A properly defined scope can make all the difference between project success—meeting stakeholders’ expectations, sticking to your budget, and completing key deliverables on time—and failure. Even when project team members have good experience executing complex initiatives, our project management consultants have found that some organizations continue to have trouble knowing when the scope is just…
Stakeholders
Do These 6 Things Before Removing a Project From Your Portfolio
January 4, 2021 by
You should already have a formal mechanism for adding projects to your organization’s portfolio. However, our project management consulting teams have found that some companies don’t follow an established process when a project is removed. It’s common that a project is pulled from the list without a thorough evaluation of the cancelation’s long-term effects. In…
Remote Project Management: Make Flexibility Your Strength
October 9, 2020 by
For organizations unaccustomed to supporting a dispersed workforce, the lack of a single shared job location can create worries about weakness. Will communications break down if we can’t talk face to face? How can we solve problems and brainstorm if we aren’t together as a group? How will scattered team members get the latest information?…
Remote Project Management: Gain Support by Easing Stakeholder Fears
June 11, 2020 by
Fear of the unknown, fear of failure, fear of becoming unpopular with sponsors and executives—fear in all its forms can be a significant hurdle for project teams and the sponsors who support them. The problem only widens when people are working remotely. Some groups don’t have strong communication channels, a necessity when it comes to…
4 Reasons Project Stakeholder Feedback is Important
March 10, 2020 by
Executing a project successfully requires that all participants in the effort—from the project team to sponsors to end users—work together. Everyone needs to have a common set of expectations and be moving toward a common set of goals. The feedback loop is an integral part of building and maintaining that alignment from a project’s inception…
Manage Today’s Project Stakeholder Expectations
January 15, 2020 by
The pace of business today can be downright frantic at times. Given the scope of activities within a normal project and the number of people involved in even relatively small efforts, PMs often face additional challenges keeping up. Not only does their team have access to more technology tools than ever before, they also have…
4 Reasons Executives Hate Project Contingency Plans
December 10, 2018 by
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…
6 Things Executives Want to Know About the Project Portfolio
August 18, 2018 by
Think a project portfolio management methodology is only useful to your project team? Think again. Broad awareness into the company’s active projects, along with those initiatives that are still in the planning pipeline, offers tremendous benefits to executives and other senior decision makers. The amount of information that can be gathered and analyzed across the…
Protect Your Project’s Task Chain
July 6, 2017 by
Every project is comprised of a number of individual tasks. Some tasks can and should be executed simultaneously, and at other times one task must be completed before the next activity can begin. Unfortunately, there’s a lot that can go wrong with these task chains, and the potential for problems grows along with the scope and complexity of the project. For example, the Project Team might not realize that one delayed task doesn’t just impact one other activity, it actually affects the execution plan for many other tasks that are scheduled to happen later in the project.
Why Power Plant Projects Need Real-Time Status Updates
July 4, 2017 by
Information is one of the core pillars underpinning every successful project. With the evolution of technology and more compute power available than ever before, there’s little reason centers of excellence should continue to rely on data that may be days or even weeks old when it comes to identifying potential issues, forecasting activity schedules, making strategic decisions, and pouncing on opportunities in the marketplace.
