Process > Status Monitoring

To know where you're at, give your projects a disciplined status process that fulfills these five characteristics.

You justified your project, planned it to the last detail and have gotten it approved and activated. Now what? Time to actually do the project--and that means managing the actions needed to insure the plan delivers as promised. In short, time to control the process. Here we explore this critical stage of JPACE in terms of its practical application.

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”.

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.

Stakeholders need to know the status of a project. A good status report will report status and also foster communication to benefit the project’s health. Here, we explore some of your options.

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.

Does your organization provide the WBS as a key deliverable in your systems lifecycle? The work breakdown structure doesn't have to be as scary as the reaper--and mind mapping software makes them even more useful.

Portfolio Management is about managing the flow of projects through their transitions into and out of the basket of projects being pursued by the organization--and thus integral to the activities found in the PMO. In order to keep PPM processes easy to understand and implement, they will be presented in terms of pre-, active and post-portfolio activities--which we explore here.

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.

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.

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.

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.

A wide variety of technology solutions and services are available to help organizations implement, customize and improve their project portfolio management processes. Here is our August roundup of recent updates and announcements from CA, Daptiv, Innotas, Oracle Primavera, Planview, PowerSteering, Rally and others.

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.

Thankfully the world has advanced and project managers have a host of tools and technologies at their disposal to make life easier. But we have to be careful--while it can help us become more effective and efficient, it’s not a substitute for good management and isn’t always the answer. Read on to find out how to prevent technology from taking the “management” out of project management.

This free card-based collaboration tool reduces the burden of project management administration with visual-based status updates, personalized task assignments and team activity streaming similar to social media updates. It is ideal for agile teams, but it doesn’t support task sequencing or end-date forecasting.

Project managers can report progress on agile projects using metrics that may appeal to stakeholders steeped in more traditional practices. Two approaches gaining appeal are agile earned value management and iteration status reports.

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.

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.

LiquidPlanner has revised its online project management software, with a focus on app-style planning features and cross-project scheduling and prioritization. This, along with a “social project management” approach, allows for a truly collaborative vibe on project teams.

Setting up safety measures that support your IT framework is a necessity in today’s hostile, connected world. By establishing a secure infrastructure, you can help reduce your organization’s exposure to loss of earnings, loss of status and loss of assets. If you are part of a middle-size company and share these concerns, here are some ideas on how to improve your risk.