Planning

By asarkar • March 10th, 2010

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.

Even if you believe that everything from dating to contact with God can be managed on the computer, that ain’t quite true. Despite the push for technology in every operation–and despite our first endorsement of (still-sequence) video-conferencing (VC) in a 1983 book, you will want or need to meet face-to-face at times. The message itself [...]

When first you heard of the PERT Diagram, it was probably in relation to engineering, architecture, or other construction or manufacturing tools. Have you thought of PERT as tool for controlling business meetings? Why not? Each meeting is a never-before event. US Navy’s motivation for developing PERT: controlling the development of the never-before Polaris submarine.
Every [...]

A project manager friend of mine recently transitioned into software industry from hardware manufacturing. He was complaining about the problems he’s been having to come up with good schedule for mid-size software project.
Specifically, he was referring to the problem of padding in estimation for tasks. Being new to software industry, he was not sure whether [...]

This is the very last week of 2009. Can you believe it? This year has gone by faster than any others. It was a year of extremes: extreme lows and extreme highs. Too many people lost their jobs, their houses, their loved ones or their spirit this year.  Every great project manager knows the value [...]

How a team feels impacts its productivity and business results.  Imagine if the acrobat above was having a bad day… the results would be disastrous!
A key ingredient that shapes team effectiveness is its culture and having a sense of community.
Geography plays a huge role in shaping culture. Communities that live together use a common language, [...]

Two of the keynote speakers at the PMI Risk Symposium provided insights into how different risks change in priority over a product lifecycle (Esteri Hinman) and how effective risk management encourages poor risk management (Payson Hall).
Risks change over a product lifecycle
Esteri Hinman PMP (from Intel) presented that there are different functional groups involved over [...]

The approach to Risk Management can also be used for Opportunity Management by using a different point of view.

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. [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Have you thought about the environment in your projects? Yes, even if you have NO wind turbines, solar cells, or cars that run on used french-fry oil in your project. Have you? Well, consider this posting as a start.

In my first post about Project Management and Knowledge Management I spoke about Collaboration, in this second post I will talk about after-action reviews.
After-action review also known as a project snap-shot, lessons learned, or any number of other names is an important Knowledge Management activity to complete at the end of a project. They don’t [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Have you ever worked for someone who said ALL requirements are high priority ? Yeah ! We all have. Customers often are insistent upon the delivery of a certain feature set by a certain timeline that may seem impossible to meet. If everything is high priority, nothing is !

Project teams often bear of the brunt of this indecisiveness. Impossible targets, lack [...]

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.  [...]

Administrative controls are perhaps most important, because they most directly impact your people. On the one hand, they are the simplest, since all it takes is education. On the other hand, education about the hazards of smoking or the possibility that having sex causes pregnancy hasn’t done much to change behaviors in those realms. Well, rather than throw up our hands and give up, let’s tackle administrative controls anyhow…

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…