The Disfavor of Doing Favors
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 [...]
Risk Register – Short & Sweet or Extensive & Complete?
Another highlight (IMHO) of the Risk Symposium was Eldon F. Jones’ presentation on “Risk Register – What is it and How is it used?”
What is a Risk Register?
A Risk Register is a document that lists “all identified risks, including description, cause, probability of occurring, impact(s) on objectives, proposed responses, owners, and current status” per Mr. [...]
Tools & Techniques – Microsoft Project Best Practices (2)
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 [...]
Tools & Techniques – Microsoft Project Best Practices (1)
With the kick-off of Project Conference 2009 in Phoenix, AZ this week Microsoft has invited some customers and partners to get a sneak peek at Microsoft Project 2010. I have been managing projects and teaching classes on this tool for quite a long time and have had a chance to read about some of the [...]
Project Management on Knowledge Management projects
My first two guest posts were about the intersection of Knowledge Management and Project Management; in this post I would like to talk about what I think are some of the peculiarities of Knowledge Management projects.
For the most part Knowledge Management projects are just like any other projects, tasks have to be delineated, risk managed, [...]
A Tale of Three Cities – London, Toronto, and Redwood Shores
It had all the earmarks of a disaster, a real career-sinker of a project. And here was my old friend and former colleague calling me up enthusiastically, on the phone: “Hey Lisa, we need a Technical Project Manager for this start-up I’m working for, in Redwood Shores… you’ll love the project and the team. It’s [...]
Risk? What Risk?
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 [...]
Control – the Illusion
Know any control-freaks?
For many of them, control is an illusion. Paradoxically, by grasping for more control, they often get less.
Lessons in Being Proactive
Once again as an Incognito Project Manager, here are some observations on the Power of being Proactive…
Prior to my coming onto the team, our project manager had been hard at work preparing the way for our initiative. Many hours strategizing plus preparing and presenting the business case clearly made all the difference for our success. [...]
Technical Security Controls
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.
Project Decelerators – Lack of Planning Clarity
So, you’ve met your stakeholders and gotten their support. Everyone agrees on the size of the breadbox. Details are needed, but those will be identified during requirements gathering. How do you plan to pursue the project? Should you draft a plan on your own since your team is brand new and they don’t know any [...]
Control or Results? How to Manage the Paradox and Achieve Greater Project Results
One critical choice project managers face is between control and results. Managers say they want results but actions speak even louder to say they want control. Do onerous controls inhibit achieving the very results they were intended to produce? Is control an illusion? Is it possible for managers to pursue both control and results: up [...]
Gap Analysis – Where are you now?
Image via Wikipedia
To take Wikipedia’s definition, a gap analysis is a business assessment tool enabling a company to compare its actual performance with its potential performance. At its core are two questions:
Where are we?
Where do we want to be?
As we know from our projects, the gap analysis process involves determining, documenting and approving the [...]
4. The Credit Crisis: For Project Managers – What should you Expect?
Should you find yourself in a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is likely to be more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks. – Warren Buffett
There is no point in denying that change is in the air. You can prepare yourself so that you’re in the best position where you are, but [...]
3. The Credit Crisis: For Project Managers – What Does It Mean?
By Andrew Meyer
“Times change, we change with them.” – Latin Proverb
In 1983, US companies spent $32 billion on IT, which accounted for 9.8% of their total investment in fixed assets that year. By 2006, spending had risen almost tenfold, to $294 billion, and IT accounted for 21.1% of new fixed assets purchased that year in [...]
2. The Credit Crisis: Why is it Important? A Little History
By Andrew Meyer
History is a guide to navigation in perilous times. History is who we are and why we are the way we are. – David C. McCullough
This is the part 2 of 4 looking at the credit crisis:
Check these four items before analyzing your budget numbers
As a project manager, you must understand these four budget items. If you do not recognize and understand them it is possible (even likely) that you will not properly understand your budget status and you may make wrong decisions based on these misunderstanding.
Project Progress Trend Analysis
If you are like most project managers, you wish you had a better real-time handle on the progress of your project so you could predict when you will finish or when a change is needed in order to stay on track. I have used a simple yet powerful method that is applicable to most projects [...]
Treating the unexpected as normal
In project plans have you noticed the constant state of change? But of course you have!
Made me wonder about that: the chip that is advertised at one speed and actually when tested runs either faster or slower: enough for a data sheet change. The product that has to be rapidly re-engineered due to a design [...]
Disaster Planning
It’s a funny thing how life continues again and again to give us pause for thought.
In industry, we know that the unemployment rate is going up. The valley seems to be weathering the storm and the financial press is full of speculation that there will be more jobs created next year: me?: Personally after the [...]
The Scope Baseline
I’m studying for the PMP exam, and I’m using the PMPrepcast to study. I actually found one point to disagree with Cornelius Fitchner on today! (That doesn’t usually happen!)
In the Scope Control podcast, he talks about the “updates to the scope baseline” as being redundant, since the process also produces updates to all 3 [...]
