It’s been some time since I wrote this article which has been published in a number of places since. Amazingly, the list is still appropriate. This is a letter to Santa on what I’d like to see from the Project Management Industry for Christmas.
Project management comes in all kinds of shapes and sizes but nowhere is scheduling more tightly managed than in a high-pressure shutdown/maintenance project. In these 5-10 day projects, an entire industrial facility must be stopped, have maintenance done and then restarted and ever hour that passes is huge amounts of money lost in production. It’s a particular kind of scheduling from which anyone in project management can learn a lot.
As project managers we strive for the large, complicated mega project. It’s the kind of project careers are built around. But, is this the best kind of project for your organization? Can you do a better job of managing when the projects are bite sized enough? In this article we’ll look at how you can break down projects into manageable pieces and manage each as a separate part of the whole.
Article: Can you make EPM from the sum of its parts? There are a lot of aspects of EPM. Do you have to go to one big integrated EPM system to accomplish them? Of course not. There are solutions to each of the main EPM challenges that are simple to deploy and quick to return results. Here are a few hot tips on how to accomplish them. Read more…
Article: EPM in a Foreclosure economy Project management is a popular concept when there is a boom economy but when economic times are more challenging, project management becomes a survival skill. This article looks at how organizations apply enterprise project management concepts when business is challenged. Read more…
Article: Head for the Hills With a teenage daughter in the house, we end up watching MTV rather often. The MTV hit “The Hills” has one of its cast fulfilling the role of project manager. It makes you think how project management is perceived by people outside of the more classic scheduling expert. Is project management becoming democratized? And, is that a good thing for all of us? Read more…
Article: The Electric PMO While at a local Project Management conference I was able to talk to project managers about the different kinds of Project Management Office (PMO). I was struck by how choosing a different direction for the philosophy of the PMO would make for very different tools that should be selected by it for making the organization efficient. Here are some of my thoughts from that confererence. Read more…
Article: Third party project management tools – timekeeping Third party project management tools come in many different flavors but I have a soft spot for the timekeeping category. Since my own firm, HMS Software, produces TimeControl, a project oriented timesheet system. This article takes a look at why looking outside of your EPM system for a timesheet is worth thinking about.
Article: Their Ain’t No Such Thing as a Free Lunch TAANSTAAFL is an acronym we can thank science fiction writer Robert Heinlein for. But sometimes he’s wrong. Every once in awhile you’ll find something that you can have for nothing. Here are a list of tools and services that don’t cost a thing!
Article: The project manager’s perspective So much of the project manager’s role involves communication. But, how can you effectively communicate with someone if you’re not sure that they mean the same thing you do when you speak? Common terminology from places like the PMBOK is a good start but do you take into account your own bias and your own perspective when you communicate?