How-To

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.

It’s easy for an unfettered 20-something to embrace chaos, transience and everything else the “Generation Flux” mind-set implies. But what if you don’t love chaos? What if your team is made up of 40-somethings with mortgages? Here's a cheat sheet, based on three simple but powerful questions, to help you leverage uncertainty in your organization.

How can your team accurately predict and communicate meaningful delivery timelines when it is constantly fielding changes from the multiple business units it serves? Here is a detailed look at how one Scrum-centered team used a four-step approach to estimate timelines for work far into the future.

Even the most capable project management offices are sometimes challenged in the areas of defining their value within the organization, and so a good PMO should market itself. This self-promotion should include addressing stakeholder perceptions and building awareness about the important working being done.

A new study of successful project management offices details how Dell Services, IBM and others manage projects for maximum value, identifying 14 best practices including significant investments in PM training and an intergrated approach to resource forecasting and loading.

An experienced-based book on managing organizational knowledge outlines the fundamentals and evolution of the discipline, and presents strategies, tools and templates to create an effective knowledge management environment. Ultimately, the book is a “call for action” to manage a valuable organizational asset before it is too late.

For small projects and teams, a spreadsheet can be a viable management tool. Problems arise, however, when organizations, teams and projects grow in complexity. In this era of dramatic technological advancement, a surprising number of larger enterprises are still struggling to wean themselves off “the sheet.”

The Agile mindset can be applied to activities beyond IT and product development, but it will require important critical changes to program management methods. The biggest transition is not in reengineering processes but in a management approach that involves different expectations, working relationships, incentives, metrics and reviews.

Any software implementation should enable or enhance a business process. Unfortunately, many organizations mistakenly believe that the technology itself is the solution. In reality, it is at best 10 percent of the value equation — the other 90 percent is based on the human factor.

Many organizations are coming face-to-face with the reality that much of their institutional knowledge may be stretched thin or, worse, preparing to walk out the door. Experience cannot be replaced, but it can be leveraged with a commitment to a culture of execution. Here are five essential steps.