OUR BLOG: HONEST VIEW OF THE GOOD, BAD & UGLY
IN THE WORLD OF DELIVERING PROJECTS
What is Project Management?
What you will find in this post: This post describes all the core elements of project management. It then describes the origins of PM concepts and techniques. Finally, it describes best practices in recent years. Firstly let's define project management: Project Management is the combined skills and processes required to define, plan, manage and deliver a project on time and within budget. Project managers must also be acutely aware of what the planned outcomes and ...
Read More When Earned Value is not Earned Value at all 🙁
Firstly some background: We have been formally involved in implementing Earned Value Management (EVM) with customers since 1993, and hopefully during that time have learned one or two things about EVM. One of those is that it does throw up lots of challenges and questions to businesses when they first try and do it - you could write a whole book on the subject. One of the things we always say at the start is ...
Read More When Agile is not working, ask this ….
Agile project management contains many excellent ideas, which can and should make a real positive difference in the delivery of projects. However, as is often the case when new ideas come along that seem to show great promise, the reality falls a long way short of the promise. What we are seeing more and more: We are working more and more often with organisations who have tried to implement Agile, not having been brought ...
Read More What goes wrong with Projects
Why Projects 'fail': most common project issues Every year organisations spend vast sums on initiatives typically described as 'projects'. Every year, there are countless examples of poor delivery performance or major disappointment with their outcome. Results of asking the question literally hundreds of times: PMIS has delivered project management training to leading companies for well over two decades. Throughout this whole period, we ask 'what goes wrong with projects' as a formal exercise at the start of ...
Read More Tips for Project Managers
Hints and Tips for Project Managers - for Beginners & Experienced Being the manager of a project of significant scale and importance could be one of the most rewarding things you do in your career. It could also be one of the most demanding. Projects can be very challenging and the role of the project manager (PM) is crucial. A skilled PM can make all the difference. All the following project management tips come from real-world ...
Read More Leadership and Teamworking
How to improve: Leadership, Team working and Communication People deliver projects, not processes. Successful project management (or is it leadership) requires a combination of 'hard' and 'soft' skills. Achieving the right level of consistency of "methods" on projects through common processes is important. However, if a project environment does not demonstrate true 'team spirit', especially in challenging times, it is highly likely that you will be able to measure the impact on the delivery performance of the project ...
Read More Project Management Templates – Free to use
Business Case, Charter, Risk Register and more: No registration required Terms of Use: The following templates can be used freely by commercial organisations for their internal use only. By downloading any template from this web page you are agreeing to these terms and conditions. Applicability and Tailoring The templates are aimed more at commercial environments, where processes tend to focus on the fundamentals of a process. It is unlikely that any generic template would be used within any ...
Read More Project Governance
Governance of Project Management (GoPM) Relationship to Corporate Governance Corporate Governance responsibilities define executive accountabilities and responsibilities for the management of the performance of an enterprise. Following well-publicised events in recent times, the responsibilities of Corporate Executives towards Governance have been extended, for example in the area of the provision of corporate performance information, especially financial. Governments and regulatory authorities have amended laws and strengthened codes and regulations, to make the responsibilities of Governance more ...
Read More How do you Plan a Project?
Practical Guidance on Planning Projects: How do you Plan a Project? It could easily take a whole book to cover this question. In this article, we cover the most important things we always need to do. We also include many lessons learned from practical experience and share many tips that will increase the prospects of success. An important note – a variety of ways to plan projects: There are widespread views on project management (PM), ...
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