If it seems like your organization’s leadership team is reluctant to approve your project’s contingency plans, you aren’t alone. Contingency planning can sometimes be a difficult concept for executives to embrace and the mere mention of contingent planning efforts has been known to derail meetings with C-suite stakeholders. Contingency plans are useful for addressing all…
Project Management Consulting
Is Your Project Data Demotivating Your Team?
November 29, 2018 by
Projects revolve around their project data—information on task durations, workforce productivity, and details about expenditure levels, just to name a few. Once the effort is complete, additional metrics will be gathered and examined. This could include compiling data on the project’s actual impact on manufacturing yield, for example, and comparing it against the initial projections….
Imrpove Your Project Task Duration Estimates
November 16, 2018 by
Accurate task duration estimates are a primary building block of a realistic and dependable project schedule. But teams sometimes get estimates from end users and other stakeholders that are incomplete or contain flawed data. This can lead to big scheduling problems later. How can you get better task duration estimates? It isn’t just up to…
Burned Out? Get Back into the Project Groove
November 14, 2018 by
Project burnout is an increasingly common problem in many organizations. It affects people in every job and at every seniority level, from new hires to the most experienced professionals. Project teams and PMs are particularly susceptible as budgets lean out and expectations increase. The pace of business today doesn’t help any, with near-constant communications contributing…
The Soft Skills Needed for Project Success
October 31, 2018 by
The project management competencies required to successfully plan and execute an initiative are well known, but does your team also have these soft skills that will help them get your next project to the finish line? Being able to collaborate with a wide range of stakeholder groups. Though teamwork is already a priority, as far as…
Project Emergency: Loss of a Primary Sponsor
October 29, 2018 by
Support from a primary sponsor is a key component in project success. Without these influential people helping to grease the wheels, important initiatives run the risk of failure. In the near term, assistance from sponsors aids in securing necessary funding and other resources. Looking ahead, sponsor support can be crucial in handling unexpected challenges and…
Use Your Project Portfolio to Improve Your Workforce
October 25, 2018 by
Managing your organization’s human capital assets is an ongoing task. Most businesses see their needs change over time, from increasing the size of the workforce to tapping new types of talent. For PMs, keeping the internal skills in tune with the company’s needs can be a challenge, but it contributes greatly to your project portfolio…
6 Tips to Manage Project Delays
October 2, 2018 by
being able to manage project delays within the project lifecycle is crucial for a successful end result. Sometimes the problem is that tasks begin later than planned, or the schedule slips when activities take longer to complete than expected. If you’re worried about delays derailing your project, the right strategies can help you stay ahead…
Benefits of Continuous Project Improvements
September 12, 2018 by
Driving one project to a successful completion is an important accomplishment. Unfortunately, too often those victories are overshadowed by other challenges, such as projects that are delivered late or that never meet all of the stated objectives. And because project teams and executive staff already have a lot to oversee, it can be difficult to…
Project Emergency: Handling a Quality Control Failure
September 10, 2018 by
Initiatives that include any sort of testing or quality control component—it could be anything from developing a new software platform to the manufacture of airplane parts—run the risk of encountering a project emergency or situation where something fails a QC check or doesn’t pass some other mid-project inspection. An unexpected and large-scale bug may be…
