Articles on Project
Management
On the Project Success
Tips website, we have a large and growing collection of articles
on project management. All of the articles have value to project managers, and increasingly the articles focus on
principles and practices that will increase the likelihood of project success.
On this page, we feature some of the articles that are new, tell interesting
first-hand stories, contain great advice for achieving project success, or are "recommended reading" for project
managers - whether newbies or old hands.
If you are looking for something in particular, use the article index to explore
our full collection of articles (or newsletter issues).
Roles and Responsibilities
by Raymond Posch
I thought I would briefly revisit roles and responsibilities and the RACI matrix
today. In projects and processes, sometimes there may be questions or confusion about who is responsible for what.
If work is not getting done and people are pointing fingers at each other, you definitely know that there is lack
of clarity about responsibilities.
The tool most often used to help clarify responsibilities is the RACI matrix (or
its variant the RASCI matrix).
Read the full article
Plan and Act Based on Reality
by Raymond Posch
Part of the project manager’s job is to help the business understand the reality
of what the project will take in terms of the time and cost to produce a particular result (i.e., scope and
quality). Just like when you shop for a new car, you may think you want all the best features and top quality, but
when you see the price tag, you (the customer) may decide that keeping cost below a certain limit is more important
than having all those features. Therefore, you decide that less power and less luxury can suit you perfectly fine.
You (the customer) adjust your requirements accordingly.
During the course of the project, the project manager must often make decisions
based on achieving or maintaining the right balance of scope (what is to be created and its level of quality), the
schedule (time), and the cost (resources). This must be done based on the information known to the
project.
Read the full
article
Project management today - on being agile and adaptive
by Raymond
Posch
You’ve heard the term “business agility”, I’m sure. And I’m sure you have a
general sense of what it means… responding to the pace of
business change, being innovative and creative, responding to competition and other business
challenges…
Well, as part of business agility, I’m one who believes that the need to be
agile applies very much to business project management as well.
Read the full article
Unleashing the Power of Project Management
By Dr. Aaron J.
Shenhar
Projects are the engines that drive innovation and change. Yet top
management ignored them for a long time. Thus many projects today do not meet their objectives. In order to unleash
the hidden potential that exists in projects, companies must learn how to manage projects in a highly adaptive,
flexible, and strategic way. This change can make projects one of the most powerful competitive assets of modern
corporations. In this series of articles we outline the potential that exists today in project management and what
organizations can do to take advantage of this power.
Part 1 - The Project Management
Opportunity
Part 2 - Why Managing a Project by the Book is Not Enough
Part 3 - What is Missing in Traditional Project Management
Part 4 - The New Adaptive Project Management Framework
Learn from my biggest
mistakes
By Sarah
Gilbert
Gurus love to tell us that we learn the most from the mistakes we make. I’m not sure
that is true, and I’ve made lots of mistakes, so I should know. I will say that my mistakes have been
some of my most memorable and conscious (painful!) learning opportunities. I thought that by sharing some
of them, I might help others to not repeat them. Although, based on my experience, I am likely to make
these mistakes again and so are you!
Don’t take things
personally
This could possibly be the golden rule of project
management. If you ever entirely master this skill, please let me know. I will sit at your feet to learn
how you achieved greatness.
Read
the full article
A Series on Risk
Management
By Glen Alleman
Quoting Glen Alleman in the first
article in his series on risk management: "The core question for project management performance measures
(on-time, on-budget, and on-specification) is “how close can we get?” The answer to that question requires us to
understand the risks that drive the actual project away from the ideal project. And the risk factors are both
technical and programmatic."
This series is an informal tutorial
on risk management and a must-read for project managers.
Programmatic Risk Management – Part
1
Programmatic Risk Management – Part
2
Risk Management
Frameworks
Thinking Like a Risk Manager
Projects and the ungrounded
middle
by Raymond Posch
Because continuous learning is more important than ever in our
fast-paced world, I read information technology and project management publications as often as I can. When
projects are demanding your time at nearly every moment, it can be hard to do — but you must make the time to
break away from the pressure and take in some input from others.
Leverage the Team
By
Raymond
Posch
It is often tempting to a project manager, especially if he
or she is also a subject matter expert in the type of project to be performed, to do too much planning
independently and to make too many independent decisions.
By independently, I mean without the direct involvement of
the team, and often with too little direct or indirect input from the project stakeholders. This tends to be
especially true for a project manager who is fairly new to the project management role.
Read the full
article
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