PMcrunch

Most good managers in project and program management know the importance of maintaining relationships with team members and stakeholders. Basic human relations can go a long way in improving overall program and project quality. However, I have learned that there is a community beyond our immediate team members and stakeholders that are worth considering in everything we do.

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“Managing an IT project is like juggling chunks of Jell-O: It’s neither easy nor pretty.” So it says in an excellent article on IT Project Management is CIO magazine. The article goes on to say, very accurately I think, that “Information technology is especially slippery because it’s always moving, changing, adapting and challenging business as we know it.”

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We need to consider how clear the objective of the project scope is when we build our project teams.  For an extremely well defined project of relatively short duration, and well-defined deliverables, this could be fairly easy.  However, for a project that is less defined, which may involve some significant shifts of some sort over the [...]

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To make the most of your time you need to be focused on what it is you want to achieve. Being focused on the smaller picture rather than the big one will throw you off course. You should sit down and review your time management  and where your time gets used up. When we talk [...]

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In the realm of project management certification, there is a transition occurring in the exam for the project management professional (PMP) certification exam. On January 1, 2009, the 4th edition of the PMBOK was officially published. Many people wonder, especially at this point in time, whether they should take the 3rd edition exam or wait to take the 4th edition exam.

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Change and pain are interrelated in a couple of ways. First, I think we have all heard many times over that change can be painful. On the other hand, oftentimes, change requires pain. Pursuing this idea a little further, oftentimes people are not willing to change unless they are experiencing enough pain. How can we leverage this idea on our projects and programs?

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As project and program managers we all know that stakeholders are central to the success of any project or program. We know that we must listen to stakeholders and that, in the end, we must satisfy stakeholders in order to have a successful project. We need to gather stakeholder input, listen to stakeholder concerns, and obtain stakeholder feedback throughout our projects. The question in my mind right now is “what can we expect realistically of our stakeholders?”

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It is a great exercise in the beginning of a project to identify all the stakeholders. For anyone who has been on just a handful of projects, you know the importance of identifying stakeholders as it helps to formulate requirements, as well as to push toward a successful close of an effective project. RACI Analysis provides a useful way to put into perspective each and every one of the stakeholders or stakeholder groups on a project.

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Marketing projects are important to companies, simply because they provide the opportunity to increase the top line of the business. That is, they are initiatives focused on driving revenue, as opposed to controlling costs. I have been thinking about three keys for how to lay out the requirements for such such revenue-enhancing marketing projects.

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Basic project management teaches us that quality is defined by meeting requirements, but not exceeding them. If we deliver more than what the customer asked for, it is considered to be gold plating – a bad thing. The premise is that there is a balance as per the triple constraint among quality, cost and schedule, and that it is the job of the project manager to manage that balance. In these tough times, however, how can a project manager produce excellence and in essence exceed customer expectations without gold plating?

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