Are you putting together a data warehouse? This Microsoft Project plan will help you keep tabs on all the complex stages and steps involved in building decision support systems and a knowledge-based applications architecture and environment.
As enterprises grow their project portfolios, they'll need to establish a project office to reflect their corporate best interests. But that's not all that project offices do. Click here for more.
This Powerpoint presentation dishes up formulas to help you make a bullet-proof business case for component-based application package development and deployment.
This sample business case provides a proposal for the development of a Web service that directly supports the successful launch of an affiliate program.
Getting off the ground starts with a business case. This project plan is the first giant step you'll need to move forward with your proposed project.
You already know the benefits of creating an Intranet. Justify it with a solid business strategy plan.
Successful business execution is dependent upon having timely and accurate financial information. But too often, little thought is put into how to present the data in a meaningful way. From a project or portfolio perspective, what does a C-Level executive expect to see from the PMO for actionable decision-making?
This document provides a high-level Change Readiness Summary to be inserted to the Business Case. For smaller projects the Change Readiness Assessment may be more useful to relate this change to the other changes planned or underway in the area of the organization affected, contributing to the cumulative change picture. For large projects this represents a key element where absolute clarity is required at the senior decision-making level prior to embarking upon detailed planning of the change.
Few know the evolution of Application Lifecycle Management and how the Structured Revolution of the 1970s and '80s was a major turning point in software development. This article presents a retrospective on ALM and Structured Development Life Cycles--those that shaped it, the influencing principles and the related methodologies and tools the movement spawned.
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.
RFPs are a double-edged sword for many vendors. In the first article, we looked at the challenges with layout and content. In this second installment, we look at the challenges vendors experience in the process from the point they are made aware of the RFP to the submission of the bid.
Just who is in charge of your user acceptance testing? For many, it belongs in the hands of business analysts and corresponding business owners. These individuals collaborate to create the test plans and test cases and then determine how to implement and track their progress.
From Gartner PPM Summit 2006
In this session, Kraft Bell, Gartner Vice President and Distinguished Analyst, discusses the importance of change and process design principles in acheiving success in rapid product development.
The System Requirements Specification (SRS) document describes all data, functional and behavioral requirements of the software under production or development.
Anxiety and strain on the job is normal, but in the process of using Scrum it is common to find product development groups and senior management going head to head. Here we look at some keys to its successful implementation.
Big or small, upstart or long established, many companies are finding that the value of their PPM efforts is tied to the maturity of their processes and practices. And even small advances in PPM capability can spark great leaps forward.
From Gartner PPM Summit 2007
Gartner Vice President and Distinguished Analyst Kraft Bell examines nonintuitive inhibitors to product development, foundational principles for product development and change, and practical frameworks and tools for rapid NPD.
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.
The purpose of this document is to quantitatively justify the project. For smaller projects, the business case may be no more than 1-2 pages in length. For larger, more complex projects, the business case may be much larger and contain far more detail.
If you have to make a business case for a major proposal (a serious undertaking), you need a plan.
This procedure describes the process of testing software code or products by the test team. It documents the procedure for the entire testing cycle: generating test plans, scheduling tests, conducting tests and reporting test results. This procedure applies to new development, as well as major and minor releases, including customized solutions delivered to customers.
We need to learn and understand more about the potential of Business Intelligence. One of these gaps is being able to understand and communicate the value it brings to organizations. Like many of the other management disciplines, that value is often difficult to quantify. As a result, the lifespan of any given BI function is shorter or more limited than it should be.
Document a business case to persuade upper management to fund your project. Keep it short and succinct enough that the busy executive management audience will read and digest it. It should directly convey the information they need to know with salient, hard-hitting, supporting evidence that addresses the bottom line. This is a basic instructional framework of the information you should include in your business case. Enhance it as you wish!
PPM without organizational preparation?! Say it ain’t so! Two aspects of organizational culture must be managed in order to capture the benefits desired from PPM…and to avoid a series of unfortunate events.
Finding sponsors to back your project is an art. Make a compelling case for the project to gain sponsor support when you are pitching your business case to executive management. Here is an example of a brief, direct project concept designed to lure sponsors into your camp.
PM principles state that there should be absolute clarity in obtaining the requirements. If the fog of ambiguity clouds this phase, the delivered project will never be accepted by the stakeholders. Here we examine some of the glaring issues in the requirements management process.
Need to sell your business case to executive management? They will want to see the bottom line, which includes the benefits stated in quantifiable terms of value to the organization. Don't be vague. Quantify those benefits, as this example illustrates!
This excellent project justification guide will provide sophisticated advice to maximize the impact of your business case, making it accurate, complete and persuasive. In addition, learn some handy tips, techniques and strategies to complement existing procedures, templates and spreadsheets that you already use.
While working for a small firm, a new PM was asked to go to a major company to help them integrate their IT PMOs...leading to the worst three months of his career. As his two-part article concludes, we find out if if there was truly a light at the end of the tunnel--or just a train coming the other way.
Why are project managers afraid to stop projects? So often after being assigned to a project, project managers try to run before they walk. This is especially common when the project is already in progress. You can quickly get caught up in the momentum of work and forget to question whether the work is justified. If this is truly the case, shouldn’t more projects be stopped? What if it means losing your job?
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.
Developing the necessary contingent of test cases to completely and accurately test the system you are building involves detailed thinking and can be a hit-or-miss activity if you improvise. Check off the items here to determine if your test cases will reveal all the hidden problems and ensure that all scenarios are addressed.
From Gartner PPM Summit
In this presentation, Gartner's Research Vice President Dale Hagemeyer discusses how leading manufacturers are leveraging customer insights across the organization to enhance new product development.
Why build a data warehouse? Be sure you have good justification in the form of a solid business case before taking the plunge.
Call us optimistic, but we want you to be prepared for the economic comeback that we're sure is just around the corner, or at least somewhere on the horizon. Sooner or later (we hope sooner), this recession is going to recede, and by planning for that now, you can be first in line when management starts handing out all that new funding.
A concerted effort to manage and document the realization of business benefits is an indispensible key to the success of any program. It requires a well-defined business case and a structured approach to measuring and tracking the planned benefits throughout the program lifecycle.
You know that your proposed project solution is the right one for your client. Now, how exactly do you convince the client of that? This form will help you state your case.
Mission-critical projects need to be well-justified, with clear goals that can be referenced throughout the life of the project. This business case template offers an excellent approach to goal-setting and a way to communicate those goals effectively.
The project may be global, but the details are just as important. Have you considered just how wide-reaching the impact of certain issues could become on your project? There's no way all of those issues and impacts for all of your projects can be flagged on one article, but here we look at just how significant some of these issues are.
Much has been written about project failures, but what about teams? It seems that management has little or no appreciation for the value of a team that exists beyond the project. Why do teams fail and what is the impact of those failures?
How do you determine the business value of CRM and perform a benefit scan as part of a value-based management approach? Learn by doing, of course! Use this case study example of Midas, Inc., a fictional enterprise that manufactures and markets investment goods, and play along at home as you work your way through the case study.
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.
Agile practices are not intrinsically “value-adding” — they must be aligned to business needs and goals in order to provide true value. By measuring their agility based on compliance with a particular method, organizations may prevent their teams from adapting practices to suit projects with different characteristics and needs.
Changing an iconic product can be perilous. Think New Coke. But sometimes change is necessary. From assessing the business case to implementation, here is a look at how a manufacturing giant used a fundamental project management approach to minimize risk when it sought to modify its most popular products.
It might seem obvious that once a project makes it through the approval process, it is good to go. This is not always the case, particularly when there is a gap between approval and the actual start date. There is one more step that should be taken before a project begins — authorization.
As products become increasingly complex, design teams must integrate a wide range of expertise throughout the development process. This offers new opportunities for innovation while helping to carry the vision all the way through to production and curtailing late compromises.
The basic premise for the New York state project management methodology is that there are two lifecycles in managing a software project: the Project Management Lifecycle and the System Development Lifecycle. This article briefly examines both cycles, worthy processes to follow for any organization seeking a quality PM solution.
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.
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.
All organizations face significant challenges in planning for and managing their IT portfolios. These challenges can be addressed, in part, by the use of systematic processes for selecting and evaluating IT investments. Based on a framework created for federal agencies, here are some key components to consider including in your project portfolio-scoring model.
