PMcrunch

Most of us as project and program managers are constantly looking to improve ourselves, our performance, our skills, and our influence on our respective organizations. There are some trends at work that I think we can tap into that can help us to do all of these things and more. They can help us to move our careers to the next level.

[Read more →]

Any project portfolio is likely to have a high degree of synergy among various projects. This is especially true of a portfolio of projects that make up a particular program. The challenge is how to best realize these synergies and to derive true value from them.

[Read more →]

Frequently, in our projects, especially those of technical nature, we are confronted with the opportunity to analyze various possible solutions. In this process, it is critically important to understand all aspects of cost related to each alternative. A potential trap is to simply compare price. Oftentimes, price is only one very small aspect of the cost of going with a particular product or service.

[Read more →]

In these challenging times, so many of our projects and programs are more challenging than usual. We are called upon to make tough decisions to solve difficult problems and to squeeze more out of every resource we have. How we face these challenges has more to do with our approach and attitude than anything else.

[Read more →]

In most situations on projects, failure simply is not an option. The project or program must succeed one way or another. We need to grapple with whether to do the project on one level; but once that decision has been made, it needs to be executed successfully.

[Read more →]

Project and program managers today are in a position of needing to grapple with many tough choices. We need to assess and re-assess our options and, in an almost tortuous way, develop a positive way ahead to communicate with our stakeholders. For us, the process of going through that struggle is important. But to our stakeholders, what is important is the positive way ahead that we have developed.

[Read more →]

In these tough times, many people are losing their jobs and the same is true within the project management ranks as projects and programs are canceled. The question of how we can cope with the potential job loss is well documented and it is important that we develop the self-honesty and fortitude to deal with this possibility.

[Read more →]

Many project management positions are just that — positions managing projects. However, many other positions seemingly in project management are much more positions in programmatics. They involve tracking, reporting, working with metrics, and passing information on to decision makers. While, often, there is a need for these functions, there, often, also is not.

[Read more →]

These tough times are different from past recessions in that “visibility is low”. What I mean by that is that it is not just a matter of seeing that sales had declined a certain amount, or that certain costs had reached a certain amount; it is not just that there is a general slimming or pruning of weaker competitors across the board. The problem is that it is very hard to predict with any reasonable level of certainty what is going to happen next and, thus, we find ourselves driving through our challenges “with low visibility”.

[Read more →]

On so many projects we assemble all the tasks and then assign them to the appropriate individuals. However, I have found that as an alternative we need to consider assigning some tasks to a small team of people. This may sound inefficient but I think it is essential, especially in certain environments and on certain types of tasks.

[Read more →]