Learn the key project management skills that you need to lead successful projects at work.
Agile is: Change friendly Iterative Collaborative Chunked delivery Communications focused Business focused Scope tolerant Quality focused (if you do it correctly!) These were the themes that set the tone for Keith Richards’ presentation at the APM Conference in London last month. “The basics of project management seem to have been thrown away with some Agile,”…
Initiating a project is where it all starts in PRINCE2®. This is the phase where you start working out who is going to do what. You also put in place all the required elements to make sure the project goes smoothly.
Last time we saw that PRINCE2 doesn’t really have much advice to offer the project manager stuck with delivering to a fixed date. I also gave you some advice from another expert, J LeRoy Ward at ESI. Surely some other project management experts have tackled this problem? I trawled my bookcase for what other people…
I joined in with Managing and Saving Programs in a Changing World, an audio/Webex conference with LeRoy Ward, Executive VP at ESI, recently. It wasn’t radical – the ESI approach to managing programs in a changing world is obviously to be great at the basics – but it was a good revision session and a…
I have written before about the fact that some projects are stopped for good reasons. Businesses need to be very transparent when that happens to ensure all relevant parties understand why and, crucially, agree that it is the right thing to do. Communication within the organisation needs to be carefully managed so that all the…
There must be a good reason why all these projects fail. There is; in fact, there are many factors that contribute to project failure. The UK Office of Government Commerce did a study that shows the main reasons that projects fail are: lack of clear executive leadership (the ‘missing’ Sponsor) poor processes for identifying and…
In a new job, it’s hard to know what details are important and what you can let slip in one ear and out the other. I’ve been trying to soak up everything – a strategy which has been moderately successful. I’ve picked up a lot of low-level detail and, not yet knowing if it is…
I am a big believer in the value of transferable skills, which is why I find the French education system so hard to understand. Essentially, you need to take business studies and do a business degree to have any hope of getting a decent job in an office. For me, university was (and is –…
Now my brain is less fuddled due to not being in the heat quite so much, I can explain my theory on estimating project tasks. Start with the basics. What needs to happen? How long will each task take? The answers to these questions will allow you to pull together a timeline. Try to use…
Over my career, the majority of my projects have involved people who already work together. I remember working with one team that I had to form from scratch, who had never worked together before and who had never worked on a project before. In that situation, having little rituals worked wonders in explaining what a…
You might remember I have written before about the Gypsy Moth IV project. It was a project to restore Sir Francis Chichester’s yacht and sail it around the world. Unfortunately, the objectives of the project have now changed considerably. Gypsy Moth IV ran aground and now the objective is to salavage something good from the…
OTOBOS is On Time, On Budget, On Scope. This definition of what makes a project successful misses out quality, happy stakeholders and a whole host of stuff, but it’s a good starting point. If you can deliver OTOBOS, chances are that you are doing something right.