Process > Issues Tracking

Recently, concerns have surfaced regarding the viability of the remaining three months of your project. Management wants quantitative evidence that it will finish successfully and on time. You need to act and act now. Before hitting the panic button, rely on these proven techniques to help achieve success.

Morale killers can disrupt and damage a project’s forward momentum. This article explores some of the ways to move past them and keep the project on track.

It is clear that both roles are essential and integral to the success of a project, but often on small projects the manager and administrator role are combined. Regardless of which role you are playing in your organization, it is important to understand the distinctions and the need for both.

The project may be global, but the details are just as important. Have you considered just how wide-reaching the impact of certain issues could become on your project? There's no way all of those issues and impacts for all of your projects can be flagged on one article, but here we look at just how significant some of these issues are.

When something goes rotten in your PMO or project portfolio, all of your projects may be in jeopardy. The best way to handle crisis across multiple projects is to treat it like the train wreck it appears to be. Take a lesson from the medical community and triage the damage before you start trying to treat the wounded.

Issues and action items are often lumped together, but there are differences--and they require different strategies to make sure they don't derail your project. Do you have a plan in place?

A project out of control doesn’t just happen overnight. It often takes weeks or months of inadequate knowledge of what the workforce understands about the project. Use these techniques to avoid failure due to naiveté.

It’s not enough to manage a good agile project, you have to be seen managing it. In this article, we explore why this is the case--and look at how to provide better visibility on what’s happening on your agile initiative.

Why is change control so important? With everything a project manager is responsible for, why so much concern over it? What does it really mean, and how do we perform it?

Stakeholder management is a key part of any project--yet stakeholders are not always the easiest people to manage. The solution would appear to be simple--manage the performance of our stakeholders so that they better support the needs of the project. Yet we tend to be a little gun-shy. But guess what? There’s no reason for PMs to be scared of stakeholders.

It's important to clarify the purpose and status reporting expectations early in the project. Here, we share a sample integration management cadence for a large project or program that effectively balances the time with the administrative overhead.

Social media has become a mainstay for people and companies these days. However, not all social networking tools are prudent for use on projects--and in some cases can spell trouble. So which types of social media tools are best suited for inclusion in project communication plans?

As projects become more complex and uncertain, there is a paradox: the more you tighten controls, the less real control you achieve. The solution is to implement a coordinated set of “trust acts” at all levels. It turns out that the people working on high-stakes projects really do care about success.

When missed task deadlines start to become a problem, it’s often due to one or more of four reasons. Examining these key possibilities can help get to the root of the problem--and get the project team back on track toward on-time delivery of critical project tasks.

Transitions can be difficult when management and stakeholders change--something that happens on a regular basis in the government. Some basic guidelines can keep the project on track.

Adversity on a project can come in many different shapes and sizes. Here’s one PM's usual five-step process for managing through issues on a project.

Risk meetings are under-appreciated--but a vital part of risk management during project execution. A regularly scheduled risk meeting can help keep risks managed properly, and it is the project manager’s job to bring the resources to the table and help assist the project by naming and mitigating risks.

HarperCollins needed an intuitive solution that could manage and track its Digital Technology Services work for over 100 global users. With Innotas’ on-demand IT Governance solution, the publisher was able to manage both strategic projects and sprints with the same tool.

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.

Many risk management guides describe a mitigation strategy that allocates funding and schedule margin for when a risk “comes true.” A better approach is to “buy down” the risk before it turns into an issue. Here is an example based on the U.S. Department of Defense’s approach.

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.

In the previous installment, we reviewed five effective leadership behavior questions. This article provides a set of technical project management questions that assess the candidate’s knowledge of project management tools and techniques.

Much of the ScrumMaster's role has been focused on the individual effort of leading a single team through the successful completion of a Scrum project. At some point, a person who has successfully established themselves in an organization will be looked on to take on more responsibilities. What would these responsibilities be? What kind of career roadmap would be best suited for a person who is an established ScrumMaster?

Four Microsoft solutions-based competency certifications designed around PMBOK standards will be launched in 2007.

Supporting project delivery across project, program, PMO and portfolio management processes, BrightWork is a SharePoint-based collaboration tool that can be adapted to each organization’s capability and maturity level without overwhelming users with unnecessary functionality.

An IT transformation program at Allianz sought simpler creation and review of project information to let stakeholders resolve project issues more quickly, with more timely and detailed data. Allianz implemented BrightWork's pmPoint solution, leveraging its use of Microsoft Project and SharePoint.