Leading a project team requires strong project management skills, but project managers have responsibilities beyond planning and executing initiatives. Not only are they expected to orchestrate and monitor the full scope of a project’s activities, they also have critical leadership responsibilities vying for their time. Understanding all the roles a project manager needs to fulfill…
Projects
Why Do Project Teams Stick with Bad Plans?
June 18, 2021 by
Project plans can be unworkable for any number of reasons and our team of project management consultants have stepped in to rescue failing initiatives due to most of them. Some project plans are bad from the get-go, others become a nightmare mid-lifecycle. And though the process of getting at-risk projects back on track requires skill…
Why Your Project Meeting Should Be More Proactive
May 21, 2021 by
Innovation thrives in environments where people are open to new ideas. Supporting team members who are committed to life-long learning and who are willing to adapt and innovate will help the project group stay current and efficient in its use of resources, its approach to solving problems, and its execution of initiatives. Unfortunately, time pressures…
Your Project Plan is Broken: Should You Fix It or Start Over?
March 19, 2021 by
Sometimes project plans run into so much trouble they can only be described as broken. Missed milestone deadlines are usually one of the first signs your plan is falling apart, but as part of our project management consulting work with customers we’re often able to identify a host of earlier issues that should have triggered…
Use Portfolio Templates to Improve Your Project Process
October 23, 2020 by
As part of our project portfolio management consulting work, we’ve seen time and again that the implementation of portfolio templates can deliver big benefits. However, many organizations haven’t yet tapped into the full potential of the template approach. Some businesses aren’t sure how portfolio templates might work in their environments. Others fear that creating even…
5 Perks of a Formal Portfolio Prioritization Process
September 11, 2020 by
You may already rank the projects within your company’s portfolio. But do you have an established methodology around the process that’s followed every time, no matter who’s sponsoring the effort or which project manager is reviewing it? If your portfolio’s priorities are determined through an informal or ad hoc process (or no process at all),…
How Healthy is Your Project Portfolio?
August 7, 2020 by
Building a healthy project portfolio is about more than successfully executing individual projects. Keeping your portfolio in good condition also requires consistent performance that delivers optimal results, gives your business the best return on its investments, and efficiently limits the impacts from any complications or risks. Many organizations don’t have the controls or data analysis…
6 Strategies to Manage Low-Priority Projects
November 4, 2019 by
It’s important that PMs regularly assess their organization’s entire project portfolio. Recurring reviews enable them to ensure each initiative is properly prioritized against the business’s needs and available project management support, and that any opportunities to share resources or consolidate workloads across projects have been identified and evaluated. But when time is short, you want…
Parachute Project? Do Not Panic!
September 21, 2018 by
A parachute project can rattle even the most efficient and experienced project teams. These initiatives—which often come out of nowhere and drop into the heart of a schedule that’s already busy—can throw everything off balance. They may be triggered by a variety of events, from the announcement of a new regulatory requirement to a competitor’s…
