Want to be a Process Driven Organization?

Everyone's talking these days about being a process driven organization and digitizing their business processes. But what does that mean really?

Well, there's no better place to turn to than www.processdriven.org. It's an online exploration of everything there is to know about being a process driven organization.

Also, check out www.infogoal.com for an excellent repository of Business Process Modeling (BPM) tools.

Web-Based Project Management Software

As the title suggests, web-based-software.com is a specialized directory of purely web-based software for project management. But it's broader than that. It also covers web-based solutions for customer service, bug tracking, document management and more. There's something for everyone. The site offers reviews as well.

Project management software, help desk software, time timesheet, bug tracking, online calendar, document file sharing, gantt chart

Project Management: Business Vision

Project Management: Business Vision: Via Accenture: Information Technology: Too Big to Fail?

Achieving a shared business vision of project outcomes is essential to success. A simple, compelling project vision may be all that is needed to shift the balance in your favor. Investing time in the project initiation phase pays dividends in the future. Hugh W. Ryan writes about field-tested techniques for successful IT project risk management and discusses the approach for a business vision ...

... "A Business Vision. Time and again we heard that successful large complex systems projects begin with a vision of a potential new way of doing business. Moreover, the entire project is guided by whether or not a new initiative or a change in scope is faithful to that vision. How complicated does the vision need to be? Often, not very. In fact, the simpler the better. At one international stock exchange, for example, the business vision was simply a crisp articulation of the eight essential capabilities that the final system was to provide. But that simple vision carried a great deal of weight, primarily because the project team spent considerable time up front getting senior executive support for the vision. " ...

Using an Integrated Master Plan (IMP) and Integrated Master Schedule (IMS)

The U.S. Department of Defense, who were the first to use Earned Value and other project management techniques that are now standard everywhere, uses the IMP/IMS approach to project planning (this stands for Integrated Master Plan / Integrated Master Schedule). An Integrated Master Plan is events-based (typically in the form of a milestones list), while the Integrated Master Schedule contains the tasks that lead to the the events.

The presentation below offers the best outline I've seen yet on the use of IMP/IMS. Once you click on the link below, make sure to then click on the link at the top of that page to access the PDF version - it's much more readable and makes more sense when you see the diagrams. I linked to the HTML version for those who can't read PDFs (although it's free to get an Adobe Reader).

Microsoft PowerPoint - Integrated Master Plan (IMP)

Free Project Management Info and Training Site

This excellent site from James Chapman offers details on project management principles, training plans, step-by-step guides, a sample project management policy, tips for using MS/Project, an MS/EXCEL spend plan, and best of all, a scalable methodology guide. Did I mention all of this is free on the web?

See for yourself...

Project Management Principles & Training

Project Management Wisdom from Max Wideman

Max Wideman is to project management what Eric Clapton is to guitars. He's a fellow of the Project Management Institute, past president and chairman of PMI, and developed the 1987 version of the PMBOK.

On his web site, he has a library of "Issacons" (an abbreviation of Issues and Considerations), which is a concise, indexed list of questions and answers by topic. It's an invaluable resource for any project manager. Check it out...

Issacons - general

Best Practice Project Management Framework

I came across an excellent website for project management guidelines, templates, tools, knowledge articles, etc. and it's shared with the public - free! It's from the Tasmanian State Government no less.

Any PMO Director or leader would be wise to examine this best practice example of a project management infrastructure.

Project Management Home Page

Project Management Belongs In-House

It started with the ERP boom after Y2K. Massive software projects, such as SAP implementations, were led by consultants and typically came in over budget and behind schedule. While consultants can and should be a vital part of any project that involves new technology or unfamiliar areas, it's important for organizations to retain ownership of the overall project and not leave everything at the mercy of the consulting company.

Part of that is insuring that contracts are creatively designed with a combination of time and materials plus incentives (and/or penalties for not delivering on certain tangible objectives). Fixed-fee contracts only tend to work when the scope can be defined precisely and agreed upon. Otherwise, the consulting company may make unwanted sacrifices to stay within budget. Time and materials without any incentives or penalties (or at least a "not to exceed" limit) puts all the risk on your organization. Incentives work better than penalties as it facilitates more positive collaboration. Vendors will be reluctant to accept penalties unless scope and the means to achieve it is crystal clear.

This doesn't mean that pride should get in the way of benefiting from a consulting company's tried and true methodology, merely that the leadership, ownership, and accountability of the efforts should remain in-house. Part of this accountability is insuring the right contracts are negotiated.

This oldie-but-goodie below from CIO Magazine is from 2002, but is still relevant today. It explores further the pitfalls of consultant-led projects and offers some sage advise. Some things have changed since 2002, but one thing hasn't. Suffering from the residue, organizations are still struggling to get value out of their expensive ERP products. Don't make the same mistakes they did back at the beginning of the millenium. Take control of your projects.

Take Control Consultants-can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em - ENTERPRISE PROJECTS - CIO Magazine Jul 15,2002

IT Project Options Thinking

IT Project Options Thinking: Via Manufacturing Insights: Manufacturing Insights Recommends Options Thinking RFID Strategy to Achieve Maximum Long-Term ROI

When dealing with emerging technology, such as RFID, and the risk associated with it, Manufacturing Insights collaborated with academia to leverage an options-thinking IT investment strategy, which involves ...

... "Value the Options: Companies must place a systematic, accepted value on each identified option. Extract Value From IT Project Options: Companies need to establish checkpoints to manage the options approach successfully. " ...

Manufacturing Insights, an IDC Company, provides business and IT decision-makers with fact-based research and analysis to inform and support critical business decisions. The global independent research and advisory firm closely follows processes associated with the design, development and distribution of goods across markets including Discrete Manufacturing, Process Manufacturing, High Tech/Electronics Manufacturing, Consumer Packaged Goods and Retail. Manufacturing Insights’ research and analysis is critical for end-users, as well as hardware and software vendors, service providers, and purveyors of IT outsourcing. Founded in January 2005, Manufacturing Insights is headquartered in Framingham, Mass.

Managing Conflict the RIght Way

As we know, Project Management is all about communication and people. And whenever people are involved, conflict is bound to arise, whether among the project team, with customers, with stakeholders, or with the sponsor.

Conflict Management is a vital skill for anyone in business, but especially so with project managers.

Here's a great writeup from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln regarding conflict management...

Managing Conflict Successfully, HEG83-181-A

Project Resource Planning can benefit from Economy of Force

For organizations trying to achieve enterprise resource planning for projects and other work, there can be no greater place to turn to than the proven military concept of Economy of Force.

Created by Carl Von Clausewitz, and inspired by the methods of Napoleon, Economy of Force consists in using all available resources and giving preference to primary objectives. Of course, too many resources can cause problems too, so the trick is to find the right balance. The secret is to allocate the maximum effective amount of resources on primary strategic objectives (i.e. major projects) and the minimum effective amount of resources on supporting objectives (i.e. enhancements and "run the engine" type work).

To a great degree, Eliyahu Goldratt's Critical Chain Project Management (CCPM) supports this model (and indeed may have been inspired by it).

For more info on the use of Economy of Force, read on...

Reader's Companion to Military History - - Economy of Force

New 2005 PMP Exam

The new PMP exam is coming! Here's the quote from PMI's website.

PMI officially announces that it will deploy the updated PMP credential examination (referred to as the “2005 Examination” for purposes of this communication) globally at 14.00 GMT on 30 September 2005. Five days prior, a “black-out” period (beginning on 25 September 2005) will commence during which the PMP credential examination will be unavailable.

See the PMI wesbite below for more info:

New 2005 PMP Exam

The Project Manager's Ethical Dilemma

As anyone who took the PMP exam knows, the most difficult decisions in project management are not technical-related decisions, not are they process-related. They are usually political or ethical issues, especially when dealing with unfamiliar international situations.

This article by Janet Williams on the Business Improvement Architects website offers concise, sage advice when dealing with ethical dilemmas, especially when working internationally.

The Project Manager's Ethical Dilemma

Project Managers Can Influence Without Authority

Sailing through the seas of organizational politics can be tough stuff for project managers, especially when there's a need to influence without being in a position of authority.

This white paper from Silicon.com outlines how to create a political plan and "turn potential victim scenarios into win-win political victories.

Caution: To read the white paper, you need to register, but it's a free registration.

Leading With Power from Emprend White Papers at silicon.com

ITIL Projects: Avoid Pitfalls ...

ITIL Projects: Avoid Pitfalls: Via Opalis Software: Opalis Software, Inc., the expert provider of enterprise infrastructure software that enables the integration and automation of data center operations, announced its top three reasons for Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) initiative failures ...

Opalis Software shares their experience with ITIL projects and how to avoid the pitfalls: automate, target the necessary processes, and market the efficiency benefits ...

... "Reason #3: ITIL is the Answer Failure – IT personnel often fail to market their ITIL project as a way to drive both internal efficiency and service levels, and try to use the ITIL label as the main message. ITIL projects are costly, therefore, IT staff need to be able to demonstrate up front how it will fortify core business processes and make them more reliable. This demonstration will avoid lost budgets or abandoned projects part way through an ITIL implementation. " ...

Opalis Software, Inc., is the expert provider of enterprise infrastructure software that enables the integration and automation of data center operations. With Opalis, companies can connect disparate environments and automate routine processes in a way that’s simple, fast, and effective. Currently, more than 550 global companies, including Toyota, Harley Davidson, StateStreet, Nokia, Xerox, BlueCross BlueShield, and Woolworths, rely on Opalis server software and integration packs to quickly and easily manage the critical components of their data centers. IT staff can automate processes without scripting or the need of professional services to stay productive and focus on other critical performance management tasks. Opalis is headquartered in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, and has strategic industry partnerships with EMC, VMware, HP, IBM, Microsoft, NetIQ, Remedy, Veritas, and Cognos.

Vision and Problem Definition - Prerequisites to Good Project Management

Many a project manager gets assigned to a project and immediately begins assembling a team to develop a solution. Even worse, many a project sponsor comes with a ready-made solution for the project manager to "implement".

Would you go to a doctor and say "I need Zithromax to address a bacterial infection I have in my throat?" No, you'd say, "My throat hurts and I have a temperature," and the doctor would examine you and prescribe the proper remedy. It's the same with project management (in most corporate projects anyway). We need to determine the problem before we attempt to devise a solution. This may take convincing the sponsor sometimes, but it's well worth it, as everyone ends up happier in the end.

When defining the problem, it's also important to craft a vision of what the desired end state should look like. If you don't know where you're going, you're probably not going to get there. Or as John Lennon once sung, "How can I go forward if I don't know which way I'm facing?"

The following white paper from ittoolbox.com offers a good explanation of the often misunderstood concepts of vision, business problem, outcome, objectives, etc. and how they are best used.

Vision, Business Problems, Outcomes, Objectives, and All that Stuff

CIO Role in Communication

Via Communication Nation: Message to the CIO: Step up to the plate!

... "CIO, where are you? We need you to help us communicate. Stop playing with technology! Stop accelerating our path to confusion and anxiety. " ...

IT Alignment: Cost Benefit Analysis ...

Via ITSMWatch: Bored With Business-IT Alignment?

Mardi Merdinoglu explores the complex and challenging issue of business IT alignment ...

... "To achieve global alignment, organizations must launch company-wide alignment initiatives that typically analyze the overall business-IT relationships, and improve them to benefit the organization to achieve its strategies that at the end will result in with increasing market value. Since this is a global effort, the senior management support and championship needs to be secured by presenting not the popular lingo, but the costs and benefits in dollar figures. " ...

Microsoft Framework: Business IT Alignment

Microsoft Framework: Business IT Alignment: Via Microsoft: Microsoft Solutions for Management: Service Level Management

Microsoft Framework for service management offers methods for business IT alignment ...

... "The IT life cycle contains four phases: planning, preparing, building, and operating: Planning. Identifying business needs, technologies, and solution options in order to align business and IT plans. " ...

Business IT Alignment: Business-Relevant Metrics

Business IT Alignment: Business-Relevant Metrics: Via BMC: Stars In Alignment

Transforming IT? Growth in business IT alignment requires a new set of business-relevant metrics for managing IT services levels. Steve Ulfelder explores "The Biggest Obstacles Between You and Alignment – and How to Avoid Them" ...

... "Enterprises seeking to align business and IT often get deep into the process before realizing that they need to adjust their approach to metrics. They must, for example, expand their concept of traditional service level agreements (SLAs), which focus primarily on technology, to include measuring service from an end-user perspective. " ...

Governance Alignment: Project Portfolio Management (PPM)

Via IBM: Project Portfolio Management (PPM): Aligning business and IT

Alignment of business and IT through a meaningful governance process enables selection of the right projects from the portfolio. Ashok Reddy, IBM, explores investing in IT like managing a financial portfolio of investments ...

... "Governance relates to the most important questions for software development and IT managers: Are we working on the right things, and are we building the right system? If their teams don't get this right, nothing else matters. A project might be successful from a schedule, budget, or scope perspective, but if it fails to meet business objectives, it fails overall. Efforts to align business and IT objectives are often thwarted by governance issues... " ...

Brainstorming Project Ideas or Solutions?

The Delphi technique has long been accepted as an effective means of soliciting group input, especially in situations that are politically charged or where there's a need to avoid a dominant party taking over. It's typically facilitated via a series of email iterations to brainstorm ideas or solutions and then prioritize them.

Here's a good writeup on the Delphi technique, along with an example of it's use in a survey on medical practice improvements.

THE DELPHI TECHNIQUE

Managing Virtual Project Teams - A Unique Challenge

Managing virtual teams presents a unique challenge. Team members can more easily feel isolated and/or lose interest, and much information is lost in translation with non face-to-face communications. As a result, it often takes longer for a team to gel, especially if the proper precautions aren't taken.

Certainly communication must be ramped up exponentially when managing a virtual team, but even things like branding can help remote team members feel like "part of the pack".

I came across this comprehensive writeup by Lisa Kimball on managing virtual teams. Well worth reading for anyone faced with this challenge.

Managing Virtual Teams

Are Canceled Projects Failures?

Upon examining studies of failed projects, nearly a quarter of such "failures" are deemed so because the project was canceled. But does a canceled project really constitute failure? Indeed, isn't cancellation of a project sometimes the right thing to do, and by nature a success?

This excellent article from PM Forum explains this phenomenon and offers some valid points to consider.

PMFORUM, Connecting the World of Project Management - Editorials

Project Management a Dream Job

So says Salary.com. See, all you project managers have been working in a dream job and didn't even know it! In all seriousness, where else can you find a job that's in such demand, brings value to a wide variety of organizations and industries, is a vital life-skill to boot.

Salary.com says:

"Project managers are key employees in every industry and all types of companies, all over the world. Project Management itself is rapidly becoming one of the most important processes within a company."

Whether you're looking to get into project management, or are already a project manager and want to feel good about your career choice, you'll find this writeup at Salary.com interesting. It explores the ideal traits and skills for a project manager, as well as typical salary levels.

Dream Jobs Project Manager: "Project Management itself is rapidly becoming one of the most important processes within a company."

PMO Role: Align Business and IT ...

PMO Role: Align Business and IT: Via eyeforpharma: IT Portfolio Management: Managing your investments ...

Helen Oram discusses research report "IT Portfolio Management – Making Technology Investments Pay Off" by AMR Research ...

... "The role of the PMO is to be the central governing body that is made up of representatives from different parts of the company, focusing on making strategic decisions that will better align business and IT priorities. The PMO has the responsibility to ensure that considerations and constraints are viewed as part of the portfolio management process, such as budget constraints, opportunity analysis, risk assessment, resource capacity, and demand management. " ...

Backed Into a Project Management Corner?

Ed Yourdon is perhaps the most influential author in the software development field; so influential that he now makes a living as an expert witness in litigations.

One of his best books for project managers is "Death March," about how to survive mission-impossible projects (i.e. those whose expectations are over 50% from what could normally be expected for the given time and cost). Check out Yourdon's website, which lists his many publications, including "Death March."

Yourdon

Project Cost Estimating and Budgeting Software

Effective Project cost estimating and budgeting remains an elusive goal in most organizations. For an interesting hosted solution for project cost estimating and budgeting, check out ScopeiT. Since it's hosted, there's no need for hardware installation. And best of all, it interfaces with most EPM software via XML.

SCOPE iT - Enterprise IT Project Cost Estimation