The site survey process is a key activity in planning and deploying a product. This document allows the customer to provide a detailed description of the environment where it will be installed. Obtaining such information will assist a company engineer when providing support prior, during and after the product installation.
Know who your suppliers are, what they do and how they do it. Have them fill out this detailed questionnaire.
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.
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.
Start your requirements gathering with this all-inclusive document outlining the entire process from start to finish.
What does a finished plan for building an intranet look like? Here's a sample Work Breakdown Structure in PPC Project Engineer format.
This extensive project plan will help you plan your next IT system development project. It can be applied to both IT or software engineering projects.
An estimate worksheet is useful not just for you in-house, but for your clients, too. This particular example covers design, engineering, make, assembly, materials, software and additional costs. There is also room for adding in prorated cost adjustment factors.
On new development projects, the production stage can be the point of no return. Before it’s too late, a rigorous gating process can help to ensure that development activities, teamwide input and critical stakeholder priorities are all aligned with the overall project vision.
We know, we know...it's a jungle out there in software land. These stories should introduce you to the unfortunate trials and tribulations of software development management--and the ways to overcome or avert them And all of these apply to project management, too! (You won't get too depressed, we promise!)
It’s no secret that command-and-control management methods aren’t very effective at motivating today’s workforce to produce greater value with fewer resources. At Toyota, the role of Shusa instills a sense of personal ownership in project outcomes. Here are thoughts on creating a similar environment for your teams.
Discusses how the expanding global marketplace has placed a new premium on a leader's ability to manage geographically distributed teams. The solution lies more in understanding the internal and external dynamics than using the newest software tools that keep us connected. This course provides new insights and skills that will enable you to coordinate, communicate and collaborate more effectively with team members, regardless of location.
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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 sample MOP document helps you describe how to install your product. It is meant to be used by deployment engineers for understanding the steps required to install and configure it.
As our history lesson continues, find out how John DeLorean distinguished himself as an innovative PM and engineer at Packard and went on to make his mark at General Motors.
There's a lot more to a software development project than just developing software. Are you measuring how efficiently your project is proceeding? How well you actually planned and estimated your project's needs and results? Do you feed that information back into your processes to improve future estimates? Use this checklist to improve the often-overlooked metric collection processes that can make a world of difference for the next time.
This handy checklist will help all project employees move your project's goods and services throughout your company's engineering, material, production and shipping departments.
The way we frame our project issues can limit our ability to solve them. But innovative thinking is not just about creativity. It’s about harnessing good ideas that solve specific problems for a specific opportunity. Here are three strategies to make innovation a more repeatable, predictable process on your projects.
In Part 1 of this two-part series, we introduced the agile engineering principles and practices that--when implemented--enable some teams and their respective organizations to quickly build high-quality software that pleases customers. In Part 2, we focus on the tools that support agile engineering and provide you with a guideline for getting started.
The goods or services have arrived at the job site. Are they what was ordered? Do they pass inspection? Were they delivered on time?
You've sent out all those requests for quotations, and now they're coming back by the truckload. It's time to make the first cut, and this form will help you do just that. Think of this as an IQ test for RFQs.
You're leading the team to deliver...what more do they want?! This article highlights a few, simple best practices that--if introduced at the beginning of your project--might help you easily control costs along the way.
There is a huge difference between using Agile practices and being Agile. Here, a chief engineer discusses his organization’s strides in creating an Agile mindset and a customized approach to producing high-quality work in short time frames. The journey offers practical advice and techniques to those getting started or struggling with Agile transformation.
The adoption of CMMI is growing among smaller working groups as the process itself evolves.
Disaster recovery plans focus on getting the day-to-day business running smoothly again, but they often fail to address the equally important need to preserve mission critical initiatives within the project portfolio. Here are five steps for applying crisis management at the project level.
Is a mechanism really needed to provide structure for making key project decisions? Yes. Being in a leadership role, you’ll be pressured by people wanting decisions made for the best interests of the company, the employee or the customer--and they typically conflict. Let’s look at the three categories of influences.
As our history lesson continues, we see how the success of the GTO gave John DeLorean almost rock-star-like fame in the automotive world.
Staying on top of technology trends is one of the biggest advantages a CIO can grab. Here's a look at what's hot for this year, so you can keep your sites on the ever-moving technology target.
Based on the best practices of winners and finalist from PM Solutions’ annual PMO of the Year award, a new book offers tips, insights and checklists for people management, performance measurement, strategic alignment, organization design and more.
Global professional resourcing and project-based solutions leader turns to Compuware’s Changpoint to manage growth and complexity with streamlined resource planning, project management, and time and materials tracking.
What are hyper-productive teams doing differently to achieve such extraordinary results? This article introduces you to the key practices used by Scrum teams around the world to achieve hyper-productive results--practices your team can apply right now.
A new guide addresses unique aspects of project management within the pharmaceutical industry, including regulatory context, integrated validation and risk management.
As products become increasingly complex, design teams must integrate a wide range of expertise throughout the development process. This offers new opportunities for innovation while helping to carry the vision all the way through to production and curtailing late compromises.
Do you make trade-offs with maintainability and adaptability in order to meet release dates? Fortunately, this hidden-cost fate is avoidable--but only for organizations that make a commitment. This article introduces you to technical debt and its common symptoms. You'll learn the basic steps to set up a repayment plan, the common causes of technical debt and effective strategies for paying it down.
Technical debt describes the cumulative consequences of cutting corners in software development, but it escapes the attention of many project managers as they focus on scope and schedule. That’s a mistake because it impacts both. Here are questions to help you ascertain the real state of technical affairs.
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.
New board members will join nine returning members to help guide the organization’s growth in the coming year.
John DeLorean was the automotive giant who went down in flames. Here we look at his ascent through the automotive ranks, from talented engineer and project manager to tough executive and automotive entrepreneur.
In Part 2 of the series, we look at how organizational behaviors in the form of systematic biases can influence project outcomes--and how these biases can be used to examine and describe the root causes of failed projects.
Three schools join the ranks of institutions offering PMI-accredited project management degree programs.
Business reengineering is about change, but it is also about balance--balancing customer needs and operational performance to achieve business goals and objectives. Let this plan show you how to achieve balance on your BRE project.
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.
Recent appointments, promotions, openings and awards in the world of project management.
Software engineering is being revised to take account of what has been learned in the agile movement--and it indicates where we should put our attention in the next decade.
In the concluding installment of our “5 Questions PMs Must Ask” series, we explore the fifth and final question: how do we know we are making progress? The answer requires measures of effectiveness and performance stated in tangible units that are meaningful to all stakeholders.
This year's trends are focused on a whole new kind of business process engineering.
Recent alliances, acquisitions and implementations in the world of project and portfolio management.
The Richmond Olympic Oval, a multiuse sports facility showcased during the 2010 Winter Olympic Games, benefited from coordinated, cloud-based collaboration among engineers, architects and contractors dealing with a compressed schedule and little margin for error. The virtual environment also helped to minimize environmental impact.
How can organizational change be implemented with a minimum of distress? Change frequently results in unrest, uncertainty and concern caused by nothing more than fear. People lose focus, become less productive and potentially seek out alternative employment because of the fear of something that is not going to happen. In this article, we look at how we can manage those situations more effectively.
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.
