Earned Value Management is not just fuzzy math, but you need to help people understand it. The problem is not in the math itself, but in the difficulty of explaining EVM to stakeholders who don’t understand the numbers and what they mean. How do you sell EVM to your stakeholders without focusing on the math? Here we look at EVM for the masses.
Developing a phased approach that brings continuous and measurable improvements is key to implementing an effective SLM capability. SLM isn’t about service level agreements, layers of complex processes and such. SLM is about aligning the services and capabilities IT provides to the organization with its fundamental operational and competitive sustainability needs.
Do you make trade-offs with maintainability and adaptability in order to meet release dates? Fortunately, this hidden-cost fate is avoidable--but only for organizations that make a commitment. This article introduces you to technical debt and its common symptoms. You'll learn the basic steps to set up a repayment plan, the common causes of technical debt and effective strategies for paying it down.
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!
Doing more with less people, less tools and less funding has become the norm--and 2012 doesn’t look to be much different. How can you continue to service a growing backlog of project requests in the face of static or shrinking budgets and a dwindling pool of project professionals? Believe it or not, there are things that can be done and ways to keep progress moving forward. Here are 10 tips you might find useful.
Seldom do our bosses hear how we project managers prove quantifiable cost savings directly from our efforts. Here’s how one practitioner did so in surprising fashion, with five conclusions to share that can help you prove your worth.
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.
Projects are financial and strategic investments that exist to deliver value. Cash flow modeling is an essential step to produce return on investment (ROI) financial measurements that support the project selection process. The author poses six key questions project managers should ask at the onset of the process to produce an accurate financial representation of the project and enable value creation.
Estimating something to be developed in a product—something that has not been done before—involves inherent uncertainty, not the least about how much work is required to produce a finished product. Estimation is about having a grip on the size of a project in terms of the amount of work, complexity or functionality, and is critical to the business.
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.
|
"O, it is excellent To have a giant's strength! But it is tyrannous To use it like a giant." - William Shakespeare |
