How Can I Have the Responsibility Without the Authority? By Mark L. Reed By far, the question I am most often asked has always been, “How can I get my project team to actually accomplish their tasks on time, if even at all?” After a short discussion, the question translates to, “I don’t have the authority to [...]

Key Activities in the Project Kickoff By Brandon Huff You heard rumors in the halls and they’re true - you’re about to start your next project. The trouble is, you don’t know much about it other than a vague internal code name and that it starts almost immediately. So, what do you do to prepare to start [...]

Areas to Focus on when Studying for the PMP Exam By Keith Mathis - PM Expert Live As you prepare for the certification, it requires that you spend a great deal of time in certain areas of knowledge transfer. The amount of preparation depends on how well you know the PMBOK® and how closely you run projects [...]

Financial Control Of Projects By The Office of Government Commerce - OGC, UK Purpose Established and effective cost control systems and procedures, understood and adopted by all members of the project team, entail less effort than ‘crisis management’ and will release management effort to other areas of the project. Fitness for purpose checklist The prime objective of the government’s procurement [...]

Can You Facilitate Your Way To Project Success? By Bruce McGraw “I’ll make him an offer he can’t refuse.” The “godfather” facilitated that way according to Mario Puzo. Even though it is extreme when practiced by the Corleone family, facilitation is a tool used by effective project managers to gain resources, helping team members achieve goals, and [...]

Managing Projects by Theory Vs Following Your Gut Feeling By Chris Marr Your Personal Approach to Management I think this is an interesting question, and depends on a lot of things; primarily, your approach to management/leadership in general, and also the types of books you read. I wouldn’t necessarily want to be on one of your IT projects [...]

Ten Truths of an Effective Project Sponsor/Project Manager Partnership By Lonnie Pacelli A sad tale of a how a sponsor/PM relationship killed a project… Exec identifies a need for a project and nominates self as sponsor. PM gets assigned to project and assembles project team. Sponsor is vague about problem to be solved other than “we need a [...]

Types of Project Information in Construction Project Management By Chris Hendrickson Construction projects inevitably generate enormous and complex sets of information. Effectively managing this bulk of information to insure its availability and accuracy is an important managerial task. Poor or missing information can readily lead to project delays, uneconomical decisions, or even the complete failure of the [...]

Project Valuation Metrics By Miley W. Merkhofer Once you have a project-selection decision model, it is easy to specify metrics. The desired metrics are “observables” that influence the model’s value drivers; that is, those project characteristics and impacts (i.e., model parameters) that have the greatest influence on value. These typically include forward-looking financial metrics, like NPV, but [...]

The PMI Research and Education Conference that wrapped up yesterday in Washington,... Dan Goldfischer, editor in chief, PMI

Agile team members create their own rules, based on constraints imposed by the environment. But something else is needed for good results: some call it discipline, craftsmanship, or competence. Traffic management teaches us that there are 7 approaches to achieving competence in a self-organizing system. We are going to look at all of them. http://www.blip.tv/file/3845155

What To Do When Taking Over a Large Project By Vaughn Smith A project manager is given a project that is already underway. It is large with a high profile in the company. Success on the project could translate into significant career advancement for the project manager. Of course, the opposite is true as well. If the [...]

Maintaining IT Project Morale By Kathlika Thomas If anyone knows the feeling of anxiety that comes after making a promise and realizing that you can’t possibly hold true to it, it’s a newbie project manager. Okay, okay - politicians, too. As Project Managers, we’ve all written a proverbial check to clients that we were unable to cash [...]

How To Execute The Project Management Plan By Michael D. Taylor The Project Manager’s Role Once the project management plan has been formulated, and “debugged” in the Final Planning Review, it must be executed by the project manager. There are at least five major roles that the project manager plays during this phase; 1) ensuring a paradigm shift [...]

11 Ways to Prevent Angry Clients from Destroying Your Project By Chris LeCompte We’ve all had our fair share of angry clients. They’ll call or email, outraged that something has or hasn’t happened, dutifully heaping a big steaming pile of blame on your lap. And as good web designers or freelancers, it’s our responsibility to eat that [...]

A Brief History of Project Portfolio Management By Demian Entrekin Change often starts from the outside. Sometimes the novice is the only one who can see the door. This idea could be applied directly to the creation of the Project Portfolio Management market and the disciplines that go with it. PPM did not emerge from the PMI, nor [...]

Project Life Cycles versus Key Project Management Processes By Michael Greer We know that a project life cycle is made up of a collection of related phases. And each phase in the life cycle is made up of a bunch of related tasks or activities. And the exact nature of all these tasks, activities, and phases is [...]

Career, communication, networking Jim De Piante