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One of the oldest, and often more heated debates in the project management world has to do with bottom up and top down approaches to project planning. Those on Team Top Down proclaim that their preferred approach lets leaders do what they’re supposed to do: establish goals, select techniques, and streamline the planning process. They...
The initiation phase is first of the five main phases of project management and sets the tone for how the project will proceed. It will give a macro view of the project, such as providing the broad reasoning for why the project is needed and give stakeholders an opportunity to consider whether or not it...
Project resources are anything that is necessary for the project to be completed. Without them, it’s impossible for a project to be completed successfully. A key element of a project’s planning phase is centered on the identification of resource requirements and how they will be allocated. The Types of Resources in Projects Human: These human...
Resource management is among the most critical – but also the most challenging – aspects of project and program management. Failing to allocate the right resources, to the right tasks, at the right time, and at the right cost invariably leads to budget and schedule overruns. It also creates frustrated team members, stakeholders and customers....
Project maintenance—the process of tracking and enabling project activities in accordance with the project plan—is an essential, but often overlooked, factor in overall project success. After spending so much time in the planning phase, many project managers have a tendency to take a step back once the other members of the project team start their...
Software projects, while not inherently unknowable, are notoriously difficult to estimate. In fact, a study by PWC found that the largest contributor to IT project failures, at 32%, was poor estimation at the project planning phase. But why do software projects take so long (i.e. longer than you think)? Well, there are a number of...
Chances are your organization is on the path to becoming more agile, and you know there’s no such thing as flipping a switch from “Not Agile” to “Agile”. It’s a step-by-step process, which is why many companies operate in a hybrid state with some teams, processes or projects becoming agile, while others are waterfall. We...
One of the most basic competencies a project manager needs to know is what are the five stages of project management. These are the project management stages that any PM can use as a basic guide to understand how a project is progressing. In brief, the five stages of project management are: Project Initiation Project...
Pioneering quality control guru W. Edwards Deming once wrote that “if you cannot describe what you are doing as a process, you do not know what you are doing.” While it is a safe bet that Mr. Deming was not specifically or exclusively referring to the overall project management process, his wise advice – or...
During the project planning phase, when drawing up a project’s timeline and setting out key moments along the project’s path, two seemingly interchangeable terms continuously crop up: “milestone” and “deliverable.” Both set out waypoints that allow a project’s progress to be judged and provide a focus for a team to work towards, but are they...
