Process > PM Strategy

The key challenge to organizational PM is that companies tend to view projects in isolation by ignoring the obvious (and sometimes not-so-obvious) linkages. Here we present a list of essential factors to ensure the organization can begin to not just benefit from the discipline of project management, but be able to maximize the benefits that organizational PM can provide.

Forget what the PM's background is, forget where their expertise lies. What is the optimal amount of business knowledge that a PM should have on a project? How well do they need to understand the business to be successful? Are you becoming the man or woman who knew too much?

Need help with project recovery? A whole new skill set and strategy is needed to recover an IT project from free fall. Here we provide practical recovery pointers on four project areas for failing IT projects, with a focus on software development for business applications.

What does the future of PM have in store? Three trends have the potential of being very powerful for project management and the organizations that continue to pursue the discipline.

New benchmark study on project management offices shows consistent, two-year trend in delivering quantifiable value, with upwards of $400,000 in savings per project.

There are certain strategies and actions that the PM may take when managing a virtual team in order to make it more productive. These strategies will also increase the likelihood for a successful project implementation--and hopefully a very satisfied customer post-deployment.

As long as people are involved in the project process, project managers will have to deal with politics. As intuitively obvious as that statement might be, it must remain an enigma to many project managers because they seem to be very politically challenged. Many PMs fail to understand that projects are comprised of people who must find a way to work together toward a common goal.

A new study shows that more than a third of projects are at risk and, not surprising, a key factor for recovering troubled projects is the actions of the project managers.

Three-way partnership with American University, Management Concepts and MCR provides training program for federal agencies and government contractors.

Do you have a dual personality? A PM that also has a foot in the business analyst camp has a “leg up” on the competition for jobs--and has more job security.

Agile got you anxious? One way to address the fears of management--and to possibly make agile PM more palatable to the masses--is to adopt and publicize the following seven principles, which will help make agile more...agile.

Based on current trends, project managers will see an increase in the need for them to have more experiential training in real-life situations in order to stay competitive. To maintain a professional edge, PMs will need to set goals to gain significant knowledge through work scenarios and industry learning.

Employers often look only at their own industry when hiring, because not every PM can make the jump--and if they can’t, things can get very bad very quickly. So what should employers look for--and by extension, what should PMs demonstrate that they are capable of doing? Does industry matter in your career? How transferable is the project management skill set?

Project managers usually tend to focus on the methodology for executing the technical part of the project. However, a good understanding of a practical SOA landscape and its associated challenges can help a technical PM make the SOA adoption on technology projects run even smoother.

So you want a career in project management? What will it take to be successful, and what about earning potential? This article will explore the pursuit of a career in project management, including looks at characteristics of successful PMs, what employers are looking for and salaries.

What sets PM Masters apart from the rest of us? Is it their learning, innate talents and aptitudes or is it more? In observing those who exhibit PM mastery this writer has found they share some common traits and capabilities that provide some interesting insights.

A new global survey indicates disparities in the measurement and effectiveness of PMOs, leaving their value a great unknown.

“Project manager” does not mean “stakeholder gatekeeper”. The PM always seems to control that relationship, but there is a better way: When the relationship between team members and stakeholders is working, it’s the PM’s responsibility to stay out of the way.

Decisions on IT Governance are easy when your company has ample resources and infrastructure to implement and support it. As companies get smaller, however, those decisions get much more difficult. Here are some guidelines to help you evaluate and prioritize your needs to build a strategy for getting the maximum benefit while staying within your means.

Developing and valuing its project management culture has paid dividends for ADP, forming the foundation for an improved customer relationship by establishing expectations, recognizing when things aren’t going right and taking action to remedy problems.

There's no problem with the standard equation for risk, but it’s only part of the story. In this article, we look beyond impact multiplied by probability and think about risk trends over time.

How do you lead and develop resources across the miles? Having a strengthened project team can be hard enough if everyone is located in the same location, but how do you ensure success when the project is global in scope? In this article, we explore different aspects of team and individual development and leadership--and some of the specific challenges that are introduced in a global project.

Most project managers think of changes to a project to be related to change requests that modify the scope of deliverables. But changes to projects go far beyond mere scope changes, so it's important to have a change management process in place that can address any manner of project change. While the majority of organizations have fairly mature change request processes in place, most lack similar processes to handle event-driven changes.

If you have not been a project manager on a contingent worker status, you're missing a great deal of experience. If you are ready to jump into the consultant PM life, what should you be aware of so that you are happy in the long run?

Frustrated by project charter meetings that feature overly textual, often generic descriptions of what the team can expect and how to accomplish it, a project manager applied the agile concept of User Stories to better describe project interactions and inject more real-world meaning into a kickoff document.

Ever stop to ponder all the different PM frameworks that have been developed over the years and which one you should be using in your organization? Is there really one best framework out there? The options are dizzying, so here we take a look at four of them in depth. What can they do for you? Remember, one size does not fit all...

After more than 20 years in the financial services industry, this writer thought he knew exactly what to anticipate moving into his new role as a software vendor project manager. He was wrong...

This article presents a profiling technique that evaluates a stakeholder across a number of dimensions, resulting in a rating of the stakeholder that identifies the management strategy most likely to be successful.

Is there a "best" way to start a career in project management? Assuming that you have started a career in an organization already, how should you focus on it? If the "by accident" approach isn't for you, there are two very distinct planned paths.

The social engagement of the project is what underlies every aspect of the project process more so than normal. In social PM, collaboration, transparency and mutual participation is central--with the assumption that if this socially engaging environment and the necessary collaboration tools are in place with a clearly defined project goal, then success should follow. But in order for social PM to work, some principles and guidelines need to be incorporated.

Project management has its roots in technical environments and appears to be returning to those roots after years of being a haven for generalists. But does this trend short-change PM experience and resourcefulness? Is technical expertise really required?

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…

Want to engage all of your stakeholders quickly and communicate with them throughout the project? Stop being so selfish! It's not just about you. The decisions one PM made that supported communications on his project had mixed results, giving him some valuable lessons in the process.

Enterprise project management is rarely the same across different entities; however, there are common denominators that collectively define the new age of EPM in the public sector.

While the concepts of strategy, portfolio and project are often discussed, the relationship of strategy to project and of portfolio to either concept seems to play out differently in reality than it does on paper.

What you do during your first 30 days as CIO will most likely determine your future success. The strategy you deploy is critical and will vary greatly with the circumstances you are inheriting. Here's part two of our examination of possible success strategies, which involves assessing various aspects of the IT organization.

Can you have a successful project if the PM is also a team member? It isn't an ideal arrangement and clearly qualifies as an “alternate” approach to project management, but in the current economy it is probably more common than we might like to think.

PMs have to manage projects that meet the business strategy, but can they also influence that strategy?

Just as project managers have some fundamental expectations of team members, they have some fundamental expectations of you. These should be the minimum we strive for on both sides. Here we take a look at some of the important expectations on both sides of the equation.

Here’s our December 2010 roundup of the latest technology solutions and services for project leaders, teams and organizations, including an application to leverage SharePoint … Agile offerings for distributed environments and portfolio-level planning … mobile capabilities for PPM … a free project management tool for small teams ... and more.

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.

This writer has had enough with so-called "project managers" making a mockery of the profession on so-called "reality" television shows. So in this article he takes you into the near future to the next reality TV sensation--The Next Great Project Manager. It’s going to be epic!

What will project management look like in the future? One writer summons his smarts as he comes up with some dramatic predictions about governance, PMOs and the accountable PM. Is he a genius or a goofball? You be the judge...