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HTML clipboard Too many IT projects & departments slide into a death spiral by playing it safe and just delivering software from their projects rather than producing business value and operational improvements. Here is the way out.
The Project Office: Bureaucratic nightmare or First Aid
We look at three types of project management office(PMO) and offer ideas on which is right for your organization and which types are a disaster.
Project Estimating: Good, Bad & "In the Ball Park"
Estimating project duration and costs is tough for even the most skilled PMs and it taxes executives too. See some of the estimating fantasies and some ideas that will help. Read the article and then comment in the blog
Three Moments of Truth on a Project
If your projects are like a circus where you march behind the elephant with a big shovel, consider how you are handling the three moments of truth that largely determine how sponsors, stakeholders and your team will interact with you.
Don't Fall into the the Activity Trap
Instead, frame your project within measured business achievements and give everyone crystal-clear and unambiguous checkpoints to monitor.
Borrowing Project Team Members
Try to borrow a team member or two from another department and suddenly it's the middle ages with feudal department managers fighting to the death to avoid sharing a resource. Sure they promised their "full support"; during initiation but now you have to battle for each of your resources..
Project Offices: Good, Bad & Clueless
Too many project offices (PMO) are known for paper-shuffling, pointless meetings, bureaucracy and little else. There are alternatives designs that may fit your organization and produce business value, not just paper
Manage Projects with More than Just Dates
Sponsors and project managers doom their projects to failure when they manage only the due date rather than all four corners of a project: business value, budget, risk and due date. When we focus only on dates, people may lower the business value, increase the risk, and increase the cost of hitting that day without giving decision-makers the opportunity to decide which trade-offs they want. In this issue we lay out how to manage the trade-offs between these four corners to improve project success rates. Read the article
Status Reports that Stupefy
Too often project managers deliver progress reports that stupefy executives and tell them nothing about what's going on. This undermines the PM's credibility. These mind-numbing techniques range from "techno -babble" to the "Girl Scout cookie approach."
Where is your Organization in its PM Evolution?
As organizations evolve though stages in their project management processes, knowing where your company is can help you survive and do better on your projects.
Why do so Many Project Fail?
Many organizations suffer 50% or higher project failure rates. We look at the reasons and what's required of PMs, sponsors, portfolio managers and team members to improve success rates.
Chartering: Throwing Gasoline on Smoldering Embers
A good project charter throws gasoline on smoldering embers. We want all the potential problems to flare up before we start work on the project so we can resolve then early.
Making Good Team Assignments
At 4pm.com, we spend a lot of time teaching clients and students to manage projects with achievements and not fall into what we call the "Activity Trap." PMs fall into this trap when their project plan is nothing but a "to do" list of features, good ideas and a laundry list of requirements. These PM's projects fail most of the time - finishing late, over budget and producing little of value because of the double-curse of the activity trap. Click to read the rest of the article
Are puppy projects making a mess of your portfolio?
Gaining control of an organization's portfolio of projects is no easy matter. Each segment of the portfolio presents its own challenges. But, no segment is tougher to control than the segment we call puppy projects. Organizations give birth to litters of these little projects every year and they usually run uncontrolled, making a mess everywhere. Executives often kid themselves, thinking that they can focus on only the large strategic projects and somehow ram those through. However, that never works because there are too many puppies underfoot, and the mess they make is down low in the organization.
