Risk: Manage It or Be Managed By It
July 2010
Risk management is a core and indispensable element of sound project management, and if omitted, can result in the project sponsors and managers constantly mitigating unforeseen issues over the course of a project. These unforeseen issues can affect projects in a variety of ways from delays in project milestone completion to project cancellation. Read more about how our approach to risk management can increase the successful implementation of your projects.
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A practical approach to vendor selection
April 2010
Selecting the right vendor to further a corporate initiative is an endeavor where good decision making is imperative and yet the process is often managed without a defined approach. Adhering to an approach which emphasizes open communication and strong governance works towards preventing the common negative outcomes of vendor selection: This article identifies a practical approach for successfully managing the vendor selection process.
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Change for Good: Sustainable Approaches to Doing More with Less
September 2009
The reality in which we must succeed today is one of increasing pressure to deliver tangible benefits and quantifiable value with an ever-tightening resource belt. Too often organizations rely solely on quick hit conventional cost cutting strategies during down turns, crippling their ability to take full advantage of the time-sensitive tipping point of the economy's recovery. Despite (or perhaps with the help of) the current market, an organization can leverage a combination of strategic project/program management program and cost optimization approaches to prioritize initiatives, emerge successfully and sustain that success over time. This article highlights some key principles and approaches to help position your organization for long term success.
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Virtual Teams – A Business Solution
February 2009
Work teams are defined now more than ever by their uniformity of purpose rather than their location and the same holds true for today's worker. Rapid upward trends in teleworking require that best practices and processes be identified and developed in your organization in order to support the implementation and management of virtual work technologies and teams.
Virtual teaming, just like any other business concept, will only yield the desired benefits for the organization if implemented correctly. With this article we provide insight into the benefits and considerations for such an undertaking from the employer, project/project team, customer, and employee perspectives.
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One of the largest threats to your project’s success: People
February 2009
“People risks” are not warm, fuzzy, or squishy. They are very real threats to your project’s execution and ROI.
We all expect a Project Manager to manage risks. We talk about dependencies, resource constraints, contingency plans, funding, back-out plans, volume testing, and compliance risk. Yet even after documenting, quantifying, and mitigating all of those, the team may still have a sinking feeling that they just can’t put their finger on. We may be sensing danger but choosing to overlook it because they are dangers of, well, a “human” kind. That sinking feeling may actually precede the sinking of the project; people issues are icebergs in your path to success.
A project that was “successful” (based on flawless, on schedule/on budget execution) can be a failure if the users never fully adopt the new system or process and thus fail to yield the promised ROI. A project that was “successful” (based on ROI) can be a failure if it were to be measured on the amount of “change pain” it introduced. In this article, we review some dangers and warning signs, and lay out a concrete plan of activities to help you minimize risk related to the people side of change.
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Optimizing Your Existing PMO
November 2008
Your organization may have considered one or more of these steps in the past, but a careful evaluation of the presence and effectiveness of these components can help ensure your PMO is on the right track to provide business value. In this article, we explore Data Governance implementation as an example of a project that requires a holistic view involving people, processes, and technology. It involves an organization-wide cultural change toward understanding data as a strategic asset; every person must recognize that they have some sort of data accountability. As such, it is critical that organizational change management (OCM) tools and techniques be employed to mitigate risk to your organization’s ROI.
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Implementing a Project Management Office
August 2008
You're tired of projects missing key deadlines and going way over budget and out of control. You're ready to put some processes in place so that you can rely more on proven methods rather than on eleventh hour heroics from those within your organization. In our previous article, we talked about the need for and the benefits of having a project management office (PMO) in your organization. You've thought about it and decided your organization should have a PMO. In this article, we'll focus on some specific tactics of starting up a PMO and what it may look like.
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The Project Management Office (PMO): A Proven Method for Increasing Project Success
February 2008
Let's face it, your business needs successful projects that are done on time and on budget, but successful projects can be elusive. Based on trusted sources such as a 2004 PriceWaterhouseCoopers survey of executives and project managers from 200 companies in 30 countries, only 2.5% of these companies completed 100% of their projects on time, within budget, and within the originally defined scope. A solution to these project challenges may well be a Project Management Office (PMO), as discussed in this article. The PMO, backed by senior management sponsorship, establishes consistent implementation practices for projects across your organization. This consistency from the PMO helps your organization in ensuring higher project success rates. A 2003 PMI and CIO magazine survey shows that project success rates increased 46% as a result of having a PMO.
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Managing Successful Projects: Where Disciplines Meet
May 2007
Why do some projects fail, while others succeed? Our experience tells us that it could simply be a factor of the project resources skill-set. In this article we focus on the "people skills" that increase the likelihood of project success. Specifically, those skills related to project leadership, which are commonly found in resources highly versed in both the Organizational Change Management and Strategic Project Management disciplines. By identifying the key skills required during each phase of a typical product development lifecycle and the associated action steps that should be utilized; you will be better prepared to select the "best" resources and implement corrective measures to keep your project on track.
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Making Project Management a Strategic Advantage
February 2007
Project Management, and the role it plays in modern business, has changed. Project management is no longer just about ensuring successful project execution. Instead, it ensures organizations are aligning their project initiatives and business resources with the business objectives. It focuses on partnerships, collaboration and continuous improvements. This shift is forcing leaders to evaluate their existing project management capability and its role within the organization. We have developed an article defining the different project management approaches and the changes organizations can implement in order to make it a strategic advantage.
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