Creating a project plan is an essential, multifaceted step in your software development project. Use this checklist to make sure you've addressed the critical components and the things you might not readily think of to create a plan that will ensure a successful project.
How does your system development project account for software version changes? Backup and recovery of data and files? Requirements changes? Check your score on software configuration management so that you can avoid pitfalls down the road.
If Partner Management is new to your organization, you'll need this matrix to help define your needs and evaluate the different software options out there.
While attending a recent course, this writer learned some simple techniques for better defining the customer and their desires. This article introduces some of the techniques that will help ensure teams know who their customers and users are, who they are not and how to create winning solutions for delivering value.
A Microsoft Excel spreadsheet that would help you manage your weekly cash position. Use this template to manage different accounts – cash, payroll, securities etc. – spread across different institutions and link them to get the consolidated view of your weekly cash position.
The accompanying worksheets are intended to help in the preparation of a project proposal and supporting budget.
Testing your newly built system should not be a haphazard activity during which team members randomly input any value they can think of. Test cases should be planned so that all requirements and objectives are tested. Use this checklist to systematically plan and prepare for software testing.
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.
Here is an example of a complete web site development project plan, from Requirements Planning (Discovery) through Deployment.
What is needed to install the customized package or system and make it operational? Here's a checklist to guide you.
How do expectations and desires become a project? Use these worksheets to transform objectives into concrete requirements and steps that can be accounted for throughout the project.
Even a small change can have a huge effect on a project. This impact analysis study will help you measure the effect of a potential change on your project's scope.
The criminalization of corporate fraud has America’s corporate community scrambling to find Web-based enterprise solutions that are SOX compliant. Accounting for financial reporting can only be facilitated with a suitable time and expense solution.
Financial closure is the process of completing all project-related financial transactions, finalizing and closing the project financial accounts, disposing of project assets and releasing resources and the work site--all the while maintaining strict accounting practices as mandated by your PMO, company, local, state and federal agencies. Don't worry. We have a checklist to help you through. (Heartburn medications sold separately.)
Many project managers are expanding the scope of their skills into program management, which offers career advancement and new opportunities in a competitive job market. Here, a certified PMP explains how he has benefited from a U.K.-based program management credential, and why he chose it instead of the PgMP certification offered by PMI.
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…
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?
Wouldn’t it be easier if someone just sent you all the information that you needed to know? Social media helps accomplish this goal by leveraging the interactive and collaborative platforms that Web 2.0 provides.
This comprehensive project plan proposes a Rapid Application Development (RAD) approach to implementing a complete customer business service system (processing of customer contacts, accounts, billing, etc.). It reports the findings of a six-week planning/investigative phase and forecasts the analysis, design, construction and testing phases of the project.
Get help starting an essential contract management system by using this project plan.
Use this plan to help you develop IT controls for the IT department to support Sarbanes-Oxley implementation.
This template will help you put together your next risk statement report. While you'll have to do your own writing, we'll give you hints on how to fill out the various subject areas of the report.
Use actual accounting data on the performance of your last project to compare how accurate your estimates were versus the real thing. The Actual ROI tool is a quick way to show you how your project performed against the plan and identify areas for improving your estimating skills.
Developing a budget requires so much more than a hankering for creative accounting and a wish for funds. If you're a project manager, you live and die by your budget. Here's a crash course on what you should take into consideration when putting a realistic project budget together.
All the project measures in the world are useless if the end result is not of high quality. But how do you quantify quality? What metrics measure how good something is? Agile practices respond by making quality part of the process rather than something you measure along the way.
The Agile movement, which emerged from a need to rethink software development projects, has popularized a number of ideas that should be applied more broadly across the PM community. Many Agile principles complement “formal” methods such as earned value management, and can be readily implemented in traditional project environments.
In his latest course, an experienced project management trainer makes the case for a durable but resilient schedule model that accounts for requirements, dependencies and uncertainties as fully as possible.
Welcome to IT Strategist's annual roundup of IT surveys. Here are the trends you need to know about to wind up 2009 and head into 2010.
Even if you have the estimating gift, there are still lurking issues that can render it highly inaccurate. Some you have control over, but for many you don't. Here are some common estimating issues that can often negatively impact your project:
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.
CMMI provides several models that organizations can use to identify best practices and organizational improvements. Studying the maturity models and researching earned value management readiness reveals a series of baby steps for organizations to adopt EVM.
Some love 'em. Some loathe 'em. But these frameworks and schools of PM thought are here to stay. What benefits and challenges do they present? Read on for both sides of the alternative equation...
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!)
Collecting data from a cross section of sources that include both primary and secondary data resources--and doing so in a timely manner--are the three foundational pieces of a good process. It is important to take all of them into account because without even one of these in place, your intelligence will come crashing down like a house of cards.
An equipment manufacturer is turning away new business. An airline is delaying flights due to maintenance issues. A homebuilder is struggling with a regulatory-driven software implementation. Here is a look at how three companies turned to Critical Chain to fix debilitating project management problems.
Minimize the risk of something going wrong on your project because of a planning oversight. Check your project plan to make sure you have done the activities recommended in this checklist.
A project worth doing is a project worth doing right. But can the project really be done at all? Learn how to assess project feasibility by taking into account potential constraints.
Nobody wants projects to fail. This presentation goes over the key factors that will certainly affect the outcome of any project.
Does your PPM solution help you understand the cost of IT operations or just your projects and portfolios? Technology Business Management is an emerging category of software solutions designed to help CIOs and IT executives manage and communicate the cost, quality and value of IT Services.
One of the most visible functions of a PMO is keeping track of project status and reporting progress at both a project and program level. This sample PMO reporting process will work right out of the box. It can be tailored up front or over time as your specific organizational needs become more clear.
This template provides the project team with a template to capture and disseminate the meeting minutes from a project meeting.
A project manager’s desk is often surrounded by scraps of paper with brief reminders and to-do lists, but this writer suggests a solution to eliminate “sticky note suffering".
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.
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?
This article describes how an IT organization from a Fortune 500 manufacturing company applied the framework to its portfolio of accounting and finance applications.
Software is built on a variety of assumptions, and we need to understand what those assumptions are--and work around them in defining how we use the software. With so many options in the marketplace, how do you decide what’s good and what’s not? How do you navigate the promises of software vendors to know what you should be looking for, and how do you decide what will actually work for you?
Need help scheduling agile delivery dates? We’ll examine a pragmatic way to derive a schedule (and subsequently a project cost) for a process framework that is inherently flexible--but one that still must plan for a release date. The approach covered will hopefully satisfy both your management and your team’s desire for practical schedule planning.
Being able to accurately describe what impact a project will have on a company’s bottom line is absolutely critical in securing financial buy-in and project approval. If you don't have an MBA, fear not...here's some help in demystifing the writing of a project business case.
Making your website e-commerce enabled is a big undertaking. Use this plan to make it more manageable.
This checklist will help you build and refine your project schedule. After you have determined the time needed to produce the deliverables and conduct the activities (the basics), you need to allocate time for all the extras and the potential unexpecteds that will come back and bite you if you overlook them.
