I am hearing lots of talk about workflow methods, process modeling and use cases. Are they all referring to the same thing, or are they distinct concepts? Allow me to clarify this confusion.
When you're starting a development process, you have to start somewhere. Academic is one way to go, UML or OPEN might be a more practical way. The DAD process on gantthead might be your first step. Here are some thoughts to get you headed in the right direction.
Projects benefit from tools that promote communication and collaboration among stakeholders and team members. By increasing understanding of goals, priorities, issues and expectations, tools such as Microsoft SharePoint also help to identify — and eliminate — areas of duplication, improving productivity.
Assuming we have decent software, the essential strategy for making it work well is deciding how we want to work with it. In this article, we explore the considerations behind what we need to do to develop a good workflow for using software. What are the things we need to think about in using the software? What are the critical steps that actually enable us to define a useful software workflow? And why should we care?
This form is designed to assist a project manager with ensuring that every workgroup is prepared to function at peak performance prior to the start of work. The planner uses a quick but detailed analysis of the components of workgroup performance success. The items evaluated are typically controlled within a project.
This comprehensive presentation covers all of the basics of Seibel 7 Workflow Processes.
Performance issues cropping up in your workgroup? Stop them before they get out of control using this form.
Gartner’s new report on the state of the PPM market evaluates 30 technology providers and identifies important trends, including the infiltration of the SaaS deployment model and increasing support of Agile.
Your workforce improvement program will really take off if you use this Microsoft Project plan based on a real-life project to automate the workflow and improve organizational structure, communication and work processes.
User involvement is key to designing an effective application and a good user interface. Give the business users a template of standards and procedures to follow so that they can describe how they do their work, including workflow, and thus how the application should work for them.
Operating with leaner workforces, organizations are adopting new approaches to professional development initiatives that align to the individual’s workflow and the translate into tangible, measurable business impact.
Product development requires a unified, collaborative team effort. A social project management framework, combined with the right social tools, helps to connect team activities to the product development process and stakeholders. The benefits include increased visibility, more accurate estimates, responsive, real-time analysis and streamlined workflows.
There’s a new tool available to project managers. Are you a MOSSaholic yet?
Some project managers have an easy facility for eliciting detailed information from their stakeholders while others find it a struggle to obtain more than just a monosyllabic answer. While some of this variability can be attributed to the questioner’s competency in formulating effective questions, the circumstances under which the questions are asked--and how receptive and engaged the parties are in answering those questions--also come into play.
Acquisition of makers of popular Kanban-based project collaboration tool will strengthen Rally’s position in emerging market.
The Agile2011 Conference drew more than 1,600 attendees to Salt Lake City, where dozens of companies showcased new technology solutions and training offerings. Here is a recap from the busy exhibition floor.
This form is designed to assist the project manager with managing workforce performance beyond the traditional training plan, as substandard performance can be caused by many factors other than inadequate training.
The secret to rapidly capturing requirements lays in understanding the business processes that the application is suppose to leverage and support. And it is in the gap between how things work today and how they need to work to achieve core business objectives that the fruit of the requirements tree can be harvested.
The secret to rapidly capturing requirements lays in understanding the business processes that the application is suppose to leverage and support. And it is in the gap between how things work today and how they need to work to achieve core business objectives that the fruit of the requirements tree can be harvested.
Few know the evolution of Application Lifecycle Management and how the Structured Revolution of the 1970s and '80s was a major turning point in software development. This article presents a retrospective on ALM and Structured Development Life Cycles--those that shaped it, the influencing principles and the related methodologies and tools the movement spawned.
Ever stop to ponder all the different PM frameworks that have been developed over the years and which one you should be using in your organization? Is there really one best framework out there? The options are dizzying, so here we take a look at four of them in depth. What can they do for you? Remember, one size does not fit all...
A wide variety of technology solutions and services are available to help organizations implement, customize and improve their project portfolio management processes. Here is our August roundup of recent updates and announcements from CA, Daptiv, Innotas, Oracle Primavera, Planview, PowerSteering, Rally and others.
For anyone thinking about or faced with implementing a PPM tool, here are some tips to keep in mind to help you wade through the sometimes problematic process.
Agile practices are not intrinsically “value-adding” — they must be aligned to business needs and goals in order to provide true value. By measuring their agility based on compliance with a particular method, organizations may prevent their teams from adapting practices to suit projects with different characteristics and needs.
Agile adoption outside of software is nothing new--it dates back very close to the origin of today’s agile methods, predating the term “agile”. However, what is new and noteworthy is the rate and scale of non-software agile adoption being witnessed today. Now--as more companies than ever are exposed to agile methods in their IT practices--these methods are being employed beyond the regular IT domain.
Which application packages and vendors are right for your project and how will you go about finding that out? This comprehensive list of evaluation activities and approach methods guides you through conducting the package evaluation process and choosing the finalists.
Here is a list of possible sources for methods that can become your organization's future best practices for use with TeamPlay.
Try before you buy, or something like that! Use TeamPlay to audition a particular method as a candidate best practice in a live project pilot situation.
Agile methods are powerful approaches that bring many benefits to how we undertake project work. However, they are not immune to misuse or failure. The following list of five common pitfalls is often seen in organizations switching to agile.
Kanban is gaining popularity in project management circles as more teams relate to its principles of visualizing workflow, limiting work in progress and balancing demand. Here, a self-described “pragmatic Agilist” explains what drew him to Kanban, where it delivers benefits, and how it differs from other agile methods.
Getting in step with workflow means knowing the difference between workflow and process, and keeping it straight.
The worlds of classic project management and contemporary agile development are not as far apart as some seem to believe. Whether you are new to project management or a traditionally trained, PMP-certified project leader with years of experience, these five questions should help you evaluate what you can do to become more comfortable with Agile approaches. In turn, Agile methods could start paying dividends on your projects.
Whether planning a one-hour presentation, a three-day workshop or a semester-long course, it is important that you match the learning objectives with the most effective approach. Through an understanding of basic instructional models and methods, you can vastly enhance the quality and effectiveness of your training courses, programs and curriculums.
Collaboration is a common theme throughout many of the leading trends for project management in 2012, as determined by a global panel of senior executives and subject matter experts.
Despite this global recession, the competitive landscape keeps becoming more urgent and faster paced. You will be expected to keep managing new projects to keep your organization competitive--but will do so with less (and exhausted) resources, tight budgets and more scrutiny for success. How does one meet such challenges and succeed? One of the agile practices tailor made for such an environment is the Lean method.
Managing customer expectations in an era of aging analytics can be challenging. IT business interface managers need to become more active in understanding business intelligence users’ gripes and "wow" factors regularly.
This cloud thing’s just not working...the silver bullet seems to have misfired. So what went wrong? A tool won't solve all of your problems; in reality, it's a combination of the tool, training, process re-engineering and integration with other corporate functions that will keep you up to speed.
Professional Edition for business analysts, project managers responsible for eliciting and documenting requirements for software.
It is well known that agile projects work through prioritized lists of features, but the prioritization approaches available to us are not so well known. Here, we take a whirlwind review of popular prioritization schemes.
There is lots of great information available on how to use agile methods for custom software development projects, but less so for package implementations. Commercial-Off-The-Shelf solutions make up a large percentage of the IT projects undertaken by companies each year, and many organizations are missing out on benefits that an agile package approach can bring.
Some love 'em. Some loathe 'em. But these frameworks and schools of PM thought are here to stay. What benefits and challenges do they present? Read on for both sides of the alternative equation...
Effective project change control allows you to maintain the proper focus needed to complete projects on time and on budget. Changes to a project are inevitable; the trick is to exercise good judgment and handle change in a streamlined, non-bureaucratic way. Change Control is the process used to properly integrate or postpone requests for changes to the project's scope into the project budget and completion schedule. This plan is designed to help you implement an efficient and effective method of change control within your project management framework.
Need some help with those Process Improvement initiatives? Stay focused and on track with these checklists designed to help you through every stage of the PI chain, from the opening work sessions through the presentations to management.
What does it take to do world-class business process improvement projects? Does it take a total corporate infrastructure dedicated to the task? Does it lots of automated tool sets that do process analysis, simulations and collaboration? The answer may surprise you as we conclude our two-part series.
As agile methods continue to gain in popularity and Project Management Institute events offer more and more agile content, the demand for agile-related offerings has increased substantially. Is this new certification offering a good idea, and what does it mean for you?
The earthwork inspection report will tell you at a glance if your site has been properly prepared before any construction begins.
The attached tool has been developed to assist you in generating some solid payback data to be used to evaluate the return potential of your proposed method. Not only will it help the gods of finance see the light, but will also help you to understand whether your project is a winner or loser before you ever put your signature on the purchase requisition.
This template is designed to assist the project manager to attain higher workforce performance by reducing problems associated with inadequate or unconstructive responses to conflict in the workplace.
