In the dynamic world of project management, maintaining control over project spending is crucial for ensuring success and meeting stakeholder expectations. When project expenses spiral out of control, it can jeopardize timelines, quality, and overall project goals. One of the most effective tools to regain control is a well-crafted project scope statement. This document … [Read more...]
What is Project Management?
Project Management is the application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to project activities to meet project requirements. The profession of project management includes the application of many skills, which include: Dividing the project into tasks Creating schedules (deadlines) Estimating budgets Determining project scope Communicating with … [Read more...]
What is a Project?
The definition of a Project is: A temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service, or result. The two most important keywords within that definition are: Temporary: A project has a fixed beginning and end. Because of this, there are two factors that come into play in virtually every project: Time (deadlines) and money (budgets). These two … [Read more...]
Project Initiation (PMBOK)
Project initiation is the processes under which the project is created and defined to the extent necessary to begin planning the project. This step involves the project setup, and ensures that the performing organization is clear about the purposes and priorities surrounding the project. There are usually certain issues that require setup, like funding or stakeholder … [Read more...]
How to Close a Project
Although it is the phase of project management that is most often shortened (or skipped altogether) due to budget availability, project closure is also one of the most visible project phases to senior managers and executives. Virtually all projects need some sort of closure phase to finalize the project and prepare its data for future reference. Project Closure … [Read more...]
The Critical Chain Method Explained
The Critical Chain Method is a relatively new concept in project management. It was developed and popularized by Dr. Elihayu M. Goldratt in his book Critical Chain (1997), which is written as a novel but outlines the methods used to ensure that projects complete on time. Critical Chain vs. Critical Path The Critical Chain method is similar to the Critical Path Method … [Read more...]
The Earned Value Formulas
Earned Value is a method of calculating project status. It does this from two perspectives: Time (schedule) and Cost. After applying the earned value method the project manager will know whether the project is: behind or ahead of schedule. over or under budget. In this post we will outline each formula in the earned value management system. The first three … [Read more...]
Agile Sprint Planning
The Agile project management revolution has affected planning more than anything else. Whereas project managers used to create a complex plan of the entire project and then hope to stick with the plan, today project management consists of iterations, or sprints, which adjust themselves to new project realities at each iteration. But that's not to say that planning has … [Read more...]
Project Schedule Planning
A project manager must deal with many different issues on a daily basis, for example, The project deadlines are firm but the resources are occupied. The deadlines have been tightened but the quality must stay the same. The customer wants a higher quality product at the same price. In order to balance these often competing objectives, the Project Management … [Read more...]
Project Quality Control
Controlling the quality of a project’s deliverables can be the silver bullet that makes everything else feel easy. Unfortunately, it’s often easier said than done but there are tried and true techniques that help you get there. On the flip side, a single poor quality deliverable can create a cycle of low performance, whereby an environment is created where quality … [Read more...]