Project success criteria are sometimes fickle and elusive things. On paper, the budget and schedule feature prominently in every project. After all, a project is defined as a temporary endeavor to create a unique product or service. But most projects have a host of other criteria, like product quality, third party stakeholders, or end user evaluation results. And to … [Read more...]
A Project Health Check
When a patient is first wheeled into the emergency room, the first priority of any doctor is their vital signs, that is, pulse, breathing, body temperature, and blood pressure. Regardless of the injury, if the vital signs are not stable the patient is dying and all efforts must be directed toward stabilizing them prior to treating the original injury. Project management … [Read more...]
The 6 Parts of Project Portfolio Management
The Project Management Institute (PMI) defines a portfolio as a collection of projects, programs, subsidiary portfolios, and operations managed as a group to achieve strategic objectives. Portfolio Management, then, is the discipline of managing this portfolio to achieve organizational goals. The components of the portfolio can be projects, programs (series of projects … [Read more...]
The 5 Parts of Program Management
A program is a group of interrelated projects, subsidiary programs, and program activities that are managed in a coordinated way to obtain benefits not available from managing them individually. Program management is often confused with Portfolio management. The main difference is that a program has a defined end point, since it is a series of related projects each … [Read more...]
8 Functions of Project Management Information Systems
A Project Management Information System (PMIS) is one or more software tools used for a project's information storage and distribution. There are many types of PMIS, and equally diverse ways of applying these types of systems for optimal benefit to the organization. The components of a project management information system are: Scheduling Estimating … [Read more...]
How to Develop a Stakeholder Engagement Plan
A Stakeholder Engagement Plan is a formal strategy to communicate with project stakeholders to achieve their support for the project. It specifies the frequency and type of communications, media, contact persons, and locations of communication events. It is created at the beginning of the project and updated frequently as stakeholder communication needs … [Read more...]
Guide to Stakeholder Engagement
All projects have stakeholders. Like any area of life, no projects exist inside of a bubble. Although some come close, every project must have a project sponsor (as a minimum) who created the project and expects some sort of deliverables. But most projects have so many stakeholders that they must maintain a list in order to manage them all properly. In … [Read more...]
12 Project Stakeholders (And What They Want)
All projects have stakeholders. As a minimum, the project sponsor who initiated the project is a stakeholder who expects a deliverable from the project. At first glance, the project's stakeholders might be obvious, for example a government approval, or an adjacent landowner that is affected by a construction project. But these main stakeholders are seldom the … [Read more...]