Methodology

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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.  [...]

When we think about creativity, we tend to think about Research and Development and new product/service innovation.
But, why not consider the creative ways in which you can do the ordinary daily work?  Why not create an environment in which employees at all levels can offer suggestions for improvement?
Not merely suggestion boxes, but quality circles in [...]

Properly managed project documentation is critical for all types and sizes of projects. After all, the project documentation is the only real output from most projects. It is not the prototype that matters. It is the production documentation that includes things such as material lists, part drawings, assembly instructions, diagnostics, and source code [...]

One of the most useful things I have learned leading teams is that pictures are a very effective way to help people understand complex ideas. I am sure you have all heard that there are auditory learners and visual learners, but in my experience, a good visual is much better than audio for most people. [...]

By Jerry Manas
How many times have we seen PMOs create intricate processes and templates, only to find that there are more exceptions than rules?
We create forms, templates, and stage gates, in an attempt to gain control. But in doing so, we also create such barriers to implementation that it becomes like the Twelve Trials of [...]

By Josh Nankivel
Fellow blogger Craig Brown over at Better Projects asked “Why reverse engineer requirements?” in a recent post.Interesting question: Craig asked what value there is in trying to derive requirements based on an existing system. There are two points that came to mind on this.

Technorati Tags: business-analyst, project-management, requirements, reverse-engineer, use-case

To someone else. Why?
Some project managers accidentally stumble into the profession. Others enter the field on purpose. Both groups tend to settle into a particular way of managing projects, and over time it seems most form specific ideas about what works and what doesn’t from their experience.
Projects in general have some similarities.

Technorati [...]

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 [...]

I’m sure you have had a chance to write a vision or mission statement at one time or another in your career. In my 25 years in high-tech corporate life, I’ve seen hundreds. Unfortunately, most of them were poorly written because the authors failed to capture the true goal of a vision statement, and missed [...]

Leading organizations is like leading a swarm of bees. You can’t directly control what’s going on, and the statistics indicate that most organizational leaders aren’t doing a very good job of it. A Harris Poll found that only 15% of people knew their orgs most important goals, over half of employees don’t know [...]

I recently read an article on Project Connections, In Defense of the Project Management “Perfect World” by Carl Pritchard, PMP, EVP.
I thought it was an excellent article, with well-stated and supported points.
There are many theoretical frameworks for project management, quality, general management, etc. I’m convinced that above a particular threshold, all of them are nearly [...]