Does your project management tool tell you how much effort your team is expending on your critical project? A simple calculation showed me that I was managing a house of cards that could come tumbling down unless I took action immediately.
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March 29, 2010 Bruce Benson
Reporting
I talked excitedly about taking a small team of developers and reducing an eight-year backlog of change requests to nothing after two years of incremental development. My colleagues at the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) were unimpressed. "But Bruce, your experience may not be the definitive one!" This wonderful statement was used to dismiss everything I knew in just the few seconds it took to say it.
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March 22, 2010 Bruce Benson
Planning
Figuring out the difference between the official project management plan and the actual plan people are carrying out provides deep insights into how your organization is performing. Discovering this difference often provides a launching pad for rapidly aligning and improving your organization's productivity and on time delivery of products and services.
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March 15, 2010 Bruce Benson
Planning
The official project management plan is logically critical to the success of any effort and should be reflected in your project management tools. However, too many organizations keep their plans restricted or hidden for various reasons. This almost always sacrifices focus and productivity. The fifth insight that helped our projects exceed expectations was to have a very visible plan at every stage of planning and execution.
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March 8, 2010 Bruce Benson
Planning
The official project management plan we are following may not be all that official and may not be the plan our team is following. Getting the official plan and the current plan to be the same and reflected in our project management tools will help vault our project to success. Here are four insights that have made a huge difference in the effectiveness of our plans.
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March 4, 2010 Bruce Benson
Planning
