PM Resources > Green PM

Green is beautiful, and it is certainly the color of IT looking into the future. There is a challenge, however, to coordinating the environmental shade of green with the financial one. Here are some thoughts and ideas for greening up your IT initiatives while holding on to the green stuff that pays the bills.

The environmentally conscious PM doesn’t have an easy time of it, but they can still do their part.

How green are you? For many, implementing Green IT solutions is an imperative that transcends ROI or enterprise alignment. For others, it's a good thing to go green if it is cost effective and in tune with other stakeholder expectations and needs.

Projects are often run by inexperienced project managers who are unfamiliar with techniques to manage projects more effectively. In this series, Jim Stewart, PMP, brings some of these common blind spots into sharper focus.

Projects are often run by inexperienced project managers who are unfamiliar with techniques to manage projects more effectively. In part two of this series, Jim Stewart, PMP, brings some more of these common blind spots into sharper focus, including resource assessment and estimating.

IT is heading for greener pastures, but how soon, how fast and how green are questions that still need to be addressed. If you're planning to take your IT to the next level of energy efficiency, you need to take a look at your data center.

A new survey tries to uncover what really makes a difference in project portfolio performance.

Green Project Management looks at projects through an environmental lens. That doesn’t mean decisions are always made “in favor” of the environment, but that the environment is considered in the planning and decision-making processes, including the conservation of project resources, which should be part of every project manager’s mission anyway. Here’s how it works, and how it might have made a difference in the Gulf of Mexico.

Now more than ever when a company decides to embark on a project, business leaders are demanding a clear ROI, explicit expectations about the longevity of a project and, more importantly, results. The era of the project manager is back...so use this time to hone your skills, discover new roles and learn how to market yourself for a changing economy.

Welcome to IT Strategist's annual roundup of IT surveys. Here are the trends you need to know about to wind up 2009 and head into 2010.

How can you make your IT dollars even greener? Here are some tips on moving your IT department into the green without bringing your business into the red.

Is there any advantage to using Cloud-based project management tools to manage projects? Is it cheaper and more effective? Are the tools more feature-rich? And what about the disadvantages? Here is what some research has revealed…

A real commitment to operating a business and performing projects in an environmentally conscious and responsible way is a commitment to quality standards that minimize CO2 emissions and promote sustainability. To realize the full benefits of turning green, an enterprise must take a disciplined and systematic approach to implementing green standards.

As if building a high-performing team wasn’t hard enough, a global project brings an array of additional challenges, from time zone conflicts to cultural differences. Here, a practitioner who has led a number of successful global projects shares 10 tips for leading a virtual team.

Our yearly look at the state of IT, collected from various industry surveys. We'll take a look at everything from outsourcing and budgets to IT's move toward something greener.

Gartner’s 2010 Magic Quadrant report surveys the state of PPM in a challenging economy, evaluating 31 technology providers, naming six “leaders” and identifying two important market trends.

Many potential projects that are considered for funding will ultimately not be approved despite significant time and effort spent on their business cases. Starting with a Value Proposition document can help weed out the less promising projects before a more detailed business case is necessary.

An effective issue management process is vital to project success. Here are several best practices.

Fortunately times have changed, both in perception and in reality. Organizations can now legitimately use the ability to supply eco-friendly solutions as a major selling point with their customers.

…would still look like modern project management. The value-driven benefits of scrums, stories and showcases have made sense well before the emergence of Agile. And they certainly aren’t incompatible with so-called “traditional” project management concepts and techniques.

When confronted with difficult choices in today’s complex project environments, project managers and teams need techniques to extricate them from the proverbial rock and hard place. A simple binary decision-making model, based on weighted criteria, might do the trick.

If you don’t see how your project fits into an overall strategic vision, you’re operating with blinders on, and without information critical to success. Here’s some guidance on what you need to know about the relationship between your project and your organization’s business plan, and how it can improve project performance.

Adaptive leadership is a critical skill for succeeding in a post-recession economy. It includes being willing to rewrite the rules of the game, realign project portfolios and redefine the work people do. Here are some solid suggestions for applying it to your organization’s PPM efforts.

Communication is a critical success factor in project performance, but those status report aren’t the only, or even the most important, tool in your communication arsenal — unless they’re telling you about the individual needs of each stakeholder. Here is a framework for how to craft a more comprehensive communication plan.

On multi-team development projects, there are significant advantages in having each team organize around the end-to-end delivery of features as opposed to working on separate components. Fewer handoffs reduce waste and integration-related risks. And feature teams have a clearer understanding of the impact of design decisions. However, in some circumstances, component teams offer benefits.

Follow these four pointers to help ensure your project objectives are crystal clear.

Business and relationship management skills are critical for IT career advancement, regardless of economic climate, according to the Society for Information Management.

With a world economy in recession, there isn't a whole lot of technology spending on the horizon. For an idea of where those precious IT dollars will (and should) be spent, here are the hot technology investments to look forward to in 2010.

Sustainable project management is growing. Indeed, there is a clear economic imperative for companies to adopt greener practices, from telecommuting to managing projects almost exclusively paperless. And project managers can play a vital role in demonstrating how even seemingly small actions can make a positive impact difference — on the environment and the bottom line.

When green initiatives require organizations to go beyond traditional project management methods, specialized software templates can provide a framework for defining environmental goals, reporting to different stakeholders and measuring value.

Your chances of success in any major change initiative are directly linked to the capabilities, commitment and experiences of the stakeholders involved. Do you have any idea who these influencers and decision-makers are — really? Here’s an assessment checklist covering a range of important attributes to help you find out.

In the final installment of our series on structuring Agile teams, here is an iterative process, in the form of questions, to help project leaders design the most appropriate team structure for the project at hand.

Managing scope is like babysitting a two-year-old … developers don’t wait for your green light … you won’t be finishing every project … and forget glory: most accolades will come from customers, not your executive team. This is some of the best advice I never got as a new project manager.

A portfolio at any given time will have a mix of projects, each with its own particularities and status against metrics. The way that you use status indicators to report project performance and anticipate future outcomes is an important mechanism to managing a portfolio. Here are some considerations and recommendations to ensure that status indicators represent an accurate picture of project health and work is appropriately managed.

More and more projects span different locations, time zones, even cultures. It only makes the project manager’s job more challenging. To succeed on such projects, you must learn how to improve your interactions with remote team members. Here are six suggestions.

The use and misuse of metrics is a colorful world. Are you red, yellow or green? And what does that mean, anyway? Be careful of what you ask for…you just might get it.

Creative problem solving can make all the difference on a project. But how can project managers make the most of innovative thinking and still keep a firm grasp on the realities of scope control, timelines and budgets? Here are some techniques for not only encouraging creative behavior but also incorporating it into your existing project delivery processes.

With the New Year well under away, how about some project portfolio management resolutions?

Maturity models, metrics and misleading metaphors have encumbered project leaders and teams. They miss the essence of knowledge work, which can’t be tidily represented in a PERT or Gantt chart. We need to explore different models to supplement and better guide our project efforts.

How often do you apply lessons learned from past projects to new projects? If rarely, you're not alone, according to recent surveys. Here are some best practices and suggestions from the field that project managers can use to better capture lessons learned.

Faced with an ever-expanding number of projects, applications and stakeholder expectations, IT executives must balance three prime directives: align IT with strategic business objectives; increase opportunities for IT to contribute to growth and profitability; and manage new and existing IT investments. To deliver, they need a balanced approach to IT portfolio management.

The green movement is transforming the IT landscape — and creating a new set of challenges for project managers, who must balance hard ROI choices, fuzzy metrics and assorted expectations. When it comes to cutting energy costs and delivering long-term sustainability, the blueprint for green projects isn’t black and white. But best practices are emerging.

Here is a framework that can help project managers guide the decision-making process with stakeholders on major change initiatives. Encouraging a broader perspective on the short- and long-term impact of changes — from people and processes to business and technology — it addresses four domains and 18 factors.

The term "eco-friendly" shouldn’t make people roll their eyes anymore…they should see dollar signs. The companies that can embrace the change will be poised for success, and the project managers that demonstrate an aptitude in dealing with eco-friendly projects will have yet another weapon in their arsenal.

The worlds of classic project management and contemporary agile development are not as far apart as some practitioners might believe. In this two-part series, two devoted agilists share practical strategies for building understanding among project leaders and moving teams and organizations toward realizing Agile’s benefits.

The worlds of classic project management and contemporary agile development are not as far apart as some practitioners seem to believe. In the second part of our series, two respected agilists share tips for realizing Agile’s benefits on a variety of projects by building understanding among stakeholders and within organizations.