project-management

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.

I love it when people contact me to ask a question. It helps me to know that real people are out there somewhere behind the screen of my laptop.
I can’t believe you all fit in there. Technology is amazing.
How do you break into project management when you have been running your own business [...]

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 [...]

The dangers of multi tasking to project teams has never been more so. Now we have additional online services and mobile devices to deal with. What I wrote about back in January 2007 about Multi-tasking, Covey, and TOC is even more applicable now. Your project schedule should drive priorities, not a [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

If you’re reading this, you are likely a project manager now or will be one soon. How well you do on actual projects depends as much on your leadership skills as your technical ones.
Here are six real-world keys which can help.
1.  Provide Common Vision
What was your best work experience?  If you’re like most people, it [...]

As can be expected, much of the feedback pointed towards a cutback in new investment and thus projects.  Another significant portion of the comments discussed another inevitable trend in hard times…increased scrutiny of current projects and focus on the dollars.
Cutbacks

North America – Although layoffs have occurred in the Canadian oil patch in recent weeks, the [...]

I recently conducted a survey on pmStudent.com asking for anecdotal stories about how the economy is currently impacting project management. This week I would like to share the results with you.
The survey was 100% anonymous, and I even removed any identifying information that a few responders put into the answer. Note that this survey [...]

The greeks measured time in two ways.  Chronos, the quantitative measure of seconds, minutes, hours and days and Kairos, the separation between two moments of important opportunity or discovery.
It’s easy to measure chronos, every project schedule does that with the help of every clock.  How many hours, days, weeks months will that task take?

Technorati Tags: [...]

Oh yeah, more anecdotal data tells me silicon valley wants SO MUCH MORE for so much less!

Technorati Tags: adult-supervision, Bad-luck, barriers, best-practices, business-analyst, career-planning, Challenges, change, chaos, creating-excellence, engineering-management, enterprise, entire-system, failure, Implementing project management, management-theory, organizational-development, Overwork, performance, productivity, project-management, project-management-experience, project-manager-role, Project-success, resources, Roles, Silicon-Valley, strategy, stress, success-factor

Accidental Project Manager Series
Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4 / Part 5 / Part 6
Part 3 of the Accidental Project Manger series talked about making sure you are working on a project that is important to your organization (and to your next promotion) by documenting benefits in a business case.
Another [...]

Accidental Project Manager Series
Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4 / Part 5 / Part 6
Part 2 of the Accidental Project Manger series talked about key reasons that you are attracted to project management. So now that you are a project manager, what lessons can you learn from other project managers? [...]

Accidental Project Manager Series
Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4 / Part 5 / Part 6
Part 1 of the Accidental Project Manger series talked about some of the disastrous consequences of not having a formal onboarding process for new project managers.  Next, I want to ask you, why did you accepts [...]

Accidental Project Manager Series
Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4 / Part 5 / Part 6
I was attending a dinner at the Northern California Airman’s Club where Eileen Colleens, commander of the a US space shuttle flight was speaking. Before she spoke, three college students received scholarships. They as a group [...]

In classrooms all over the world little children are taught the importance of coloring within the lines.  Indeed, they are often called names like “sloppy” or “careless” if they don’t conform.
In some cultures conformity to the norm (tradition) is everything.  Everyone must toe the line and behave appropriately.  Those that deviate from the norm are [...]

I get many questions from people who want to enter into project management as a profession. After all, my blog is pmStudent. One of the most common questions is “how do I get started”? I received an email from a reader recently with this question, and so I would like to share [...]

By Hal Macomber, Project Reformer
10 Adopt practices for exploring a variety of perspectives.
We think we see what we see, but we don’t. We really see what we think. Remember the blind men and the elephant. Make it your habit to inquire what others see. You’ll see more together.

Technorati Tags: building_relationships, collaboration, perspectives, project-management, project-manager, team_members