PMcrunch

Project Requirements Gathering is a complex and challenging activity. It is also one of the most important activities in project management, as it establishes the baseline against which the product of the project is measured. Here are some thoughts and ideas on effective requirements gathering for any project.

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Determining project requirements has many challenges, but one of the most common that I have encountered is what I call the “Solution Trap”. I have usually identified this when someone states something like “What I need is a …” This is usually a hint that there is an underlying problem that needs to be surfaced and further investigated.

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A moderately lighthearted approach to project management and leadership can be very beneficial. To get the most out of ourselves, we need to strike a balance between hard work and fun. As leaders, we need to be assured that we are facilitating the right balance work and fun for individuals on our team and for the team as a whole. On project teams, where project leaders expect the absolute best from their people, fun on the job isn’t a frivolity, but rather a necessity.

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Project Communications plans provide project managers with the opportunity to think through how the various stakeholders and the project team will communicate with one another. I think a case can be made for thinking a little more broadly about this in today’s Web 2.0 world.

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Uncertainty is part of the territory for effective leaders. Certainty simply does not exist for effective leadership, since if it did, leadership would not be needed! Whether in executive leadership or project leadership, it is the ability of the leader to manage uncertainties that most defines success.

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Critical Chain project management is a great idea, or really a great collection of ideas. It has similarities to the Critical Path Method in that it focuses on the critical path tasks for managing the project. But there are several innovative ideas that distinguish critical chain from critical path, and some unique hurdles to implementation.

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Leaders know that great insights often come from the people doing the actual work. Faced with “higher level challenges,” leaders and leadership teams tend to lose touch with those doing the work. Whichever end you find yourself in this dilemma, whether you are on project team, lead a project team, or lead a program, take some time to refresh your thinking and “dismiss the hierarchy’, if only temporarily. It will help to keep motivation alive in yourself, your team, and your organization.

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Sometimes I wonder if we are too success oriented. In other words, we as project managers feel that we have failed if our projects fail in anyway, and we define ourselves by project success and project failure. This reminds me of children in school striving all the time to get perfect grades. The problem with this is that sometimes failures produce our greatest successes. Do we have a project management expectation that acknowledges that?

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IT project management is a very wide-open field, and can readily refer to IT infrastructure project management or software application development or both. Opinons vary as to what appropriate training means for IT project management, including the depth and type of technical skills, the unique project management methodologies, and a great deal in between.

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There has been a tremendous amount of buzz more recently about PMOs, otherwise known as Project Management Offices. Here is what a select group of experts are saying about PMOs today.

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