“Can your system help us? We have two distinct groups.” This is a remarkably common request here at HMS. In our case we’re talking about how to take care of timesheet collection for multiple groups using our TimeControl timesheet system but the request is common to many project management environments. This comes up whenever we have multiple groups trying to use the same project control environment. From one perspective, there are many benefits to grouping…
I get this question on a regular basis, “Why can’t I just start with Resource Capacity Planning? That’s all I want from our EPM anyway.” In many lectures when I talk about what is Enterprise Project Management, I show a collection of possible definitions. Perhaps EPM is just system compliance, where everyone uses the same system. Perhaps it’s document management, perhaps it’s timesheeting. All of these answers are potentially accurate for any one organization but…
When we think of Project Managers we tend to think of communications as one of their key skills. I’ve spoken numerous times about the importance of communications in project management. These days we tend to think of how connected we are. In the last 20 years, communications has evolved at an ever-increasing pace. We think nothing now of being connected 24×7 no matter where we are in the world. We are linked to the Internet…
I’m very much looking forward to speaking at the Eastern Iowa chapter of the PMI in Cedar Rapids during their Professional Development Day event on Friday, October 20th. We’ll be talking about how to increase resource capacity; one of my favorite topics. For those who are attending the event, please make sure to say hello. For those interested in the PMI Eastern Iowa event, visit PMIEasternIowa.org/events/event-listing/meetings/2017-professional-development-day.
Project Managers almost always find themselves in the middle of conflicting interests. On the one hand, marketing wants a project finished immediately. On the other hand engineering is going to need much, much more time than they’d ever imagined in order to get the project right. On the other hand, management wants to do the project with less money. On the other hand, sales needs new projects started for which there are no resources. In…
In today’s Agile-oriented software world, it’s all too tempting to skip the important steps of defining the work completely. There is no doubt that there is a meeting of minds between the client and the developers to end up with a product that fulfills the client’s desires and is of high quality and rapid arrival but once we get into the actual management of the project, there are differences in perspectives that are not obvious.…
In my brief flirtation with Psychology in my first year of university, I learned more than I’d ever want to know about rats in a maze. My distaste for the exercise would come back to haunt me last year when my stepson needed a dwarf hamster for his science project. Wendy is now a part of the family. You can see Wendy and our home-made maze on the right. You’ve no doubt seen the images…
The whole concept of Agile was designed to prevent project bloat. Back in the 1990’s when software development and deployment projects became mega projects a little too easily, the notion of Agile became much more popular. We’ve all heard about Agile. The idea that we’ll develop incrementally in sprints and after each sprint we should have deployable code, each time with a bit more functionality. It’s a great idea. We use Agile project management within…
I get this request on a semi-regular basis and given the work I’ve done with Microsoft, Oracle and other technical partners over the years, I’ve been involved in a number of early-release software programs. So, let’s talk about what people mean when they talk about Beta Test Programs. The first thing to know is that the perspectives of what the vendor is hoping for and wants are often different than what the users want. First…
I have an expression that my staff and clients have heard me use often. It’s a favorite of mine. “If you are a hammer, then everything looks like a nail.” It’s a paraphrase I know and as I was writing this article, I thought it behooved me to look up the source. It wasn’t much of a surprise that the author was someone who I read a lot of a long time ago, Abraham Maslow. …