If there’s one topic project management consultants know their clients hear about often, it’s money. The most common inquiries revolve around how much money each initiative has consumed, but team members also want to confirm how much remains available to move current efforts to completion and sponsors sometimes put out feelers to see if there…
project management tips
Why You Should Formalize Your Project Intake Process
With so much attention focused on executing projects, some organizations put too little effort into formulating and strengthening their intake processes. This is a mistake that could end up diminishing the performance of your company’s entire project portfolio. You may be expected to push projects through to completion that are poorly crafted or unsupported, or…
Project Portfolio Management: The Value of Analytics
Companies that execute more than a handful of initiatives each year have access to tremendous volumes of useful project data. Unfortunately, unless you have a process in place to make sense of all that incoming information, you’re likely to miss the most meaningful metrics. You may not have enough visibility into project performance to know…
Is It Time to Embrace Project Portfolio Management?
Small companies with only a few active projects may be able to successfully achieve good results without implementing a portfolio management strategy. Their pool of sponsors and executives is limited enough that everyone can likely get together for quick project status reviews, and budgets are monitored closely because funds are so lean that no one’s…
6 Reasons to Involve Executives in Project Portfolio Management
Managing your organization’s portfolio of upcoming projects while also planning and executing the current batch of initiatives is a challenge. Hectic workloads sometimes lead PMs to avoid involving their executive team in portfolio management activities simply because it seems like yet another layer of complexity in an already packed schedule. But leaving your senior staff…
Remote Project Management: 4 Tips for Successful Virtual Events
In the virtual world, it can be difficult to maintain engagement around your project. Online events and other digitally accessible activities help keep remote stakeholders interested in what your team is doing and excited about your project’s expected results. Coordinating a presentation for your executive group Using video to show a walk-through of…
Is Your Project Too Big to Succeed?
We’ve all heard the phrase “too big to fail,” but PMs should also be mindful that some projects could be too big to succeed. That doesn’t mean these monster efforts can’t get to the finish line—they’re often strategically important, and failure is simply not an option. Instead, it means project teams need to take some…
Are Executives Derailing Your Project?
Your organization’s leadership team plays a vital role in project success. The executives are typically key sponsors of high-visibility initiatives and their participation in moving efforts from concept to reality is crucial. There are times, however, when you may discover that senior staff are standing in the way of progress rather than supporting it. If…
Improve Project Performance with Templates
Though they may seem like minor players when it comes to successfully completing a project, templates can be tremendously helpful in closing some significant gaps in the planning and execution process. Without templates, your team may have trouble communicating effectively with stakeholders. They might omit crucial details when handing off a multi-part task to a…
Project Management: Improve Individual Accountability
Successful project planning and execution requires commitment from every stakeholder. Everyone involved in orchestrating and carrying out tasks must be accountable for the activities under their area of responsibility, but developing this level of individual accountability and sustaining it across the entire project lifecycle is a task all by itself. Along with their normal project…