Your process is not living up to expectations, so you’ve decided to implement standard operating procedures (SOP) to improve process consistency, compliance, and effectiveness.  However, that project is stalled: employees are not buying into your proposed changes, and management is growing impatient.

Read more...   |    Leave Comments »

Project Execution, Project Monitoring & Control, and Project Review & Close

The first phase in any project management process is Project Initiation.  The second phase is Project Planning.  Together the first two phases represent the seven “Ps” of planning:

Proper Prior Planning Prevents a Pretty Poor Program.

But you are not preparing planning for planning’s sake, you need the deliverables.  The next phase – Project Execution – is the area most people spend most of their time.

Read more...   |    1 Comment »

The first phase in any project management process is project initiation, where the goal is to uncover the project’s scope — the boundaries for resources, expectations, results, feasibility, the team, and your requirements — and produce a project charter.  Now that you know the project’s goals and scope and you have a project charter, what’s next?

Project planning is the second phase of any project management process and consists of developing the core planning elements.  The output of this phase is a set of project management documents, or plans.  The most important one is the project plan itself.  (Figure 1 shows the table of contents for a project plan.)

Read more...   |    Leave Comments »

Last week, we learned about the five phases of project management.  Each phase of project management has a distinct purpose, importance, and set of outputs designed to ensure that the project manager is moving the project towards the desired results.  The first phase is Project Initiation.

Phase I – Project Initiation

The primary purpose of Project Initiation is to discover the project’s scope — where are its boundaries?  As you see in Figure 1, you need to determine and document the User Requirements & Project Assumptions, produce a Business Case Justification & Feasibility Study, and put together a Project Charter and Project Team.

Read more...   |    Leave Comments »

Today, everything is a project with more and more people finding themselves in a project management role of some type.  You don’t have to have the title of Project Manager to manage projects.

A Project is a temporary collection of related tasks to achieve a desired and usually unique result.

What do you think? Do you find yourself managing a collection of related tasks to achieve a desired result?  If so, you qualify as a project manager.  Businesses today are evolving, downsizing, and pushing more work down the organization chart.  You may be a project manager and not know it.  But what if you haven’t been trained as a Project Manager with the necessary skill and tool sets?

Read more...   |    1 Comment »

The Complete Five Phase Process

Phase I – Discovery

Imagine what a professional football team would be like without a regimen of practice drills? Now take away their playbook and player statistics. What you have in this extreme scenario are highly talented (and perhaps overpaid) individuals participating in organized chaos. They might actually win a game or two, but

Read more...   |    1 Comment »

Part Two in a Five-Part Series

Have you ever had the opportunity to watch the construction of a large building? The daily progress from foundation to top floor is truly amazing, and if you’re like me, you wonder

Read more...   |    Leave Comments »

When you first take over a department, expectations are usually high but operations are sometimes in disarray. The staff is disorganized, goals aren’t being met, and hours are spent on unproductive tasks. Just when you think the company would never get on track, the CFO recommends that

Read more...   |    6 Comments »