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Posts tagged "Tracking" (Page 6)
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
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
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
IEEE Spectrum ran an article on "Infoglut" in October 2009. The article was light on specific techniques to manage "Infoglut", so here are five related to e-mail that I've found useful for the project manager, or any manager for that matter.
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November 20, 2009 Bruce Benson
Time Management
Manufacturing buffers help to smooth over problems at each stage of production. The project management tool "honesty buffer" is when someone holds back reporting issues and problems to make things look better than they are. Reducing or eliminating such buffers quickly exposes problems and enables rapid process and quality improvement.
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October 29, 2009 Bruce Benson
Change Management, Communication, Reporting
Look into using your existing business systems as part of your project management tools. The business systems used by everyone to do their daily jobs can often provide more current and predictive information than relying solely on our traditional project management tools.
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September 2, 2009 Bruce Benson
Communication, Reporting
If we want a successful project, we may want to develop it remotely, so it is away from the chaos of the main office.
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August 30, 2009 Bruce Benson
Change Management, Communication, Reporting
Sometimes we just need to bring order to one key project process to stabilize and enhance the overall project.
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August 25, 2009 Bruce Benson
Change Management, Schedule
Pay Attention. That's it. Pay Attention. The Ultimate Project Management Tool.
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July 26, 2009 Bruce Benson
Communication
All I had to do was to get about 500 software defects fixed, according to my project management tools. My boss told me I had to have daily meetings with everyone concerned to get this done. This meeting centric approach to managing this project turned out to be utter madness. Simple measurements, that anyone can do, demonstrated that these meetings had no discernible impact.
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July 20, 2009 Bruce Benson
Communication, Reporting
Your development team is telling you it will take 24 weeks to do product development. You only have 20 weeks to your product launch window. After that, the product won't be competitive. What does a good project manager do?
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July 5, 2009 Bruce Benson
Schedule
A simple project management tool, such as computing an average, can transform a project from chaotic and out of control to suddenly predictable and manageable. Here are some simple averages that made a huge difference in our management of large and complex projects.
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June 28, 2009 Bruce Benson
Reporting
Project management tools is all about turning an out of control situation into a rational, methodical discipline. Sometimes, however, losing some control of the situation can be the best course of action.
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June 19, 2009 Bruce Benson
Change Management
Our team, led by a baby faced brand new 2nd lieutenant, delivered on schedule the annual software release of a critical national defense early warning system. This on time delivery was a first in memory of the organization.
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June 12, 2009 Bruce Benson
Change Management
Consider organizing your project management change effort as a "service" tool. This approach helps reduce resistance and it highlights how you are here to help. For us, it resulted in rapid improvements where previous efforts had little or no impact.
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June 5, 2009 Bruce Benson
Change Management
