PM Best Practicces

Justification for Creating and Maintaining a PMO - A Proposal to Consider!

2008-03-12T19:53:00Z

Overview What is the price of missing critical project dates? Who is accountable for all everything coming together at the right time for all projects? Can you identify and resolve potential delays in your portfolio of projects or the status of all your projects? A Program or Project Management Office (PMO): Matches business goals with appropriate technology platform or solutions Provides centralized control of all projects under the program umbrella Reduces time to market Increases communication...(read more)

Resource Management with Daptiv PPM

2008-01-17T03:49:00Z

Using all processes and tools available for Resource Management in Daptiv PPM, the following process flow can be accomplished. Output from any area of resource management from planning through actuals can be created using the Cross-Tab report in Daptiv Work Intelligence (WI). The process can be modified if an organization doesn’t want to use all functions of the Daptiv PPM Resource Management. For instance, if an organization doesn’t have a defined resource manager role, the team can be created using...(read more)

Prioritization: Getting Executives to Pay Attention

2006-08-07T16:17:00Z

There seem to be a couple of immutable truths in the PMO world, especially in IT departments. First, there is always more work than can possibly be done. This usually surfaces in the form of an insatiable appetite for projects. Second, no matter how you prioritize the work, someone's going to be unhappy - and they'll try to make your life miserable by becoming the squeakiest wheel in the company. The answer, as we PMO practitioners all know, is to elevate the prioritization decisions up to the company...(read more)

Calling For Ideas!!!!

2006-07-27T23:21:00Z

eProject is going to put on a User Conference in Seattle soon and we want your input for ideas for sessions, breakouts, or expert advice. Please respond to this blog with ideas....(read more)

A Guide for Software Solution Selection

2006-07-20T04:40:00Z

I don't remember where I got this, but the guidelines are very logical and sensible. This guide outlines the factors that should be considered in the selection of a software package and its associated hardware. It indicates the steps that should be taken in the evaluation processes and possible sources of help. Section One: Objectives Section Two: Costs Section Three: The Requirements Specification Section Four: Who to Approach Section Five: Evaluating the Alternatives Section One: Objectives The...(read more)

The Value of Project Portfolio Management (PPM)

2006-07-03T14:49:00Z

The concept of "project portfolio management" has become popular as a way to manage business investments in the same way "financial portfolio management" has been a popular way to manage financial investments. At a high-level, many of the same concepts are involved. You have a limited amount of money to apply to your business. You want to manage this money as a portfolio to maximize the overall value and to allow you to reach your goals. A portfolio management process provides a way to select, prioritize...(read more)

PMO Success Story: A.G. Edwards Case Study

2006-06-07T03:05:00Z

There's an excellent article in CIO Magazine this month showing how A.G. Edwards reinvented its PMO to bring their projects to an 88% success rate (from about 50% originally). Some key lessons: They created a 25-step project management high-level framework of just the high level activities common to all projects. They didn't inflict a detailed application development methodology and left the "how" flexible, as long as the "what" was satisfied. At a more detailed level, they used their Enterprise...(read more)

The Invisible User Interface

2006-06-06T18:22:00Z

"There is no Spoon" is a popular quote from the "Matrix", where the young prodigy hints to the protagonist while levitating and bending a spoon with his mind, that the spoon is a mere container of energy, and is symbolically irrelevant to reality. Media sponges that we are, we like to cling on to every catchy metaphor we run across, and frame it in our own context. Software interaction designers have been trying to eliminate the "spoon" for years, to provide direct, unimpeded access to the raw data...(read more)

Project Management/Delivery Methodology Quick Reference

2006-05-22T17:45:00Z

Whether you are creating a project management/delivery methodology based on the PMBOK, Prince2, RUP or other processes or whether you have five phases or nine phases; consider the following as a general guide to what needs to be done in a general order or timing. I have created many methodologies and use the following as a map to success. Initiating Phase Phase Description Initiating is the process to define, analyze, prioritize, and approve a project before work can begin. In some companies, the...(read more)

Do you log your time?

2006-05-17T10:28:00Z

In my "Maximizing IT Capacity" webinar the first poll asks "How much of your time do you log? Of the choices, "none" is the most common response, with "project time only" running a distant second. Yet when it comes to understanding resource issues, actual time is the most valuable information around. By analyzing the prior 12 months time records at PeopleSoft IT, we increased our project capacity 30%, and staved off drastic staff cuts during the Oracle battle. Why is this information so valuable...(read more)

Too many project requests? Scorecard them!

2006-04-12T02:34:00Z

One of then biggest obstacles to successful project delivery occurs right at the beginning of the lifecycle – deciding which projects to approve. You take in 20, 50, 100 project requests, and then it’s decision time! What do you do? If you’re like most IT departments, one of two scenarios occurs. 1 - The CIO looks the list over and decides, then takes the resulting flack from the stakeholders who were denied. And often his decision is based on the squeaky wheel principle – who will squawk the loudest...(read more)

Steps for Starting a PMO

2006-04-10T16:07:00Z

STEP 1 (1-3 months) Meet with Governance or the Project Steering Committee to craft a PMO Director or PMO Manager job description Hire the right people STEP 2 (3-5 days) Hold PMO Planning session to discuss PMO Roles, assign committee chairs, discuss deliverables, and timeframes STEP 3 (10 weeks) Project Inventory Focus (or Committee): Initiate a review of current projects by segmentation: by Division, by Project Management Office, by Initiative, by department or division, etc. In this age of electronic...(read more)

The focus should be Project Delivery, not Project Management

2006-04-05T18:01:00Z

I feel many of the foundations of project management are taught without urgency and as if things were frozen in time. We actually work in a very dynamic environment. Though I have been teaching project management for years, I have changed my focus to one of teaching project delivery instead of just project management in the past few years. Knowing how to deliver a project is much more valuable in today's environment than just knowing how to manage a project. The Project Delivery Expert (PDE)...(read more)

Project Management and Innovation; Not Mutually Exclusive

2006-04-03T03:52:00Z

The Ten Faces of Innovation , by Tom Kelly of IDEO, with Jonathan Littman, is an excellent book on how to create a truly innovative environment (as opposed to just saying "from now on, we're going to be innovative"---which nearly never works). Some think that innovation has nothing to do with project management---that innovation is about generating ideas, and project management is merely about executing them. In my view, this is absolutely wrong , as you will hopefully see as I share a summary of...(read more)

Presentation Skills for Project Managers

2006-04-03T03:50:00Z

Perception is reality. A project manager can be great at the "science" of project management, and yet still be perceived as ineffective. Often it comes down to a simple lack of presentation skills. After all, communication is 90% of a project manager's job, according to the Project Management Institute. Here's a great site with tips and techniques for those who struggle with giving presentations. And it's geared towards Chemical Engineers, many of whom are "communicatively challenged" (how's that...(read more)