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Project Management
Help for the Newly Minted Project Manager
Congratulations! Due to the recent [acquisition / divestiture, market expansion / contraction, organizational realignments, other] you have been identified as a Critical Resource for this particular bit of business process change. And, to help us implement these changes, you have been named the Project Manager for this effort. So now you are a Project Manager [...]
Idle Time is a Good Thing for IT
Lots of good conversations recently about managing IT, Finance, and other constrained resources for projects. We have implemented tools to model available time; when trying to understand what new work can get added to the pile, it helps immeasurably when you understand how much time you have available, plus what else has been committed. This [...]
Estimating Bird-Dogging Time for Project Tasks
New year, new projects, and new adventures in getting folks to think in project management terms. I’ve written before about Calendar time vs. Effort time, but this past week we came up with a new distinction that is worthwhile to call out. When working with the business and getting folks to estimate how much time [...]
The Magic In the Middle
I don’t know where I first heard that phrase, or what it originally meant, but I have been using it a lot in the last few weeks … Consider the entire user population for any web site or application. You can generalize all user populations into three Pareto-inspired groups … Top 20% – The folks [...]
Defining Business Benefits: Hard and Soft
All projects should have a clear objective, a practical plan, and an understanding of the costs and benefits to get the thing done. Easy to say, but a lot of project teams struggle to crisply and clearly define specific business benefits. One way to move the process forward would be to have a clear understanding [...]
The Delicate Art of Pushing Back
Commiserating a week or so ago with an old friend, struggling mightily with some external consulting firm providing technology talent, developing customer management systems for Big Sales Company. There were some critical dependencies on the server side, and the (internal) project team needed some on-site assistance working through the issues. Ad hoc phone support was [...]
Over / Under Communication for Project Managers
It is often said that you can’t over-communicate, but I’m willing to bet most folks – and especially your project sponsors – underestimate the cost and effort of this critical component of project management. Consider this fair warning – and a good checklist for folks wanting to get into IT, project, or functional management. Media [...]
Location, Location, Location: Terminology Confusion in ERP Projects
Have you ever experienced the clash of terminology that results when supply chains are brought together, due to acquisition or merger? The typical scenario: different groups using multiple terms to describe where product is manufactured at and shipped from; folks use terms like “location”, “plant”, and “site” interchangeably, and confusion can result – are we [...]
Dueling Collaboration Portals
I noticed an interesting phenomenon this afternoon; we are experimenting with SharePoint as our internal project management / collaboration portal. A nice platform to choose, because it’s popularity is growing, and there are a wide selection of add-on products and development partners ready, willing, and able to help us spend our money to make it [...]
MS Project, Early and Often
99.9% of the project managers I know have at least heard of Microsoft Project (MSP), and all understand it to be a very capable, yet very complex environment for estimating and managing projects. But it’s Saturday evening and I’m a bit cynical tonight, so I’ll say that 50% of those people don’t really understand how [...]
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