PMcrunch

What do Six Sigma, ITIL, and Project Management have in common? These three disciplines all have associated business certifications, living largely in the ‘business’ versus technical realm, and all relate in some way to processes. But how can these disciplines relate to one another in such a way that greater value is created for the individual as well as the organization?

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“Performance metrics” is an especially popular topic in management today. The idea is to try to measure everything by some sort of metric that gives a true picture of our degree of success or effectiveness. But like many management techniques, it is subject to misuse. Here are my suggestions for identifying relevant metrics and using them effectively.

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“Performance metrics” is an especially popular topic in management today. The idea is to try to measure everything by some sort of metric that gives a true picture of our degree of success or effectiveness. But like many management techniques, it is subject to misuse. Here are my suggestions for identifying relevant metrics and using them effectively.

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As project and program managers we need to make sure that our projects are moving forward. We need to make sure that we identify the obstacles that get in the way of progress and that we address and remove them. We need to make sure that the greater project team has the tools and resources [...]

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Oftentimes, as[tag-dir]project managers[/tag-dir] and leaders, we are called upon to compare a variety of potential solutions and to either recommend or choose the best one for our situation. There are a variety of ways to do this. It is important for us to recognize that the answer we come up with is very closely related to the questions we ask and how we do the comparison. Many times—perhaps even most of the time—we do this comparisons in a relatively informal way, putting together our own structure. In other cases however, there is a much formalized organizational structure with a formal name such as [/tag-tec]“analysis of alternatives”[tag-dir] that is performed.

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When we first build our [tag-tec]project plan[/tag-tec], we need to make many [tag-dir]assumptions. As part of our project plan, we need to document what these assumptions are. We also need to acknowledge the reality that many of those assumptions may not prove out as the project unfolds.

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What do you do when hopelessness seems on the horizon? What do you do when it appears you have tried everything and nothing is working? What do you do when it appears that you are at the end of the road?

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I just heard a discussion led by a Duke University economics professor (sorry, I didn’t get his name) who had some interesting points to make about things being for free or being for money. He draws some very interesting conclusions that might be helpful to many of us on our projects.

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One of the most important things we can do to kick off a successful project is to clearly define the vision for the end state that will exist upon completion of the project. This end state is the vision for the way things are to be upon successful completion of the project. This [tag-tec]end vision[/tag-tec] should appeal to all aspects of the purpose for the project.

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[tag-tec]Task estimating[/tag-tec] is a critical skill for [tag-dir]project managers[/tag-dir] and [tag-dir]project teams[/tag-dir]. We cannot manage what we cannot estimate. However, realistically, it is very difficult to be able to estimate every possible task accurately.

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