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Archive by category "Planning" (Page 4)
There are simple project management tools that allow us to quickly and accurately estimate projects (or tasks) even when we don't have a lot of time to make the estimate nor a lot of details on the effort.
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January 4, 2011 Bruce Benson
Planning
Estimating the project is one of the greatest challenges, with or without fancy project management tools, that a manager will face. Here are three areas where we've seen estimates fail and how we've avoided doing the same.
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September 7, 2010 Bruce Benson
Planning
I had a job interview for VP of Development. The interviewing VP with a long history in the industry asked me a simple question: Did I think software development was a repeatable process? I said yes. I won't describe the ensuing discussion except to say I didn't get the job. We didn't even get to talk about project management tools!
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August 23, 2010 Bruce Benson
Planning
Objective project management tools are something we all look for. However, too often the move to become fully objective results in a loss of insights while we are trying to figure out how to become analytical. Here are a few "gut" insights that have helped us avoid this problem.
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June 22, 2010 Bruce Benson
Planning
There is great comfort in trying to know every detail so that we as managers can make sure everything goes right. This desire for working out all the details, using project management tools, instead often results in detail overload that obscures the most important aspects of the project. Instead, there is an often simpler approach that works surprisingly well.
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June 15, 2010 Bruce Benson
Planning
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
Planning is a way of proactively knowing what you are doing, before you do it. However, there is always a plan running - even when you don't think you have a plan. Knowing this plan and accounting for it in your project management tools can vault you to success.
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February 24, 2010 Bruce Benson
Planning
