If I told you to change a light bulb and you had two hours to do it, you would probably spend most of the two hours. You'd assume I thought you needed to go the store, or that I wanted it done a certain way, and that I've thought hard enough about it that you should take the two hours. In project management, this human phenomenon, that work tends to fit into the space … [Read more...]
Given the value that project management gives to an organization, it's easy to understand why more and more companies are adopting it as a way to do business. Consequently, the demand for project managers is increasing, and will continue to do so in the foreseeable future. Almost anyone can benefit from a sound knowledge of project management skills. Laborers or … [Read more...]
If you've managed projects for a long time, you can start to look like this guy on the right. It seems like you need every skill in the book to manage people, schedules, stakeholders, project finances, risk, and more. Managing project is inherently challenging. Have you ever experienced any of these type of projects? The Impossibly Late Project This type of project … [Read more...]
City: Sao Paulo, Brazil. Capacity: 61,606. Cost: R965 million (US$430 million) Over budget: 15% Google Maps location: here The Arena de Sao Paulo has become the poster child for the construction scheduling problems that the stadium projects in this world cup have experienced. Built from the ground up, it will not be ready for the World Cup even though FIFA required … [Read more...]
The project charter and scope statement can seem like one and the same sometimes. They are both usually contained early in the project management plan, and they both itemize the scope of the project to some extent. So what's the difference? Well, they have a slight difference in purpose. The project charter should contain the rationale for the project, the … [Read more...]
Experience has taught me that the highest quality producer is quite often the lowest cost one. Say what? This is because of a factor called the Cost of Poor Quality, sometimes called Cost of Quality (COQ). Although production of high quality products and services usually requires an investment in equipment, people, or processes, the production of poor quality products … [Read more...]
When I was a middle manager, I saw many goals that ended up as roadkill on the business superhighway. Whatever the flavor of the year was, that's what was reflected in the business goals. Things like: reducing dependence on one client, diversifying our service offerings, and others made the rounds through our business units. One year our vice president even said … [Read more...]
Key Performance Indicators (KPI) are clear, specific metrics that measure an organization's progress toward a corporate goal. They generally have a time component, because they track the execution of a corporate strategy. They are the "scorecard" part of a balanced scorecard. To develop KPI's, it helps to divide them into three … [Read more...]
All of us have written technical reports for clients or other stakeholders. It is one of the tasks that are central to an engineer's job. In this edition of the technical brief, I will provide a checklist that should be relatively comprehensive. This has been taken from several of my old reports, and each of these were their own section (1.0, 2.0, … [Read more...]
