Process Improvement > BPI Standards and Practices

While these two buzzwords are unlikely bedfellows, they are inextricably linked...and SOA is a key enabler in propelling BPI initiatives within an organization.

The purist view of BPI is that it is a quantum leap rather than a step-change for businesses. Radical transformation is BPI's intent, but it often falls short of that goal. Even when they face possible corporate demise, many businesses do not really have the appetite for radical transformation, and settle for the half-way house of process re-engineering instead. But this does not have to be considered a failure...

Project management is becoming recognized on an international scale. In support of this, there are a number of efforts underway to promote a global view of how we think about, discuss and practice project management. But to what extent is project management a universal language? To what extent can it be? Or are we all simply sowing confusion as we use the same words to mean very different things?

Just calling a practice “best” does not make it so. But for many PM practitioners, the term “best practice” appears to represent the business practice equivalent of a “get out of jail free” card--wave it around enough, and critical thinking seems to be banished. It's time for a new outlook on this misused term and concept.

If necessity is the mother of invention, then the customer is the father of business process improvement.

Is business process improvement best done through evolution or revolution? And what are the differences?

Many people still do not understand the Standard and the differences between its implementation tools. What are the differences between the OPM3 Standard, OPM3 Online and OPM3 ProductSuite? The answers await inside...

Given IT has played a significant role in business since the 1960s, it seems almost inconceivable that CIOs are still alignment challenged. Perhaps the challenge isn’t so much getting aligned but staying aligned given the pace and nature of change companies must cope with and adapt to in today’s global economies.

Instead of measuring quality, Agile enterprises commit to it by investing in integration and testing, developing a common language around quality, and nurturing motivated, disciplined teams. Ultimately, quality reigns when organizations value it as much as profitability and protect the agile processes that support it.

Most scope management frameworks are designed around the definition of a finite scope based on limited knowledge and advocating tight controls to manage change. The challenge is how to weave change and scope recalibration rules into the fabric of the project. Here are eight strategies you might find useful in meeting the challenge.

We all believe that we understand and know what the concept of "doing the right thing" means. When it comes time to do this on our projects, however, is it really as easy as we might initially think? Do we really know what it means to manage our projects responsibly? Are we prepared to do so in the face of pressure, influence or outright direction to the contrary?

One of the most established standards organizations (and their pronouncements) is often missing from the IT governance conversation: the International Organization for Standardization. Did you know that the ISO has been very active in the governance and compliance space? Here is an update on the standards that you might find useful.

Part 1 of this two-part series introduces the agile engineering principles and practices that, when implemented, enable some teams and their respective organizations to build high-quality software very quickly that will please customers. Organizations embracing these practices--when used in conjunction with agile and lean management practices--can gain delivery advantages on their competitors while managing lower maintenance and support costs in the long term.

Many organizations understand the need to build and mature a business analysis center of excellence but are scratching their collective heads over how. Where do you start? What does it look like? Who owns it? How does it evolve? Here is some step-by-step guidance.

How did you improve today? By making BPI an integral part of your company’s culture.

In the ever-increasing speed trip down the ramp of badly made cost-cutting decisions, many mainstream manufacturers are compromising on the quality of their products. To help address this, we all need to more carefully monitor the quality of our supplier goods.

Oh no! The enterprise business process improvement initiative also has a communication strategy that may not coordinate with your project. What do you do?

In the next few years the PMO is going to evolve considerably as EPMOs become the new norm. The concept of an EPMO is gathering support in a lot of different environments, and the recent economic challenges have only accelerated the process. In this article, we look at what that might mean for traditional PMOs and identify some of the things that you can do for the arrival of an EPMO in your organization.

Here’s our March 2010 roundup of recently published books recommended by and for project management professionals, including the latest thinking on leadership … a primer on earned scheduling performance … guides to business process improvement initiatives and preparing for PMI certifications … a business analysis glossary … and more.

From Harris Corporation
Harris Corporation offers compelling insights into the impacts that process can have on culture and vice versa. This organization understood the four reasons why many organizations fail to transform their Project Management cultures, and avoided these pitfalls with their PMO working with OPM Experts LLC.

Establishing strategies with a sponsored project management office dedicated to overseeing their implementation within an organization can generate a stronger, more refined and professional business environment that is reliable and dependable--and thus more attractive to customers.

Does your PMO Produce Multiple Obstacles for your project or Promote Many Opportunities for success? PMOs often get a bad reputation on agile teams, but it need not be that way--they can also add tremendous support and be a great help.

Set for release at the end of 2010, the Practice Standard for Project Estimating draft is now available for comment.

CollabNet updates its TeamForge platform and ScrumWorks project management application, focusing on scaling agile to the enterprise through flexible reporting, ease of use and other enhancements.

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.

More than ever, business process improvement/re-engineering (BPI/BPR) is gaining recognition as a critical success factor in sustaining the growth and profitability of businesses. With these gains comes a plethora of tool kits, methodologies and technologies all promising to be the end-all, be-all solution.

Testing is not the same as quality, and it’s not a replacement for it either. Our writer hopes to help you identify some ways that you can improve how you manage quality on your own projects--and hammer home that if you plan for quality in the first place, you won’t need to spend so much time fixing the things that have gone wrong.

How global are we, and how global are we likely to become? If we’re not seeing the evidence of increased globalization, does that mean that it doesn’t exist or that--once more--we’re being passed by and made redundant? And what does all of this mean for project managers who are still working hard to get their projects done? The answers are are a click away...

Completed two months ahead of schedule and $100 million under budget, the CH2M HILL-led Prairie Waters Project has received Project Management Institute's 2011 Project of the Year Award.

Making a single person responsible for managing risk on a project is a major risk in itself. The fact is, wherever there are project objectives there are risks that might affect them. And the best person to identify and manage a particular risk is the one who owns the objective that could be affected.

A recent Aberdeen survey identified the top pressures in managing IT projects as well as “best-in-class” practices for picking the right projects and managing portfolios and resources.

What should the PM know about a larger program? Should the PMO mandate a consistent level of understanding for PMs whose initiatives fall into larger program? It's time to explore the right program-level perspective for the project level manager.

One approach to improve project management maturity is through a project management community of practice, an informal group of PM practitioners who share advice, tips, techniques, lessons learned and promote relevant topics in the project and program management domain.

Organizations do a lot to implement what is viewed as project management. But do organizations have an organizational project management capability? To understand whether we do or not, we have to understand what this actually means, explore where organizations are today and evaluate how close we actually are to the attainment of this goal.

The basic premise for the New York state project management methodology is that there are two lifecycles in managing a software project: the Project Management Lifecycle and the System Development Lifecycle. This article briefly examines both cycles, worthy processes to follow for any organization seeking a quality PM solution.

Welcome to the PMO! Does your Program Management Office have a plan for helping new project managers? More than any other function, the PMO varies hugely from one organization to the next--and even from one division to the next. That means that there will always be a ramp-up period for anyone entering as a project manager--and yet many PMOs make no allowance for this.

It’s time to make way for new training tools and techniques…or get run over. Old methods are fast becoming obsolete, but the replacement tools have not been fully tested and will not be immediately acceptable to all organizations. Use these tactics to move more quickly toward faster project workforce development.

Training provider LegalBizDev has introduced the first program to formally certify lawyers as Legal Project Managers.

If you’ve ever been involved in a highly visible project in which major stakeholders are jockeying to position themselves to impose their own agenda, then you would have experienced project partisan politics. And If you are a ScrumMaster on an agile project, there isn't a more important impediment to get out of the way.

Use the features of Web meeting technology to deliver powerful, consistent messages to a global workforce. These seven tips and techniques will also help build confidence in your leadership ability.