Category: Project Team Development

Project Management Blog

Supply Chain Challenges Continue To Evolve | PMAlliance Project Management Blog

Several factors can create challenges for manufacturing project teams. For example, among the many concerns for PMs today are unexpected supply chain issues related to ramping up after a prolonged downturn. It can be tremendously difficult to juggle increased manufacturing needs—often with time pressures as primary drivers—against potentially decreased bandwidth across suppliers and producers.

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Project Management Blog

5 Challenges of Internal Project Training

Ongoing education is a critical part of maintaining a Project Team’s base of skills and expertise. Using internal team members to train others in the group is often an attractive option—it doesn’t entail the typical hard costs associated with outside training and classes can be conducted with little advance planning. This takes good advantage of downtime while keeping everyone up to date on best practices. However, though the cost savings and flexibility may be tempting, there are some challenges that teams need to be mindful of if they want to get the most benefit out of their internal training opportunities.

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Project Management Blog

What Can Dynamic Scheduling Do for Your Project Team?| PMAlliance Project Management Blog

Project teams are increasingly aware of the value of using a dynamic schedule to sequence and oversee activities. With the ability to effectively address any schedule impacts by reflowing or compressing tasks to maintain alignment with the target completion date, the center of excellence gains tangible benefits that can help keep difficult or complex projects on track.

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Common Problems

Solid Planning is the Answer to the Brexit Uncertainty

Companies worried about the future should instead turn their focus toward planning. Contingency planning has long been a core skill behind successful project management, and it’s a competency that organizations can turn to as the Brexit process moves forward. After reviewing the firm’s goals and where the changing environment might intersect (or interfere), project managers will be able to lay out several contingent paths that can guide the business through the uncertain years ahead, leaning toward one or another of these potential paths as information about the future becomes more clear.

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Benchmarking

Maintain Quality in Your Manufacturing Project

There are many potential challenges hiding within manufacturing projects. Without the right kind of planning and preparation, issues can crop up with little warning and cause Project Teams to compensate by cutting corners, either in the level of work being performed, the materials used, or even in the overall scope of the project.

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Communication

Why Your Manufacturing Project Needs a Work Breakdown Structure

Teams tasked with executing manufacturing projects have a lot on their plates. To get things underway as soon as possible, it can be tempting to skip over the development of a work breakdown structure and go right to carrying out tasks. But any perceived time savings gained by avoiding this step will quickly come back to haunt PMs, often in the form of delays, critical activity conflicts, and tasks left uncompleted.

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Maintaining Project Schedules
Communication

How to Become a Staff Realignment Master

Project schedules are rarely static. Instead, they begin evolving as soon as the team gets to work. Status reports coming in from the field, issues such as material and equipment delivery timing, and labor availability will all impact the schedule throughout the project’s lifecycle.

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resource management
Common Problems

Resource Management Enables Visibility

Project managers essentially have two areas of focus when it comes to manpower support:

Knowing that they have enough of the right resources to execute the amount of work planned, ensuring they aren’t caught short-handed at a critical time.
Understanding when those resources are needed—and when they’re best used—so they don’t have expensive labor resources onsite without anything to do.

If the team isn’t adequately staffed with the right level of labor resources to complete the amount of work being scheduled, the activity durations will ultimately take longer. This often leads to some of the project’s scope being sacrificed toward the end of the project as the team runs out of time leading up to the target completion date.

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