December, 2016

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The requisite law of variety

Musings on Project Management

Now, this could be a bit stuffy: "The Requisite Law of Variety" But actually, it's an interesting concept to consider, to wit: Essential Elements (E): these are outcomes, results, or other artifacts that you want to have some control over, even if you are Agile Disturbances (D): these are events or actions that impact E. usually there are a lot of these!

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2017 Project Management Trends To Watch

Rebel’s Guide to PM

This time last year I reviewed the trends in social and collaborative technology in the project management space: some of my predictions had come to nothing and it was interesting to look backward and hold myself accountable for what I said would happen. This year I’m looking forward into 2017 to highlight some of the project management trends I think it is worth watching out for. 1.

2017 211
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So what’s in your company’s project management dictionary?

Kiron Bondale

We often joke that the only correct answer to a project management question is “ It depends! “ Many of us would also agree that the right approach to deliver a project is one which is tailored to fit its context, complexity and the culture in which it will be managed. But there is still value in establishing some standards for project management.

2011 168
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New Year’s Eve

The Lazy Project Manager

A New Year’s resolution is a tradition in which a person makes a promise to do an act of self-improvement, such as losing weight, doing exercise, giving up smoking etc. Babylonians made promises to their gods at the start of each year that they would return borrowed objects and pay their debts apparently, and the Romans began each year by making promises to the god Janus, for whom the month of January is named.

2017 150
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Understand Digital Debt, Form a Team, Set Goals, and Plan Roadmap for Transformation

Understanding digital debt is crucial before digital transformation. Assemble a team to assess internal operations, market pressures, and digital debt's impact. Define future digital vision with measurable goals. Refine hypotheses and conduct market analysis. Develop a roadmap for transformation with defined projects, cost estimates, and governance.

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5 Ways You May Unintentionally Create Schedule Risks

Project Risk Coach

The Problems with Crashing, Fast Tracking, and other Schedule Compression Techniques How do project managers unintentionally create schedule risks? As a result, perhaps you feel a cloud of uncertainty about your schedule. Image courtesy of Adobe Stock. Many times, it starts with pressure from a sponsor to deliver the goods early. For sure, project managers have a responsibility to work with their sponsors to understand the requirements and to complete the projects within the sponsor-imposed dead

Risk 209

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Thinking first

Musings on Project Management

“It took a year of thinking before we built any prototypes,” Serge Montambault, Mechanical engineer with Hydro Québec’s research institute And, to top it all off, his project to build robots to inspect high power transmission lines is a business success. It's remarkable what thinking will do. And of course, take note that from thinking, the next step was prototypes, not full scale.

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Inspiring Women in Project Management: Natalie Warnert

Rebel’s Guide to PM

The Inspiring Women in Project Management series is an occasional column that sees me interviewing women who are inspiring and who do inspire others in the world of project management. Today is the turn of Natalie Warnert, who set out to promote and support women in Agile. I asked her all about it. Natalie, what does Women in Agile do? WomenInAgile has created a place and community for women to network, share experiences, and spread diversity through the Agile community.

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Are you missing a musketeer on your projects?

Kiron Bondale

Ask someone which delivery roles are critical to successfully completing a project and you will get a wide range of recommendations. Three of the more common roles likely to be stated include a project lead, a requirements lead and a solution lead. This is logical as the first is responsible for the delivery process, the second what needs to be delivered and the third how it will be delivered.

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What it takes to be a great project manager

Moira Alexander

Many challenges confront today's project managers -- new technologies, remote workforces and a global market to name a few. To take a project from inception to finish can be grueling and you've got to have great dedication and skills if you're going to be successful. But what sets apart good project managers (PMs) from the truly great ones? What does it take to go from being the manager of projects to a game-changing leader?

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Strategic Project Finance Essentials: A Project Manager’s Guide to Financial Metrics

Speaker: Ketan Jahagirdar - Sopheon’s Director of Product Management

Empower yourself as a project manager with insights that directly influence the financial landscape and strategic direction of your organization! Join us for a deep dive into the world of financial strategy, as we dissect key metrics that drive CFOs and business leaders’ investment decisions. This session will equip you with the necessary tools to craft compelling business cases as well as a comprehensive understanding of the crucial distinction between capital expenditure and operational expend

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How to Take Care of Poinsettias (and Project Teams)

Project Risk Coach

Knowing what your teams really need I recently had a friend ask me — since I have an agricultural background — how to take care of her Christmas poinsettia. She said, “The leaves have been turning yellow and falling off. I think I’m killing it.” Poinsettias have a reputation for being hard to maintain. I asked a few questions such as: How many hours of sunlight has the plant been getting?

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Advice for Project Managers: How to Get More Resources and Manage Chaos

LiquidPlanner

Are you grappling with a stubborn project management work issue? Ask Elizabeth! Email your question to: marketingteam@liquidplanner.com. Anonymity included. Dear Elizabeth: I’m currently running a large project that’s a mess. We’ve lost team members, the customer has asked for more features and now we’re scheduled to go well over our deadline. I’ve had endless conversations with my manager about the need to add more people to the project—I’ve even shown her my resource workload report.

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The Agile Canon

Musings on Project Management

I thought this posting on the "Agile Canon" was worthy of passing along in its entirety. So, there's the link for a pretty good read on the most important elements of a canon that all should be interested in adopting: Measure Economic Progress: Outcomes, means to measure, means to forecast Proactively Experiment to Improve: Assess options, embrace diversity and variability, execute.

Agile 150
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Project Management Collaboration Tools FAQ

Rebel’s Guide to PM

I ran a subscriber-only webinar recently about trends in project management collaboration tools and the barriers to adopting new technology in a project environment. I think people had a great time and the feedback was fantastic. I certainly got a bigger buzz out of presenting my own webinar than I was expecting! The only problem was that we ran out of time to get through all the questions so I wanted to address some of them here.

2015 228
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20 Common Mistakes Made by Inexperienced Project Managers

You’ve read the PMBOK® Guide several times, taken the certification exam for project managers, passed, and you are now a PMP®. So why do you keep making rookie mistakes? This whitepaper shows 20 of the most common mistakes that young or inexperienced project managers make, issues that can cost significant time and money. It's a good starting point for understanding how and why many PMs get themsleves into trouble, and provides guidance on the types of issues that PMs need to understand.

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Are your artifacts advantageous?

Kiron Bondale

Project management methodologies define policies, principles and practices. Methodologies will also usually mandate the completion of some standard artifacts. On the low end of the prescriptive scale, specific documents might need to be produced only where organization policy dictates whereas with other methodologies, a whole slew of artifacts are required to comply with expected standards.

Agile 136
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Tool Review: Hub Planner – resource scheduling, time tracking & project management software

The Digital Project Manager

Hub Planner is one of the tools featured on our list of resource management tools. It’s a powerful and robust resource and team scheduling software. The post Tool Review: Hub Planner – resource scheduling, time tracking & project management software appeared first on The Digital Project Manager.

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What tips do you have for breaking down your project into deliverables and activities? [Tip]

Project Risk Coach

What tips do you have for breaking down your project into deliverables and activities? I asked this question on LinkedIn: What tips do you have for breaking down your project into deliverables and activities? Bill Duncan responded with the following tips (which I thought were great): Recognize that “work packages” are only the lowest level of the WBS from the buyer’s perspective in a contracting environment.

Estimate 150
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5 Project Management Trends for Manufacturing Teams to Watch in 2017

LiquidPlanner

As 2016 comes to a close, it’s time to look at some project management trends we can expect to see in 2017. With all the talk of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and anticipation among future-thinkers and business leaders around Industry 4.0, a lot of industry trends and processes are focused on how to succeed in a new world of technology, market demands and productivity requirements.

2017 103
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The Big Payoff of Application Analytics

Outdated or absent analytics won’t cut it in today’s data-driven applications – not for your end users, your development team, or your business. That’s what drove the five companies in this e-book to change their approach to analytics. Download this e-book to learn about the unique problems each company faced and how they achieved huge returns beyond expectation by embedding analytics into applications.

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More on the risk matrix

Musings on Project Management

In 1711 Abraham De Moivre came up with the mathematical definition of risk as: The Risk of losing any sum is the reverse of Expectation; and the true measure of it is, the product of the Sum adventured multiplied by the Probability of the Loss. Abraham de Moivre, De Mensura Sortis, 1711 in the Ph. Trans. of the Royal Society I copied this quote from a well argued posting by Matthew.

Risk 163
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What I’m Reading: December 2016

Rebel’s Guide to PM

As the holidays approach it’s hard to find time to do any reading. I haven’t even been using my commuting time to read because I’ve been crocheting Christmas tree stocking decorations instead. My NCT group from when Jack was born has had two new babies this year and it’s a bit of a tradition that I make them a little red stocking for the tree. The pattern I use works up quickly and small projects like that are good for the train.

2016 152
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There is a good reason why everyone hates Microsoft Project

Binfire

There are two things people say about Microsoft Project. Microsoft Project is the industry standard for project management software. And everyone hates Microsoft Project. Although there have been some declines in market share for Microsoft Project, it is still the dominant solution in the marketplace. The gold standard. The 1,000-pound gorilla.

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Work Together: WePay with CEO & Co-Founder Bill Clerico

Redbooth

Work Together is a regular discussion with founders and CEOs about the people, processes, and technology that help today’s companies get work done. This week in Work Together, AeroFS CEO Yuri Sagalov interviews Bill Clerico, Co-Founder and CEO of WePay, about the company’s collaboration style. With operations across the U.S. and Europe, WePay uses a variety of collaboration tools to store documents, support customers, hold meetings, and chat.

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How to Stay Competitive in the Evolving State of Martech

Marketing technology is essential for B2B marketers to stay competitive in a rapidly changing digital landscape — and with 53% of marketers experiencing legacy technology issues and limitations, they’re researching innovations to expand and refine their technology stacks. To help practitioners keep up with the rapidly evolving martech landscape, this special report will discuss: How practitioners are integrating technologies and systems to encourage information-sharing between departments and pr

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How to Break Down Your Project

Project Risk Coach

Scope and Schedule Management How should you break down your project? Steven Pressfield said, “A great trick that I learned having worked as a screenwriter for many years, the way screenwriters work, is they break the project down into three-act structure: Act 1, Act 2, Act 3. I think that is a great way to break down any project, whether it’s a new business or anything at all.” Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.

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How to Create an Innovative Project Team

LiquidPlanner

Innovative project teams are increasingly becoming an invaluable asset for corporations. Not only is it becoming vital that project teams make use of the latest technological advancements in the products and services that they’re developing; it’s also vital that teams continuously improve the way in which they work—and that they find new and innovative ways of cutting costs in order to stay competitive.

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Kahn Academy on game theory

Musings on Project Management

Chapter 12 of my book, "Maximizing Project Value", posits game theory as tool useful to project managers who are faced with trying to outwit or predict other parties vying for the same opportunity. When John von Neumann first conceived game theory, he was out to solve zero-sum games in warfare: I win; you lose. But one of his students challenged him to "solve" a game which is not zero-sum.

Risk 163
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Thanking the GirlsGuideToPM Community (That’s You)

Rebel’s Guide to PM

This year I received two emails that changed the way I think about this blog. The first was from a lecturer in Africa who teaches project management to female students. He said he uses this site to show that it’s a real job that women can excel at. Some part of what we do here might have inspired a new generation of girls to go into project management.

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From Complexity to Clarity: Strategies for Effective Compliance and Security Measures

Speaker: Erika R. Bales, Esq.

When we talk about “compliance and security," most companies want to ensure that steps are being taken to protect what they value most – people, data, real or personal property, intellectual property, digital assets, or any other number of other things - and it’s more important than ever that safeguards are in place. Let’s step back and focus on the idea that no matter how complicated the compliance and security regime, it should be able to be distilled down to a checklist.

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Project Management Books: 20 Best Books for Project Managers

The Digital Project Manager

Check out our list of 20 of the very best project management books. Whether you're a newbie, beginner, advanced or experienced project manager, we’ve done the reading for you so you can find one to match your level of project management experience. The post Project Management Books: 20 Best Books for Project Managers appeared first on The Digital Project Manager.

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