half Men. Now keep in mind that the show is full of gratuitous innuendo and juvenile comedy, much of it not easily translatable in (nor suitable for) the context of project management.  In [...]

Taking advantage of the social networks that we PMs have started to form on LinkedIn, I did some polling in early 2009 to gauge the interest level (see post below) in the brand-spanking-new PMBOK(R) Guide.
Using a completely non-scientific scale that I made up in 17.4 seconds, and asking the question on the larger LinkedIn Groups [...]

The new PMBOK(R) Guide has a new process called Identify Stakeholders.
As a person invloved with creating PMP(R) Exam study materials as well as developing and delivering PM courseware, I always want to keep my material up-to-date with the latest PMBOK(R) Guide.  Of course, this means searching for practical examples from organizations and real applications.  Sometimes, [...]

Agile development methodologies put forth a set of guidelines for helping to navigate the complex world of software development.   For agile to be truly effective, it needs to be supported throughout the organization, and encourages reaching out to the customers.  In working with the agile projects at different companies, I found challenges in getting [...]

While Ford announced that “Quality is Job One,” it is Toyota and Honda that continue to build the most reliable cars year after year.  Many, if not all, software companies want to build a quality product, few actually do build products that meet their own internal management quality expectation and external customer’s satisfaction.    The [...]

Good Requirement Management is perhaps the most important factor in many projects’ successes or failures.  Some research had mentioned that it can be as high as 65%.   Requirement specification greatly affects the scope of the project, which in turn affects the resource and time required.  In this blog, I will share my thoughts and [...]

Participants in the UCSC Extension advanced course on the “Project Management Office” had ample opportunity to explore their environmental challenges, share questions with others, and prepare action plans on implementing a project office for organizational change.  They came with real questions and left with renewed understandings about the potential for anything from a Project Office [...]

Every program manager has run into the same situation at some point in their career. You put together your program plan with lots of spreadsheets, Gantt charts, requirements documents, resource requirements, risk management plan, etc. You present the plan to management and everything goes reasonably well until you start to talk about risks and how [...]

I believe that most people in the computer-using community (which now is just about everybody in the developed nations) want to do the right thing, and can do the right thing. They just need to know what the right things are, and how to do them.

There is a lot to talk about with regard to technical security controls, aka the “sexy stuff” like firewalls and IDS. So rather than bore you with technobabble (in Scrappy Information Security, I start with packets, headers, ports & MACs as a way of introducing how the Internet works), I will instead focus on an explanation of encryption.

When teaching “InfoSec 101,” I reflect back on my early career as a reporter, and focus on answering the standard questions: who, what, why, where, when, and how. Since this is a Scrappy Book, let’s throw caution to the wind and take them out of order…

We’re adults, and we like to know “why.” I would like to share some of the whys of information security, so that you can understand why the infosec guys can be so darned stubborn.

It sort of pains me to even have to write about #4 on my list of mandatory practices (see Tuesday’s blog):
“4. Testing of every requirement (using the RM tool to track progress)”
because I always think “how else would you test?”. But perhaps that’s because I’m originally from an aerospace background where we [...]

That requirements will change is a given. How you plan for and manage that change is crucial. Think about what you want to accomplish with your change management, what you want to protect yourself from, what you want to avoid, and then put in place the practice that makes sense for you.
Having a [...]

There is a set of SW practices that I consider non-negotiable, and they begin with 2 that are requirements-related:
1. Written, reviewed, approved requirements
2. A requirements baseline, implemented with a requirements management (RM) tool
In my last company, getting these done in a way that was accepted by engineers and management alike did require a pinch of “writing the [...]

At my last company we took pride in the amount of work we were able to accomplish with a very small team – software of high quality and releases on tight schedules. The high quality and the responsiveness to customers’ demand for new features kept our customer support expenses low and gave us good [...]

I was listening to an NPR talk show segment about customer service last week.  It was mainly about being on hold, the friendliness (or unfriendliness) of the support givers, etc.  There was a quote from a customer service person who said that they were rude because the customer service expense “sucked out whatever profit they [...]

Sending an SOS? Need some guidelines or information regarding international project management? You may be ready to launch a global project or you may find yourself in the midst of a big international initiative. Yet you’re missing those extra insights on the cross-cultural challenges faced throughout the project cycle. If you need some extra resources, [...]

I grew up in a rural area.  Rural enough that dogs chased cars.  Extraordinarily enough, the dogs never caught the cars.  In fact, they never got close.  It was good sport.  The dog felt very fulfilled, barked aggressively and made sure to never come close to catching the car.  As best as I can recall, [...]

Have you ever been on a project or program where all the PMs knew that their project was in trouble, but they were waiting for someone else to admit their problems first?  It happens often enough, as soon as one PM admits that they have a problem, everyone else discovers problems too.
 
The Prisoner’s Dilemma
From the [...]

If you’ve ever been inside of a tin of sardines you will have a pretty good idea of what it’s like to ride the subways of Tokyo during rush hour – only in the subway the sardines are still alive.  Even though we are packed together with greater intimacy than most sexual encounters, my inscrutable [...]