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The PMO is under constant pressure. From maintaining standards for project management practices to planning and delivering projects – the PMO needs to be in constant sync with strategy and business outcomes. This PMO blog category provides numerous recommendations from experts to encourage top down and bottom up planning, improve processes, promote stakeholder satisfaction, and ultimately eliminate silos to advance the PMO function. Get expert advice on the pros and cons of adopting a continuous planning model. Experts will also share real-world advice on choosing your next Project Portfolio Management tool and how to #BeThatPMO your business needs.
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...
Capabilities-based planning originated in the fields of defense and military planning, and it’s understandable why. In this area, operators will never have full information about what threats or risks they face, so capabilities-based planning focuses on ensuring they have the ability to adapt and succeed in the face of change and meet whatever challenges may...
When it comes to long term project planning and management, several challenges and difficulties can arise which require a total rethink of the project’s future or scope, all the way up to having to abandon it or adopt a whole new working approach. Loss of focus, the slowing of progress, a lack of immediate results,...
As experienced project managers know and emerging project managers quickly discover – and not always pleasantly – not all project management software solutions offer a similar set of tools to manage projects. Some solutions are sophisticated, while others are superficial. Some are customizable, while others are confining. And some are easy-to-use, while others are exasperating....
What is a Project Management System? The term “project management system” is widely used to describe two major pieces of the overall project management puzzle. The first piece is essentially an approach to getting work done. The second piece refers to various tools and technologies that help drive this approach. In this article, we will...
In the Scrum methodology, iterations, work and deliverables are completed in “sprints.” These sprints usually align with the project goals of a product owner, i.e. the specific team lead on a development project. A sprint can take anywhere from one week to four weeks and the scrum sprint planning session takes place on Day One....
Taking on a new project can feel overwhelming at first, even for the most seasoned project managers. Spending some time writing out a scope statement can make reaching your goal seem that much more achievable. But making a truly comprehensive project scope document can come with pitfalls of its own. Here are five important questions...
“Delivering a project isn’t difficult. What’s difficult is delivering a project without first taking the time to plan properly.” ― James Leal A project without a clear plan, is like starting a journey without a map. One may arrive at the destination but it’s difficult to estimate when and at what cost. Knowing how to...
