Process > Milestones

There’s more to vendor management than deliverables and deadlines. Let's look at a few basic concepts that will help PMs avoid some of the biggest pitfalls.

Nothing helps a project get headed down the right path than a well-planned and professionally organized project kickoff. The five-step process outlined here will help insure that the customer and your delivery organization are of the same mind as you start your engines.

A good plan tells you what done looks like on your project; the schedule defines the steps to get there. Here is an approach, grounded in activities and artifacts, that can improve the credibility of your schedule. It measures progress based on accomplishments rather than the passage of time and the consumption of resources.

This writer has seen some truly atrocious project communications where the PMO seems at a loss to be able to assist. In this article, he looks at a few ways that the PMO may be able to assist in building a communications model that brings consistency without burying the PM in “dashboard hell”.

Agile projects benefit from the rapid pace of feedback achieved through frequent releases, but what happens when you’re working on a complex project with a long timeline and resistance to releasing early? As a compensating strategy, story maps based on project goals can leverage some benefits of a release even if you aren’t “going live” any time soon.

When project milestones are being met, but related work is being pushed aside, you have a case of phase-shifting. A crash is around the bend. Here’s how it happens and how to avoid it.

Establishing a program management office is a project in Itself. And like all projects, you need a charter that presents a clear and measurable purpose, scope, schedule, quality, budget, risks and critical success factors. Here are guidelines for creating a charter for your PMO project.

Sometimes a pure agile approach is not appropriate for a particular project — the important thing is getting the work done, not strict adherence to a process. Still, a non-agile project can benefit from the inherent values of agile, including strong team collaboration, prioritized, incremental development, and regular progress assessment and adaptation.

Portfolio managers don’t always need a full-feature package with all the bells and whistles. Reviewing the variety of solutions available led this writer to generate a basic list of PPM requirements as well as a few nice-to-have features--leading him to a recommendation.

Why do stakeholders' eyes roll when you try to explain why earned value is a good thing--and how it works? Ever wonder why claiming partial credit for projects in progress is met with skepticism and ire? Maybe it’s time to rethink the concept of EV as a way to measure project performance and progress.

To really understand whether or not you have the right players or even the right teams in place to complete the projects you’re responsible for on time and on budget, there is a critical shift in paradigm you need to embrace. Projects aren’t the only things team members are working on, and all work is not the same.

Are you ready for EVM? Our writer conducted a study on earned value management readiness based on 40 critical factors found in successful EVM implementations, and here we present the Top 10.

By integrating analytical processes such as scope definition and schedule development with non-linear, collaborative activities such as brainstorming, a mind-mapping solution can help project leaders do their jobs more efficiently and communicate to a broader audience more effectively.

It's easy to find a million ways that software managers can fail with their teams and their projects. This article prioritizes seven practical leadership tips and techniques that can help build great teams that consistently deliver great projects. And these habits are so simple, you can put them into practice immediately!

Which governance/compliance model is right for you? Like so many things in project management, there is no one-solution approach to governance. Here we discuss two models.

Do your teams see value in your meetings? As with other facets of project management, the time that you spend planning meetings can pay dividends when it comes time for action. Here are some tips to assist you in getting the most out of your team check-ins.

Game mechanics can be applied to the discipline of project management, both as a motivational and training aid. By making project work more enjoyable through real-time recognition and rewards, gamification can also improve team productivity and individual performance.

On many projects, work is planned months in advance and you might delay a milestone or implementation if it is not completed. In an Agile project, you plan for the current iteration and adjust workload, if necessary, for the next. Here is a primer on the fundamental Agile concepts of story points, velocity and team rhythm.

Although the role of the business stakeholder has evolved using agile as a methodology, the business need or pesky constraint typically remains for delivering functionality by a particular date. Hence, project success many times is still measured by delivering functionality by a pre-defined date to meet business goals. Here we offer some suggestions to try if your organization is using an agile methodology--yet expected to deliver a large-scale project that has the same constraints that have existed over time.

The Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary says new project plans must be created that meet the requirements of the Program Management Accountability System.

A cost-cutting economy has changed every aspect of project management, affecting all the important participants--especially stakeholders. How do you manage the stakeholder balance and stay up-to-date with their ever-changing roles? Read on.