Project Management

What Is Supply Chain Management & How It Drives Efficiency
A good friend who shall remain anonymous deploys projects for a large IT organization. Recently, as often happens, our conversation strayed into “work” topics. This time the subject became her Program Management Office, or PMO, with which she was greatly annoyed. “The volumes and volumes of reporting and paper my PMO demands have become completely …
Every year, project management conferences come with a promise of learning and networking opportunities for project management professionals. The good news is that this year is no exception. If you have been looking forward to the next big event, here is a comprehensive list of the top project management conferences in 2023. Interest in Project …
Gantt charts are a popular and time-tested way of visualizing project workflows. But they’re not just for any project. This project visualization approach aligns with the waterfall methodology that focuses on completing a task or process before the next one can begin.  A Gantt chart lets you organize a project’s timescale and create an overview …

More in Project Management

I am always talking about bringing in training from the outside, not just a vendor but from another occupation or profession. As most of you may know I have a theatre background as well as one in training and psychology. My latest brainstorm in the area of theatre is to develop a community theatre based …
Two years ago I was deploying a high-technology project for a client. It was a worthwhile project, whereby we were going to give sales people the ability to communicate instantly with their developers in Asia. A few weeks into the project, the client’s own Security organization became very interested… and proceeded to shut us down! …
I was recently teaching a course where the discussion turned to project resourcing, and the problem of people being stretched more thinly than ever. I suggested to the student that maybe her company’s mechanism for “project selection” needed to be revisited with her management, so that the number of projects could be decreased until the …
Our topic today has nothing to do with an eccentric or detestable person, happily. Although some project managers may not agree, a more prevalent pest to be avoided in projects is “scope creep”: additional scope that creeps in, without anyone in the project team noticing. Before you know it, there is an expectation that the …
Here is a familiar scenario for some of us who perform projects for customers: a request for some work comes in. We have (or know where to get) the capability, the skills the personnel. Having performed similar work before, we even have references. The catch? Geography. Either the customer, or key performer(s), or the project …
There are certain skills which are incredibly useful for small businesses. If the business has someone on staff knowledgeable about ‘accounting’ for instance, or ‘taxation’, better decisions can be made consistently in those areas. For example, business equipment would be purchased knowing already in advance what kind of depreciation will leave the business in a …
Recently, an acquaintance who owns his own business installing industrial valves, remarked how difficult he thought the field of Project Management had become. “Why is there so much paper?” and “Why do the concepts have to be so hard?” (He does have a point, what with Earned Value Analysis…) He indicated that if it weren’t …