PMcrunch

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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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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Thomas Edison was the quintessential mistake maker. He believed that the more mistakes he made, the more wrong answers and wrong solutions he could eliminate and, therefore, the closer he came to the correct solution to his problems. In management and on projects, on one hand, we seek to minimize mistakes but it is important to recognize when “mistakes” can actually be beneficial and produce positive outcomes. Indeed, we should not be afraid to make mistakes but rather should try to control and leverage the process. The project portfolio management process is an ideal place to formally do this.

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What does you organization “tolerate”? This is an important question to ask because you will know where you have some flexibility, and you will know where you have risks and inflexibility. You may very well also find out where your organization is lacking, and where it needs some reform in its project management practices to become a much more streamlined, and lean operating machine. A useful tool for thinking about this is the triple constraint.

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Project organizations really are not unlike other organizations. Like a small, medium, or large sized corporation, projects have specific objectives that need to be supported by its own project culture. Projects inlcude collections of people and stakeholders, surrounding a concept or idea and particular action, take on a persona. Discovering, and even more important creating, and maintaining the character of that persona, is an important job of the project manager and supporting organization.

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Innovation is one of those buzz words that evokes positive emotions. It is generally considered a “good” thing, and therefore is something that we want to do. However, there are other things to consider so, lets put innovation into perspective as a project management tool.

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Techniques for generating ideas have been around for a long time; however, like many other things that have also been around along time, it is a special skill unto itself. Excellence at the skill of generating great ideals can pay great dividends personally and professionally.

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“Culture” has a lot of impact on the performance of work on a project. Therefore, cultural considerations are very important when estimating the work effort. Cultures are not limited to countries or regions; they are just as important within organizations that share virtually the same location and language.

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Good projects map well to organizational goals. In fact, the best organizations make sure their initiatives are in alignment with their strategic plan. Whether for project initiation or for simply evaluating how the value of a project fits within the organization, becoming familiar with the strategic plan is invaluable.

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More and more companies are becoming interested in increasing diversity in the workplace. Having different kinds of culture in the workplace can make the office more interesting: people will have different ideas, they can interact and find new things to be interested in through interaction with other cultures, and officemates can enrich each other’s work experience through cross-cultural interaction.

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