PMThink! Project Management Thought Leadership

Customer facing projects

2010-04-25T18:56:00.004-05:00

Round out your list of growth and efficiency projects with customer-facing initiatives that drive intimacy and satisfaction. Getting closer to your customers adds extra growth potential to your IT project portfolio. ...... "Campbell describes TfL's new IT strategy as highly customer focused. He plans a string of customer-facing projects ... " ...Via Computer Weekly: TfL CIO Ian Campbell

Project stakeholder satisfaction

2010-04-19T16:52:00.007-05:00

Do you track stakeholder satisfaction during your project? Besides the sponsor, have you identified any other stakeholders worth consulting? Identifying and engaging your stakeholders can position your project for success. Read on for insights into stakeholder engagement. ...... "One of the best ways to do this is to work with IT project stakeholders -- the people who will be affected in

Clean data pays off

2010-04-11T19:32:00.006-05:00

Data quality projects are hard to justify. Here's some business value anecdotes to help with the next business case -- cleaner data can drive increased revenues. ...... "With information managed more effectively, Oliver estimates that you can encourage a typical supporter to spend 25 per cent more by using targeted promotions. However, building a clean database of accurate information is the

PMO Focus + Flexibility = Value

2010-04-10T09:28:00.002-05:00

How project management offices (PMOs) function differs as widely as the organizations they serve.A PMO may oversee and execute projects, implement process improvements, serve as a center of excellence, or align projects to the organization’s strategy.The consensus seems to be that the more focused and flexible the PMO is, the higher the chances are that it delivers value to the organization—and

Map Process on path to Improvement

2010-04-03T10:13:00.004-05:00

Steps to improving business processes, include mapping and characterizing the current state. ...... "Verify the Process Map: Gaining Buy-in — In Step 5, the process map is reviewed to be sure that it accurately reflects the existing process. " ...Via Chem.Info: Steps to Business Process Improvement

Operating Cost Impacts in Project Business Case

2010-03-29T21:01:00.003-05:00

Cost transparency involves educating the governance team about the impact of today's investments on tommorrow's operating costs. ...... "Factoring in costs of collateral impact should also happen at the project management phase as applications are being developed. While an organisation's impact metric might state that a new application for 1000 users will require five help desk people ... "

Project Management Forces

2010-03-28T10:43:00.002-05:00

The Next Business Intelligence Project

2010-03-24T13:11:00.003-05:00

Business intelligence is a critical investment area in many enterprises. BI projects focus on creating the data warehouse, Extract/transforms/loads, report library, and portal delivery, for example. The opportunity is in making sense of the data, especially market information that provides unique insight that you can obtain faster and more accurately than your competition. Now, that would make

Measuring Innovation Performance

2010-03-21T15:21:00.004-05:00

Innovation measurement should go beyond ... the count of research projects at each stage-gate and the NPV of the portfolio ... to culture metrics that sense the breadth and depth of the spirit of innovation. ...... "Quantitative metrics in this area may be more activity-oriented, i.e., how many people are participating in innovation efforts and what percent of employees have been trained in

Act on Ideas

2010-03-16T07:32:00.000-05:00

Projects and product enhancements at Google start as ideas and gather momentum through actions that influence and garner support. ...... "Many products and product improvements at Google start with one person having an idea, sketching it out, showing a prototype to others, getting feedback, and soliciting support from others. " ...Via Poyner: Google projects

New ISO Standard for Project Management: Is this Necessary?

2010-03-13T14:01:00.003-05:00

For those who haven't heard, there is a new ISO standard being developed for project management ---- ISO 21500.Considering that PMI standards are already establshed internationally, the first question that comes to my mind is "why?" Apparently, this standard will build on existing global standards, and will incorporate the work of a number of national standards as well. The project brief for the

Project managers keep your team on task

2010-03-11T18:12:00.005-05:00

Case is made for focusing team members on as few tasks as possible ... ideally, the critical path. ...... "Studies have shown that our brains switch between one activity and another (called executive control). We really don't do two things at once very well. " ...Via Teamwork and Leadership Blog: Multi-tasking?

Agile predicts, senses, and responds

2010-03-10T13:40:00.004-05:00

Robert Kaplan sees agile techniques applied to business, where information is leveraged to support prediction and modeling of strategic responses. ...... "It's also keeping track of competitive forces as well, to be able to offset that. But the front end of agility is information because it's what you're being agile with respect to. " ...Via SearchCIO: Robert Kaplan, Balanced Scorecard

Project management maturity assessment

2010-03-07T21:41:00.001-05:00

Scenario Planning IT Problems and Outages

2010-03-03T21:49:00.010-05:00

While planning for problems is a valuable exercise on projects, application management and support groups need to perform periodic risk assessments of critical business systems as user adoption evolves over time after the original implementation is complete. Are your business continuity plans fresh enuf to serve your enterprise during the next glitch? ... ... "Risk management exercises —

The Data Center Consolidation Project

2010-03-02T22:27:00.005-05:00

Data center consolidation projects are not out of fashion yet. NYC and the feds move to consolidate their sprawling infrastructure to gain financial and energy efficiencies. ...NYC Data Center Consolidation via InformationWeek: "current IT infrastructure of New York City is fragmented, with more than 50 unique data centers serving nearly 48 city agencies, many located in prime commercial real

Project Goals and Team Members

2010-03-01T20:04:00.004-05:00

Keep a pulse of your project team members, especially off-line, to surface any mis-alignments before they derail your critical path. ...... "find a way to surface the underlying goals and expectations of project participants. This may involve private meetings, group discussions, or perhaps even a combination of sorcerer’s potions ... " ...Via ZDNet: IT gridlock

Intel Data Center Strategies Drive Business Value

2010-02-28T15:40:00.002-05:00

Top 100 Project Management Blogs

2010-02-23T23:07:00.002-05:00

I was recently notified about a great list of the Top 100 Project Management blogs on a construction industry blog called The Fixer Upper. It's a pretty comprehensive list, with great descriptions of each of the blogs. I was of course pleased to see PMThink made the list. Check out the list here. You're bound to find some excellent blogs, some of which you may not have heard of.

Structural IT Business Alignment

2010-02-21T11:44:00.003-05:00

Use Business Value Dials to Steer IT

2010-02-14T16:59:00.004-05:00

Business value dials are used to align IT with customer (internal client) objectives in this framework for measuring the business value of information technology. ...Via Intel Press: Measure Business Value of IT (PDF)

What does it take to be GREAT?

2010-02-14T13:30:00.007-05:00

Obviously one must have technical project management capabilities. But that is NOT enough to be a GREAT project manager. To be called upon to lead the most important projects, one must also have backbone, leadership skills and the ability to think broadly as well as in detail. 1) Backbone – You have to be willing to take on a tough project and tell the TRUTH to people who

Resource Capacity: Where Have All My People Gone?

2010-02-13T17:14:00.005-05:00

My friend and colleague Terry Doerscher, Chief Process Architect at Planview, has a superb blog called Enterprise Navigator, and recently posted an excerpt from his upcoming book, Taming Change with Portfolio Management, which he co-authored with Planview CEO Pat Durbin.The excerpt talks about resource capacity planning and reveals a startling fact: For an average staff of 500 people, there's

Project Milestones

2010-02-11T16:25:00.004-05:00

Create good project milestones with bite-sized tasks and celebrate them routinely to create high-performance teams. ... Via Tom Peters: http://bit.ly/alY5fC

Cloud Email Project in LA

2010-02-10T20:49:00.008-05:00

LA government moves to outsourced cloud-based email solution (Google's Gmail) and will demonstrate the effectiveness of the cloud in supporting an enterprise solution, while delivering tangible savings to the city. ...... "Los Angeles is now slowly marching toward a full implementation of Gmail for the city work force. If successful, the project could open the floodgates for other governments