PMcrunch

Talent management is a huge challenge for corporations and organizations of all types and sizes. I many cases, success at talent management within the organization can be the key differentiating factor between success and failure for the organization. Likewise, success at project management, program management, and portfolio management also largely hinges on strong talent management. Part of this challenge lies at the relationship between the organization’s talent management capabilities and those of the projects and programs.

[Read more →]

As Project Managers, our propensity to assess and manage risks needs to align with our understanding of the level of leadership required on the project. We need to understand clearly the range and depth of our responsibilities on the project in order to effectively manage risk. Otherwise, our risk management program may be over or under what is really required. Here’s my thinking on why.

[Read more →]

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.

[Read more →]

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?

[Read more →]

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.

[Read more →]

As project managers, we all know that the project sponsor is the most important stakeholder. Without the project sponsor, it would be very difficult to get any project very far off the ground. I have been thinking about some of the risks of not having proper sponsorship, but the real issue is in defining what proper sponsorship really is – and of course, what it is not.

[Read more →]

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.

[Read more →]

A great question that we can ask ourselves as project managers is, “Would we invest in our projects”? This is probably the single best indicator, if we are honest with ourselves, as to the health of our projects, our positions, our teams, our organizations and more. Here is a look at an investment perspective to managing projects.

[Read more →]

Project status reporting is important because it keeps many of our stakeholders informed as to the status on the project. The challenge is to keep project reporting from being a project unto itself. This can be achieved by integrating the normal day to day processes within the project with the project reporting, so that it virtually happens on its own.

[Read more →]

Edmund Hillary, of Auckland , New Zealand, , died on January 11,2008. On 29 May 1953 at the age of 33, he and Sherpa mountaineer Tenzing Norgay were the first humans to climb Mount Everest. This hit me especially because I have always had a great interest and enthusiasm for the outdoors, and I just finished reading a great book about the climbing of Mount Everest. What makes Hillary’s death even more interesting for PMcrunch is that he was in practice actually a great project manager!

[Read more →]