For any and all projects you lead, a constant mantra should be “keep the stakeholders involved.” It will help you to get ahead of potential risks and changes to scope as your project moves towards completion, and it will be critical to its ultimate success. When in doubt, overcommunicate.
Why inject complexity into your projects when elementary math will suffice? Cut through the quantification using these three simple formulas when engaging with stakeholders.
What happens when the consultant falls short of their billing as an industry expert? Here is a humorous look at some of the consultant characters that you may have encountered--and survival tips for dealing with them.
While there are several strategies for improving client satisfaction, a sustained focus on three essential attributes can help cement a successful consulting engagement.
With business competition increasing, organizations have turned to third parties for delivery models that offer new ways of fulfilling their information processing and data needs. Managing an IT service is very different from managing IT products and requires new skills. Contract establishment, vendor management and education of the business staff is needed. This paper addresses some of the key areas to consider when contracting for large-scale IT service contracts.
Maintaining control of your project is a good thing. Controlling people is not. Still, you need your team members to provide reasonable status updates on their work. So how do you “trust but verify” without crossing the line of managing the project to micromanaging the people?
To achieve business leadership, we need to have competitive advantage direction from people dedicated to the principles of cost leadership. While it may not get quite the hype that cost reduction efforts do at an organization, it has the potential to meet crucial company goals.
Don’t let an unproductive organizational culture keep you from ensuring your project is successful. Using tactics that leverage your workforce and stakeholders in a special way, you can maintain progress despite obstructions.
One of the keys to building a project portfolio management program that is embraced by the entire organization is the establishment of a common set of project artifacts. To get started, here are downloadable samples of six key artifacts, including the project brief, plan, status report, delay report, health bulletin and interdependency journal.
Rigor in process around project management is not enough to stay professionally relevant. In fact, the nature of our work is such that process may not need to be our primary focus. One PM shares how certain situations can inform us about when process should be emphasized and when relationships should matter more.
|
"If you want to please only the critics, don't play too loud, too soft, too fast or too slow." - Arturo Toscanini |
