Question: We are in financial trouble. Even though my team carefully researches costs for new hardware and software with multiple vendors, somehow as time goes on the expenditures on each implementation always costs up to three or four times what we budgeted. Is it us?
A.
You are being “taken” by sales people from your hardware vendors who are behaving like used car salesmen. They quote you a low price to get your management’s approval, but when it comes time to actually install you have to add on many necessary extras you really need that they never revealed.
B.
It is probably you and your team if you are only figuring initial hardware costs in your project budget. The total cost of any new installation should be calculated both in immediate costs and in long-term costs over the life of the equipment, including non-tangible expenses. Only then can vendor offerings be fairly compared and evaluated.
C.
Management should not expect project teams to be pricing hardware. This should be done exclusively by someone from the purchasing department. Your only role is to install whatever arrives on the dock. In this way, if the costs go up you and your team escape the blame.
D.
Since recent costs for information technology (IT) items have quadrupled over the life of the equipment, you should multiply any future vendor contract pricing by four and alert accounting how much cash to have on hand in the immediate future. Always pick the lowest bid, as in today’s market all hardware is basically the same.
The whole point of Earned Value Management is to use past project performance measurements to depict the current standings and predict future efforts and resources required to complete the project goals. If you think in pictures, this illustrated formula will aid in your pursuit of certification or provide a refreshing perspective for veteran practitioners.
Establishing a “program approach” allows leadership to control performance across multiple projects to achieve maximum efficiency and ensure alignment to strategic goals. The “Intelligent Project Management” model (iPM) provides a fully integrated approach utilizing smart controls, greater visibility of performance data and ensuring people have the right capabilities to support delivery.
The work breakdown structure is fundamental to project execution. When we expend insufficient time and develop inadequate detail on the WBS, the project will yield poor results and we can expect to see last-minute identification of critical elements. Here we look in greater detail at this essential tool.
Earned value management is a technique that integrates scope, cost and time to highlight how the project has done in the past and predict how it is expected to do in the future. This article discusses a few basic concepts of EVM and is useful for anyone looking to get started on this topic, as well as for candidates preparing for certification.
The project workflow framework enables even the inexperienced project manager to use detailed step-by-step guidance, examples, tools and practical advice, freeing experienced project managers to manage programs and portfolios and promoting better use of project resources to reduce the cost of projects across all industries.
In this article, we look at the key to schedule success, historical and repeatable tasks, why schedules fail, how to eliminate the target date tango and build a schedule defense that manages the risks.
Continuing to develop a failing project is a big challenge. Improving the environment and culture to ensure successful delivery requires integrating the bottom-up approach from a small task level with a top-down orientation of strategic management. Learn how to diagnose failure and implement useful techniques.
Project managers must ensure that projects are aligned with business strategy and value creation for their company and its shareholders. The author demonstrates the importance of the bridge between the business and project worlds, even when there is not a clear link between their objectives. But one objective always remains the same: to create economic value.
Outside of the discipline of cost engineering, the concept of project levels isn’t well documented. That hasn’t stopped the spread of the concept, but without supporting documentation, project managers have been left to make up their own definitions. Let’s question our own creative definitions by exploring some common themes, then look at a best practice to help clear the fog. Finally, we’ll apply what we learn to our own projects and programs.
