What's getting in your way? Let's break down the barriers and build bridges to success. Here are both leading-edge and time-tested approaches to better managing projects, programs and portfolios.
Informal, undocumented communications play a major role in project work, for better and worse. Project managers must recognize two very different informal channels: the grapevine and the rumor mill. One can be a constructive asset; the other terribly destructive.
Risk management isn’t always about identifying the downside, though many project managers seem to focus exclusively on this side of the risk coin. The fact is, we can assess and prioritize opportunities using the same techniques that work for threats, including brainstorming, root-cause analysis and probability-impact matrices.
Just as agile teams strive to continuously improve, they should also continuously seek opportunities to reduce wasteful activities. A good start is creating visual representations of a team’s total wasted time over the course of several sprints as well as its time invested in improvements.
A turning point in the American Revolution, the Battle of Saratoga in 1777 offers a number of critical lessons that today’s project leaders would do well to revisit now and again, from the fundamental importance of the project charter and thorough risk assessment, to understanding the project environment and skill-sets of team members.
The knowledge found in project teams can be invaluable, but it isn’t always shared or understood by those outside "the tribe.” Technologies, processes and mindsets are evolving to create a new era of collaboration. By following key principles, tribal knowledge can be turned into organizational power.
Though programs and portfolios are too often used interchangeably, there are important distinctions that should determine how you organize and report on the projects within them. Here are seven questions that can help your organization better structure and align its project groups.
Agile consultant Devin Hedge observes a key difference between east and west coast Lean Startup communities ... says large enterprises must create work “bubbles” that foster the entrepreneurial freedom of “two guys in a garage” ... and introduces the coaching concept of “wetware craftsmanship.” [12:08]
Today’s “do more with less” mandate makes the ability to optimize finite project resources more critical than ever. A recent benchmark study provides a blueprint for improving your organization’s resource management and capacity planning, starting with visibility.
Approving a project is like writing a check: you’re committing your organization’s resources to completing activities. But often the process fails to recognize that the most critical resource — people — is overdrawn. Here is a simple first step to better estimate the human cost component of your project.
By embracing fast and frequent project failure rates, organizations can become more efficient more quickly, according to a new report from research analyst Gartner. At the same time, portfolio managers should institute 'stop-loss' criteria to determine when to accept failure and bring a project to an end.
Though programs and portfolios are too often used interchangeably, there are important distinctions that should determine how you organize and report on the projects within them. Here are seven questions that can help your organization better structure and align its project groups.
A new benchmark study on project portfolio management identifies best practices, future trends and areas of improvement, while establishing a link between PPM capability and return on investment.
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Dave PriorAgile Consultant, BigVisible Solutions
Dave Prior, PMP, CST, MBA is an Agile Consultant for BigVisible where he…
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Vincent McGevnaPrincipal, Vincent McGevna Consulting
Sr. Project Management Consultant and e-Learning Developer.
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Wayne GrantScrum Master
I am a Scrum Master with a strong background in development and have a p…
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Will KellyFreelance Technology Writer, Will Kelly Writes
Will Kelly got his start working in the information technology industry …
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Janis RizzutoContributing Editor, ProjectsAtWork
Janis has been writing for ProjectsAtWork for more than a decade, starti…
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Aaron SmithEditorial Director, ProjectsAtWork.com
Aaron has been the editor of ProjectsAtWork since 2001, leading its evol…
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Sustainability in project management it is not about how to manage projects, but how to be. This has been and always will be our message. We never wanted to see a separate PMBOK&r...
Posted in: People, Planet, Profits & Projects
When my efforts to employ Personal Kanban reached a point where I felt I had gone as far as I could on my own, I decided it would be a good idea to find a coach who could hopefully help me see thin...
Posted in: The Reluctant Agilist
Since we started asserting that there is a vital, fundamental intersection between project management and sustaianability (since about 2009), we have seen three basic responses, which we summa...
Posted in: People, Planet, Profits & Projects
Personal Kanban Weeks 13-16:
Zen and the Art of Personal Kanban Maintenance
Phaedrus had Quality
I have Value
The more I examine my approach to getting work done, the...
Posted in: The Reluctant Agilist
Changepoint helps businesses gain competitive advantage and increase profitability through complete portfolio visibility, planning insight, process automation, and improved resource utilization throughout a customer’s lifecycle.
Project Insight, project and portfolio management software, is powerful for project managers, and easy for team members to learn and adopt.
AtTask: the only project and portfolio management software that meets the business intelligence needs of executives, the planning needs of managers, and the collaboration needs of project teams, helping organizations get jobs done on time, on budget.
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