Business Proposals and The Lesson of Jabberwocky

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 a lack of direction; it didn't take the reader (the decision maker) through a clear progression. Admittedly, the subject matter was a bit technical and…

When is a project a Project? How to prevent the buildup of backlogged requests

I just wrote something up (internal wiki) that I thought was common knowledge, but I think it's one of those soft-skills things that makes total sense once you hear about it - but somebody needs to tell you. I think of one of the reasons that IT (at times) intimidates the business - or why IT gets the cold shoulder when it comes to process improvement efforts - is that we can get a bit too wrapped up in the…

Driving to a Decision on your Projects

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 project objectives, not business objectives. How will we know we are done? Benefits: Why should we consider doing this? What are we getting? Alternatives: Are…

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

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 of the communications associated with coding and testing (emails, archiving of successive release of code, meeting recordings, archiving of test results, etc.) can in any…