Buying a software package? How do you know which package best suits your business environment and which vendor will serve you best? This checklist will help you evaluate the key questions and tend to the important details of procuring the right packaged application.
Use these forms to track your company's computer and network equipment and to keep current equipment in mind while planning for future hardware and software additions and/or replacements.
Despite this global recession, the competitive landscape keeps becoming more urgent and faster paced. You will be expected to keep managing new projects to keep your organization competitive--but will do so with less (and exhausted) resources, tight budgets and more scrutiny for success. How does one meet such challenges and succeed? One of the agile practices tailor made for such an environment is the Lean method.
From developing an activities schedule to completing the contract paperwork, this plan will help keep you focused on your next software acquisition.
Take the temperature of your project every week with this checklist. Make adjustments to your plan or procedures if necessary to correct any deficiencies and keep the project on target and on time.
Discusses how the expanding global marketplace has placed a new premium on a leader's ability to manage geographically distributed teams. The solution lies more in understanding the internal and external dynamics than using the newest software tools that keep us connected. This course provides new insights and skills that will enable you to coordinate, communicate and collaborate more effectively with team members, regardless of location.
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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!
This list and overview of common schedule risks will help you maintain vigilance against pitfalls that can interrupt, stop or ruin your software development project.
Disaster recovery has never been more important. National and world events have elevated it to a top priority in companies and government. Following 9/11, lower-Manhattan companies scrambled to recover data. Hacker attacks at government offices and large corporations also pointed up the critical need for meticulously crafted disaster recovery plans. Here is some help in keeping your workforce organized.
Are you building a new software system? Use this checklist to keep track of your progress as well as to make sure you don't forget any important steps along the way.
This will be the first in a series of articles that will look to provide the background of issues involved with managing an agile software development project under a traditionally linear and sequential project procurement process. Software development has been deliberately chosen for the example industry since that’s the domain for which agile is most typically used, but for those using agile in other industry domains, the general issues and proposed solution should work equally well within your industry.
Agile vendors have done a good job providing project managers and product owners with planning and tracking tools. But the primary creators of project deliverables are software developers, and they have consistently been an afterthought. To scale across the enterprise, Agile work processes must embrace the individual contributors doing the actual work.
You're leading the team to deliver...what more do they want?! This article highlights a few, simple best practices that--if introduced at the beginning of your project--might help you easily control costs along the way.
Are your software development inspections up to code? Use this checklist to find out.
Don't let problems creep into your crucial development plan; this weekly checklist will keep you--and your software--on track.
Use this checklist to evaluate your organization's mechanisms for identifying problems in the software development process, correcting development process deficiencies and preventing the recurrence of project problems brought on by development process deficiencies.
Are you designing a new software system? Chances are, you are so busy with models, processes and plans, you might be forgetting other pieces of the puzzle. This checklist will keep it all straight for you.
Part 1 of this two-part series introduces the agile engineering principles and practices that, when implemented, enable some teams and their respective organizations to build high-quality software very quickly that will please customers. Organizations embracing these practices--when used in conjunction with agile and lean management practices--can gain delivery advantages on their competitors while managing lower maintenance and support costs in the long term.
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.
It is important to define your project’s technical architecture early in the process, with input from the team. This includes all the hardware, software and other technologies your project requires. It will need to be flexible, but the sooner you get it right, the better off your budget and schedule will be.
Sink or swim! Taking over a dysfunctional project team can be a very frustrating yet exhilarating experience. This article summarizes some “rules of the road” that should help you navigate through shark-infested waters--with the result being a highly motivated department or team delivering quality projects on time.
As a manger or coach, if you don’t change a pacesetter’s behavior you run a high risk of being held hostage by one person’s abilities--and pay a cost in team productivity. This article is about a pacesetter as a team member on an agile software development team. We will explain what a pacesetter is, why it’s a problem and the effect that a pacesetter has on agile software development.
In order to keep your body functioning as it should, you need to ensure that it is maintained properly. Effectively, we all implement ALM on ourselves by managing for our own lifecycle. Maybe this isn’t such a crazy analogy after all…let’s explore.
Agile and earned value are inherently different approaches to managing projects, but they can complement each other in support of flexibility and bottom-line value. Here are three practical tips to help you bridge the gap between an agile approach and the earned value reports and measurements many organizations require.
Lack of face-to-face time makes cohesion difficult to achieve on distributed teams. Collaboration software can help, with forums for information exchange that enhance productivity and accountability. Along the way, it should also make “getting things done” more rewarding and spontaneous. Here are four keys to keeping your virtual team connected.
Collaboration software provider Daptiv predicts that the role of project management offices will expand into business strategy, social software will be used even more to engage project teams and stakeholders, and PPM systems will play a greater role as a business intelligence source.
There is lots of great information available on how to use agile methods for custom software development projects, but less so for package implementations. Commercial-Off-The-Shelf solutions make up a large percentage of the IT projects undertaken by companies each year, and many organizations are missing out on benefits that an agile package approach can bring.
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?
Make sure your IT projects are bulletproof. This checklist doubles as both a quality review plan and a risk assessment document.
Project Management Professionals (PMPs) must earn 60 PDUs every three years to keep their certification. You can earn some of these PDUs by writing project management-related articles. Here's the lowdown.
These fundamental aspects of Scrum's functionality make it an easy match with software development projects. But the wonderful nature of Scrum and the agile methodology is that it is highly adaptable to many technologies and other types of efforts--and doesn’t have to stay locked into one project type.
Your project is staffed with skilled programmers, but even they may not attend to all the details that make code comprehensible, maintainable and effective for the project. Your code developers will benefit from having a guideline such as this checklist (it's in programmer-speak!) in hand to review the code for tightness, accuracy, completeness and adequate documentation.
Partnership will deliver enterprise project management solutions to the European marketplace.
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...
A new agile procurement process--one that can operate in conjunction with and alongside an agile software development methodology--should significantly improve both the procurement of software vendor’s services and and successful delivery of software projects. This article will explore the underlying principles as well as map the reconciliation points required to harmonize agile development and procurement methods.
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!)
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.
As a manger or coach, if you don’t change a pacesetter’s behavior you run a high risk of being held hostage by one person’s abilities--and pay a cost in team productivity. This article is about a pacesetter as a team member on an agile software development team. In this installment, we discuss useful approaches to dealing with these sometimes problematic people.
The Agile2011 Conference drew more than 1,600 attendees to Salt Lake City, where dozens of companies showcased new technology solutions and training offerings. Here is a recap from the busy exhibition floor.
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...
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.
Developed in conjunction with a project plan, resource plans help provide tactile information on what is needed, when and for how much--thus making them huge assets during the activate phase of project management.
Agile approaches help manage risk for projects. Is it possible to scale agile approaches to programs? Yes, and there are four areas to consider: backlog management, product architecture, managing risks across the program and explaining program state.
Is your work more industrial-worker based or knowledge-worker based? The way people work together on projects has changed. Have your project management methods kept up?
Mindjet is also introducing a cloud-based collaboration service and a new version of its collaborative work management solution.
Agile methods recognize the increased need for communication and provide a variety of tools and checkpoints to help avoid the classic project mistakes of mismatched expectations and confusion. In the absence of a visible physical product to point at and measure, we need to be constantly confirming understandings and aligning ideas against increments of the final solution.
What data should you keep in a Data Warehouse and why? This form helps you identify the needed data and its associated characteristics in relation to your business requirements.
Lots of things happen on the job every day. Use this form to keep track of them.
Keep an eye on your project's bottom line by requesting and tracking your human resources carefully for budget and project control purposes.
Want to keep good tabs on your project? Have every member of the project management team fill out one of these babies on a regular basis. It's not long, and it will tell you what you need to know.
