You’d think that ERP systems would be the be-all and end-all of products. Why then are vendors like SAP and Oracle so keen to have 3rd party vendors on their list. The answer of course is that it’s quite common to integrate specific tools with these ERP beheamouths in order to create a complete solution.
Creating products and systems for deployment is challenging enough but what if you had to deploy an enterprise system across national boundaries. Have you thought of the implications of language, time zones, currency differences and regional operating system settings? Here’s a primer on what to think about.
Communications is at the heart of what makes a project manager effective and much has been written on the subject. The tools available to the modern project manager however provide a wealth of options on how to be effective at creating a project communications plan.
Project Management systems are changing profoundly as the users evolve from highly specialized full-time schedulers to a much broader audience. Workflow combined with online forms technology will be at the heart of this change.
There seems to be some management desire for real time project management systems where management would be able to get a minute-by-minute account of what’s happening with projects. But is this practical in a project management environment?
Every industry has some mythical goal. In project management, the holy grail of goals seems to be the all integrated, everything connected project management system. Is it myth or reality?
ERP deployments seek to be the core business system for all business functions but they virtually always start at the center of the Finance department. ERP firms, a niche with a tiny home in 1995 became a behemoth of an industry by the end of the 90’s as some firms became desperate to abandon old non-integrated systems in favor of a complete solution that would be not only Y2K compliant but more effective at the…
Too many project managers bite off more than they can chew when creating their plan for an Enterprise Project Management deployment. Going for little victories is always lower risk and a higher probability of ultimately reaching the business goals that the system should be supporting.
Ahh, the good old days. It’s easy to reminisce. Back when CIO’s were known as DP managers and their word was law. Keepers of the key to the old centralized mainframe systems were gods. Their will was done by all. Want a report? Sorry – that’s got to be done by our centralized staff. What? You need access rights to some data? Sorry – our database manager will get to you soon. You need a…
Written originally in the tech crash that followed Y2K, this article describes many of the challenges and opportunities facing the project management industry in today’s economy. The article is reposted here from its original publication in Computing Canada Magazine.