We all seem to know that throwing people at a late project may only make the project later. Yet, we all too often still do it for a variety of reasons including as a way to manage risk in a project. Having your best people ready to jump in and solve problems appears to be a smart strategy, but is it really?
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April 26, 2010 Bruce Benson
Risk Management
Project risk management is not about not having problems. Risk management is about being able to handle the problems that come up. With good risk management the problems that occur have a very low probability of ultimately impacting the project. Here are two approaches that have worked for us.
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April 20, 2010 Bruce Benson
Risk Management
As good project managers we all factor risk into our planning through our project management tools. Wouldn't it be great to have a risk free project? No, I don't think so. This might be worse than a project failure for you and your team.
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April 12, 2010 Bruce Benson
Risk Management
Certification and training is a great way to improve your team's knowledge and skills. But as a project management tool for getting your projects to suddenly start to deliver on time, on budget and with good quality ... not so much.
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April 4, 2010 Bruce Benson
Change Management
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
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
Too many solutions are just patches on the system and come from being an expert on patches rather than solving the underlying problem. This is just another rut!
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January 25, 2010 Bruce Benson
Change Management
The bottom line is that you can know if your project management tool estimating is accurate. More to the point, estimating in a project can be verifiably accurate.
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December 21, 2009 Bruce Benson
Schedule
Not all improvements require a fancy new development methodology or project management tool. Removing existing cultural and management inhibitors, while often not easy, can vault your team or organization to the next level of performance.
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December 7, 2009 Bruce Benson
Change Management
Balance using your messaging (e-mail, texting, voice mail, etc.) project management tools with talking one-on-one to key people, but beware of overdoing it when talking in person.
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November 30, 2009 Bruce Benson
Communication
My article on e-mail infoglut resulted in a pointer from DoddsSimon to Inbox Zero by Merlin Mann. Merlin takes classic time management ideas and applies them to e-mail. One notion he presents is that much of your e-mail becomes "dead skeletal husks" and can be thrown away. I'm going to suggest instead that your "old" e-mail can be a great project management tool.
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November 24, 2009 Bruce Benson
Communication, Time Management
