Compressed Project Management Schedules Discourage Innovation and Improvement
Studies have found that creative solutions to problems actually decrease under external pressure such as deadlines.
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Three Ways Project Management Estimates Fail And How To Avoid Them
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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The Most Effective Part of the Day In Project Management?
It only takes one key item to make a day successful. Often for me it is a well written e-mail that outlines a problem and drives a set of actions. As busy as the rest of the day may be, this one item makes the day a success and often, if it was insightful enough, makes days or weeks successful.
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Project Managers Repeat After Me: Software Development Is A Repeatable Process
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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Improving Project Management Productivity Does Not Save Time
That’s the ticket. Let’s get a great project management tool that will help us get everything done faster. We’ll complete all our projects quicker and finally deliver more of them on time! Not so fast young Jedi apprentice ....
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One Reason To Always Support The Other Guy’s Project
As a project manager we have our own project and often have to fight to keep resources and schedules running right. So what do we do when that other project manger comes requesting our resources? Do everything we can to help them out.
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Don’t Squash Your Project Management Pockets of Excellence
Just about every organization has projects or pockets of people doing exceptional work - with or without sophisticated project management tools. Here is one approach that has helped ensure we didn't squash these efforts as we further improved project management in the organization.
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Don’t Kill The Golden Goose of Project Management – The Crisis
We certainly would not sell off the fairytale Golden Goose to pay for today’s meal. We would find a way to eat today or go hungry and keep the Golden Goose until she laid that next Gold egg. Yet, too often we ignore each project management tool Golden Goose as it comes along.
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Project Management Crisis? Hurry, But Do Nothing
We had a crisis. Another project had an emergency so we were losing a significant portion of our engineering staff to go work on that project. We had to act now!
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Project Management Initiative or Insubordination?
Initiative as a project management tool is one of those double-edged swords. We often must take the initiative when we lead a project. But what about initiatives that appear insubordinate? Sometimes it is a project management risk worth taking.
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Your Project Needs Business Rules, Not Meetings
It is a big deal today. Project management tools to get people together. Crowd source. Wisdom of the crowds. Even in the Agile Manifesto: "individuals and interactions over processes and tools." Hogwash!
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Project Management Or Anesthetized By Analytics?
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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Project Management or Death by Detail?
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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One Key Secret for Improving Project Management – Just Do It!
There are many techniques for improving project management in your organization. There are many newer technologies and project management tools that can replace your existing technologies. Why these help is not always because they are inherently better or improved over what you had before. Often, it is just the key act of changing in an orderly and well thought out manner that makes the huge difference.
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In Project Management 9+3 Is Not Equal To 12
Benson's Bylaw: People will work at a quality deficit if given insufficient time.
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