Project Management Best Practices Blog
Project management articles, project manager in actionvideos, project templates and tools from our online instruction courses. Our instructors use these materials to supplement and customize their student's learning. Join the discussion of blunders in our project blog.
Weekly Project
"Best Practices" Articles |
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Sunday, November 22, 2009 8:51 PM
When our project planning with customers is like letting them order at a fast-food drive-up window, we get an endless list of requirements. Then we can’t control scope, finish on time or produce any business value. Customers may be happy when we start fast but are dissatisfied at the end when they get little of value.
Tuesday, November 17, 2009 10:21 AM
"At Tier #1, projects are few, simple and fun but by Tier #3 its disorganized chaos with too many projects, too few people and way too many priority #1 projects. Learn the challenges and opportunities for project managers at each of the 5 tiers so you know the best way to survive now plus how to get ready for what’s coming next to your organization’s project management world.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009 6:54 PM
All too often project managers give status reports that undermine their credibility and give executives little information on which to base decisions. What’s even worse, bad status reports don’t give early warning on big problems. Let’s look at some common but useless ways to report status and then talk about the best practices techniques to use on your status reports.
Wednesday, November 04, 2009 4:53 PM
Succeeding on cross-functional projects is a survival requirement for many organizations. But these projects require that we handle authority, workloads and rewards differently. When we don’t, the cross-functional effort usually follows a downward spiral of conflict and blame avoidance.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009 1:26 PM
As projects multiply like weeds in an organization, they devour the time of technical staff and line supervisors leaving little time for people's "real jobs." Yet despite a project failure rate that can inch past 70%, some executives and project managers continue to live in a land of fables. Let's look at the fantasies and then the survival techniques you should use in a project dense organization.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009 3:51 PM
Do your project teams expend their energy on relentless problem solving or on avoiding blame? Does the team challenge every idea so the best solution emerges or is there too much concern about rank and job titles or hurting people's feelings? Let's look at the various paths project teams take as they form and then we'll discuss how a PM
should guide the process.
Sunday, November 15, 2009 5:15 AM
A PM and an executive meet about a project. The PM silently vows to prevent any changes to the plan or schedule. Across the table sits an executive who feels he's drowning in a sea of project manager techno-babble and BS. See the predictable outcome and then learn a better way to customize a project for an executive and win approval
Monday, September 28, 2009 5:50 AM
Too often these sessions are nothing but the final round of the "Project Blame Game." Read about how to make them a valuable part of your personal, and organizational, project improvement program.
Wednesday, July 08, 2009 5:02 PM
The project approval process is fraught with peril and games. Sponsors kid themselves that they can "improve" the completion dates with no other consequences. Project managers play their own games, faking cardiac arrest whenever anyone suggests reducing the project team, the budget or the post-project reward dinner menu.Let's look at three of the fantasies the happen during project approval.
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