OUR BLOG: HONEST VIEW OF THE GOOD, BAD & UGLY
IN THE WORLD OF DELIVERING PROJECTS

Project management group with a difference: An invitation to participate - starting in 2018: We operate exclusively in the area of project management and have some pretty firm beliefs about what is important in being a successful project manager and delivering projects well.  Something that all of us would probably agree can be a challenging task.  We believe passionately in the value of skilled project managers and disciplined project management at the organisational level. Our ...

Difference between Project Management frameworks, methodologies, methods and Bodies of Knowledge (BoKs): In many online project management forums, discussions often incorrectly classify Project Management artefacts.  For example, calling Agile a methodology when it is not a methodology at all. Agile is literally a set of values and principles – these alone do not make a methodology or even a method. Lifecycles: In general, a lifecycle is the major stages that something goes through as it ...

What is 'project control'? The word 'control' in the world of projects generates a lot of controversy, but we would say that's due to a lack of appreciation of what it really means. In this post, we will explain why. So let’s look at one extreme view: can it ever even exist? Some say that you can’t use the word control on projects as projects carry a great deal of uncertainty and it gives the impression of ...

Purpose of this Post Some people say that Agile could be used on any kind of project.  Agile contains some great ideas and some of the practices of Agile can be used on almost any project.  However, the heart of Agile, being incremental product development and deployment are always going to be limited to certain projects and circumstances. Let me use the following example project to share why. State of the art Hospital Project A contractor has ...

The Pros and Cons of Agile and Waterfall Agile and Waterfall (1) are potentially two very different ways of delivering projects.  Firstly we will describe them both and then compare their respective advantages and disadvantages. Waterfall (V) Model:   Waterfall (1) projects go through a number of sequential or overlapping phases.  This defines the life cycle of the development effort of the project.  The principal difference with Agile is that in Waterfall, requirements are defined near the start ...

Setting Smart Project Objectives - An Example All projects, especially 'business projects' benefit a great deal from having crystal clear objectives. However, in practice, they are often far from clear or even plain wrong.  'SMART objectives' also help with this question but in the world of projects, this discussion can be extended even more. This may sound obvious but it is a really common mistake: We see many projects every year.  One of our first questions is ...

Firstly, poor examples: from page 1 of the world's favourite search engine Projects always carry risks.  If you search online for “example project risks” there are some extremely poor examples on page 1 of the world’s favourite search engine.  Most are very misleading, at best.  We see many real risk registers every year and their contents are often unfit for purpose. This post shows why. The PMI defines project risk as: “an event or condition that, ...

We have released the short and punchy video, which describes a number of things we see in customers businesses who are more successful at delivering projects.  This challenges some of the current trends in project management. Enjoy and if you like this please share with others:   © PMIS Consulting Limited - all rights reserved.  

Purpose of a WBS A work breakdown structure is one of the most useful 'tools' you can have when managing projects. It has an initial purpose in the planning phase: to enable the definition and capture of the complete scope of work of a project, so that estimating and planning are effective. In the delivery phases, the WBS can then be used to help for example with assessing progress against work scope and enable an ...

Ways to transfer and share lessons successfully: You hear the expression “lessons learned” all the time, but what does it mean?  Sadly, too often it means a single meeting, followed by the publication of a set of minutes, capturing the 'lessons learned'. Job done ! Really? Actually 'learning' from lessons is really hard. This post provides the basis of doing this more successfully. So let’s look at the challenges when we do this and some better ideas: It ...

Why we need to make a project manager's role crystal clear: If you gather 10 random project managers (PMs) and ask them to define their roles and especially responsibilities, you will get very different views and even disagreements on what they are responsible for. What follows in this post is what we have seen delivers by far the best results (i.e. from projects). It also addresses the key principle behind where the main disagreement usually ...

Going well beyond "on time & within budget": Far too many organisations appoint project managers with far too little definition of what the specific role and responsibilities of project managers are.  Too often, you see little more than “to deliver the project on time and within budget”.  While those words are true, they are no more than the goals of project management and are not the specific responsibilities of a project manager. Why is this an ...