Managing

6 change questions for IT project managers

Armed with savvy change agents, smart organisations leverage their project managers’ skills to manage the inevitable shifts in the business landscape. IT change agents need to call on their other essential business skills: business savvy, communications, critical thinking, financial know-how and even coaching and mentoring.

Expertise, estimations and project risks

The use of subject matter experts is commonplace throughout the lifecycle of a project, typically functional experts in their respective roles that the project manager relies on to make delivery estimations and identify potential risks to a project, but what risks do they bring?

Juggling project resources in a tight market

For a professional services firm where skilled staff such as project and engineering consultants represent both their biggest cost and biggest source of revenue, effective resource management is critical to creating client value, enhancing profitability and maintaining a competitive edge.

When your project suffers from Requirements Syndrome

Until now, IT project failure was bordering on the proverbial for reasons project managers could never quite pin down. David Guazzarotto introduces the signature effects of Requirements Syndrome, and shows how you can diagnose and treat it before it’s too late.

Project schedules: the good, the bad, and the pretty

What makes for a quality project schedule? Martin Vaughan sifts through the good, the bad and the ‘pretty and colourful’ to find the perfect balance, and laments the lost art of project scheduling.

6 reasons to stop funding a project

When considering a request for additional funding there are three types of funds: sunk funds, the ‘money at risk’ (to be spent in the next phase) and the remaining projected cost of the project. But when should you stop funding altogether?

Devils in detail and project estimating fallacies

Project estimating costs and durations can be done in great detail using Excel or more sophisticated tools. However, detailed is not synonymous with accurate! Pat Weaver provides a more pragmatic approach to estimating time and costs on a project.

Project success plans – planning for success

Setting up projects to succeed in the view of the customer/stakeholder is a critical part of the project manager’s role. PM Oracles looks at how having a project success plan can assist in upfront communication.

Project controls versus project schedules

Project controls are a misnomer, says Pat Weaver, they don’t control projects at all. A well designed project schedule on the other hand…

“The project schedule has two key roles to play, firstly as a tool to develop a common understanding of the optimum approach for achieving the project objectives and then as a flexible tool to measure the inevitable deviations from the plan and re-assess the best way forward.”