Benefit

Help for the Newly Minted Project Manager

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ November 21, 2011 ⋅ One comment

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 [...]

The Hegemony of Large Numbers – Ignoring Common Sense

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ February 28, 2011 ⋅ Post a comment

Ok, maybe I’m stretching the meaning there, but that’s a cool sounding title, and what I see as an interesting phenomenon. People get excited about Large Numbers, and think they have meaning and importance simply because they are Large Numbers. Big Errors For example – years ago, when an application manager was whirling around the [...]

Business Proposals and The Lesson of Jabberwocky

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ March 28, 2010 ⋅ Post a comment

When someone asks my opinion on their writing, I’ll get fairly detailed; I’ve noted in the past that there is a lot of power and influence in the written word, and it’s fairly important to get it done well, or your project proposals just never seem to get off the ground. This particular proposal suffered from [...]

If I Told You a Fractal Solution, Could You Change the CEO’s Mind?

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ December 6, 2009 ⋅ Post a comment

As the new year approaches, debates over the “value” of IT and business projects intensify; it’s not holiday stress, but the excitement of the approaching New [fiscal] Year. Lately, I’m hearing more about the struggle to quantify business value, especially when selecting those few projects that will “make the cut”. We will definitely iterate on [...]

Three Business-Case Arguments for Agile, & The Moose On The Table

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ January 15, 2008 ⋅ Post a comment

Another conversation at the start of the new year – this time in our PMO, concerning project prioritization and resource assignments. Many organizations follow a “parallel” model, launching multiple projects at any one time and working concurrently to move things forward. To be fair, this often occurs because we start work on one or two [...]

Innovation That Matters – Substance Over Style

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ January 12, 2008 ⋅ 2 comments

This the time of year when organizations (companies, departments, and teams) review their performance from the previous year. Breathless presentations are made to upper management and/or the Board of Directors, in late December or early January. Typically, the IT department will go through their projects and talk about how many significant chunks of work got [...]

PM Anti-Patterns That Increase IT Project Cycle Time

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ December 8, 2007 ⋅ Post a comment

Lots of conversation at work these days about PMO, resource prioritization, and reducing cycle time for IT projects. I feel a series of posts coming on … IAPL, we launched a project to bring test discipline to our technology efforts. The team was writing standards and guidelines for test scripts, implementing integrated testing tools supplied [...]

Defining the Business Value of a Project

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ October 25, 2007 ⋅ Post a comment

I’m following a project management meme lately; while freely admitting that I’m oversimplifying some complex topics, I will forge ahead with … project “value”. At work, we’ve been talking about the classic challenge of putting a business value on a project. I call it a “classic” challenge because it’s a basic requirement for every prioritization [...]

Chargebacks Redux – Some Good May Come Of It

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ October 9, 2007 ⋅ Post a comment

Okay – to be fair, that really wasn’t the end of the chargebacks conversation. One of my cohorts suggested that we each come up with an argument counter to our position; I needed to come up with something “good” about chargebacks. Actually, it’s quite easy to come up with the one good thing; the only [...]

Yet Another Discussion on IT Chargebacks

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ October 7, 2007 ⋅ One comment

It felt anachronistic, getting into a surprisingly good conversation on the pros and cons of IT chargebacks this past week … We’re not seriously thinking about it (thank goodness), but a group of us did go through the intellectual exercise of discussing the good/bad/ugly of such an approach. Unfortunately, most of the “debate” focused on [...]