Nothing comes free, but do you understand the true cost? When we look for ways to improve business efficiency, we consider two primary factors. But sometimes organizations push so hard for efficiency that they ignore the potential impact--and that’s when the problems start.
Whatever the approach, mandate or processes adopted by each organization, you as the PM should be aware of the following best practices and ensure that they are adopted in one way or the other to guarantee your project’s financial transparency.
Since it’s the cold season, we wanted to share a list of maladies that will take your project down if you aren't paying attention or fail to keep your guard up. Each are preventable, and as the old saying goes: an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
It's inevitable--organizations will change the way that planning cycles are executed. For many organizations, this is a natural extension of the commitments that they are already making--EPMOs, strong and executive supported portfolio management, and results-focused execution. For others, this is a major shift. Here we explore some of the ways that annual planning can be improved.
There are many different methods a project manager can use to rebaseline the project plan. Unfortunately, the one most often used is reactive instead of proactive. Approach your rebaselining event in a careful and methodical manner to make it worthwhile and benefit the project.
Enterprise PMOs are going to continue to grow and evolve--and over time the vast majority of organizations will evolve their PMO models to an EPMO model. However, as we look at the way that companies manage their PMOs today, we can’t help thinking that there is a lot of work ahead.
For those project managers practicing agile practices and methods, you already have all the ingredients in place to optimize your green initiatives. This article will attempt to illustrate how agile principles can enhance and compliment projects that have sustainability as one of its main end goals.
Now is a great time for us as project managers to consider how we might change our habits for the better. It’s very easy to get trapped into a set of activities without examining how we can improve our delivery. By incorporating the three “Rs” (reduce, reuse and recycle) we can better manage our projects.
To really get environmental awareness to stick in an organization, you have to be prepared to go beyond setting an example and start to define green-aware policy and create a culture of sustainability. Here, we look at some practical, easy-to-implement ways that you can start to have a smaller environmental footprint when you execute on projects.
Adoption of LEED standards is typically framed as a means of reducing operating costs; the greater expense in designing and building sustainable facilities is offset by reduced energy consumption in future years. This becomes a theoretically easy business case that should be readily accepted: an investment in current periods providing future savings in costs. The challenge, however, is two-fold: it requires foresight and a willingness to invest in the long term, and there needs to be confidence that the promised benefits are realistic and attainable.
As environmental concerns and sustainability become bigger issues across all aspects of society, there is an argument for taking a rather longer-term view of product development--the concept of whole lifecycle thinking, ensuring that the costs of the product are considered from birth to retirement. What can project managers do to help develop and implement the concept?
One writer understands the need for carefully considering the impact and consequences of our decisions and actions, but why project management? Isn’t it everybody’s responsibility? But after researching and pondering the options out there, she realized that being green is actually pretty easy sometimes...and important.
In a world where there are many big challenges and all sorts of grand designs, there are massive projects taking place everywhere we look. What can a bridge halfway around the world teach us?
Any project team that doesn’t manage its current and legacy technical debt will eventually discover that it is impossible to produce features. It’s a slippery slope. Here’s what an agile project manager can do to work with a project team and a product owner.
Welcome to "The Truth About Projects", a popular new show that helps save you from missed budgets, blown timelines and under-performing or under-delivering projects by answering your questions on all things project management! Caller, you're on the air...
The Olympic rings are five intertwined circles that represent the elaborate and complex Games. Similarly, project managers can bring five rings of discipline together to manage very complex projects. Each of these rings builds upon the other--and they give the project manager a taxonomy by which to manage Olympian efforts
More than ever before, CIOs need to be extremely nimble and adaptable. They need to find ways to stay aligned with the business while doing more with less, and create scenario-based business plans and supporting budgets. Here are some tips on producing a flexible budget to management that focuses on aligning spending to economic realities and probable possibilities.
Are you putting your PMO in the position to make the right decisions every time? While the PMO has many functions, one of the most important is to facilitate decision-making--either by senior project stakeholders or within their own teams as escalation points for project managers. In this article, we look at how to ensure that we are as effective as possible in that process.
How well do mega-projects get managed in comparison with normal projects? Given the size, the scale, the visibility and the sensitivity of these projects, would it be reasonable to assume that they are managed more formally and more effectively than “normal” projects? Reasonable: possibly. Correct: sadly, no.
"Big" is somewhat defined in the eyes of the beholder. Beyond sheer size and mass, what makes big projects so daunting? Certainly as a project grows in size and scope, a number of things increase along with it--each adding complexity and risk to the effort. While there is no foolproof way to eliminate the risks associated to big projects, there are some things you can do to reduce those risks.
Recently, concerns have surfaced regarding the viability of the remaining three months of your project. Management wants quantitative evidence that it will finish successfully and on time. You need to act and act now. Before hitting the panic button, rely on these proven techniques to help achieve success.
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.
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?
Name the season and name the reason, but many firms schedule shutdowns of their facilities and staff during certain periods as a means to put a temporary stop in operations to control costs. But there are many in the workforce who prefer to exercise their own individual control over these down times in order to keep their industry active, carry on their work and remain effective contributors.
Rather than being half empty, maybe the glass is actually half full. One writer argues that the opportunities for project management to make inroads in an organization are actually better now than they have been for many years. Let’s look at some different scenarios.
To be successful in achieving our goals, project managers need to build a culture of efficiency within their teams. In this article, we explore how we build that culture of efficiency without sacrificing project quality--a step made all the more challenging given the economic constraints we face today.
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"I once took a cab to a drive-in. The movie cost me $190." - Stephen Wright |
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