Project Management

The Five Fundamental Rules of Project Management

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ October 15, 2007 ⋅ One comment

Okay, the title is a bit of a false advertising. I’m not revealing the top five rules – I’m actually looking for help in defining rules #3-5. Any input is appreciated – care to weigh in with an opinion? I’ve had a number of discussions, with some of the best project managers I know, as [...]

Driving to a Decision on your Projects

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ February 11, 2007 ⋅ Post a comment

I’ve written about the basic project proposal (for consulting groups) or charter (for internal IT) in the past. The point of any project summary document is to tee up the what and the why, using an outline like this: Description: What are we trying to accomplish here? What is our ultimate goal? Objectives: These are [...]

No, you mean Smart as a Bag of Hammers …

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ January 10, 2007 ⋅ Post a comment

My other working title was How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Methodologies … I’ll admit, I am a vocal advocate for the agile mentality. It appeals to my practical side, the time-to-value, impatient, western business mindset shared by most of the executives I have worked for and with. The “universal truth”: no [...]

The Iron Triangle – Quality is a Feature that We Choose to Omit from Projects

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ October 28, 2006 ⋅ 4 comments

Atwood recently wrote about the Iron Triangle – the three critical dimensions of any project. Most project management folks refer to the three legs as Money, Scope, and Time, and Atwood gives a good treatment for the software development crowd, tweaking the three terms (which can apply to any project, not just software) … Time [...]

Documentation Redux – a Shorthand Proposal Framework, and the PMO Surprise

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ July 30, 2006 ⋅ 2 comments

McDonald sent a nice comment on my last post – he’s writing a lot about project management lately, and we even chatted about some research he’s doing around boomer flight. Since I don’t get a ton of comments, I thought I’d respond with a post, instead. He poses the question: I am wondering if documentation [...]

Strategies for Malware in Consulting Engagements

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ May 28, 2006 ⋅ Post a comment

Last in a series on some practical legal mumbo jumbo (disclaimer: IANAL) for your Master Consulting Agreements (MCA). This one was particularly interesting to put in; it’s really interesting to see who catches it, but it was an amazing (in retrospect) observation that led us to include the language. The Trigger Event: A virus outbreak. [...]

Pointer to a nice blog post on Perfect Project Manager

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ May 17, 2005 ⋅ Post a comment

Maybe that’s a stretch goal, not a specific objective … still, check out this post on ProjectSteps. Also, here’s the Project Management section of my “blogroll” as of today – some good sources herein: About Management Agile Management Companion Computerworld Shark Tank Crossroads Dispatches Do More Than Manage EDventure Just For Small Business Managing Product [...]

Excellent series of posts for PMs communicating with non-techs

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ March 26, 2005 ⋅ Post a comment

I just scanned this really terrific series of posts by Tom Evslin at Fractals of Change – talks about “managing programmers”, but it’s quite insightful for a project manager or development lead trying to understand how they may be perceived by the business and management communities: Part 1, on the programmer-speak, is yet-another take on [...]

System not system

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ November 14, 2004 ⋅ Post a comment

Interesting dynamic in a meeting this week. For one fairly important project, we’ve spent a lot of time educating the business process owners, as well as the ultimate end-users, that this is not an IT project, even though we are implementing a new ERP system. This has been the message since the beginning, but the [...]

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