Maintaining acceptable quality across all the activities in a project—particularly when an initiative is complex, high visibility, or has a long duration—can be difficult. There are all sorts of reasons teams might see their project quality drop, and leaders need to be ready to quickly take action so they can keep initiatives headed toward a…
project management tips
Why Data Silos Are the Enemy of ERP Project Success
September 7, 2021 by
ERP implementations are full of challenges. One common obstacle project management consultants and internal teams alike often encounter is the prevalence of data silos, where information can’t properly flow between the various systems and the ERP. Looking across the numerous existing platforms that typically integrate with a new ERP solution, it’s a given that seamless…
Reasons Your Project Scope Creep Might Be Your Fault
August 27, 2021 by
Scope creep creates all sorts of problems for project teams. Resource conflicts may crop up if excessive labor or materials are consumed by one project and then unavailable for another, for example. Delays in reaching key milestones can also occur when outside-scope tasks prevent the team from completing their original workload. Identifying scope creep before…
3 Reasons Project Scheduling is so Difficult (And What to Do About It)
July 19, 2021 by
Developing workable timelines can be a big challenge for project teams. In particular, our project management consultants have seen businesses encounter trouble when initiatives are complex, have a long duration, or are still on the horizon but need to have some structure created around them now. If you’re having difficulty developing your project timeline, it…
Project Portfolio ROI: Thinking Beyond Dollar Signs
May 14, 2021 by
Industry research continues to reveal dismally low project success rates. There are many factors that play into this, and the PMAlliance project management consulting teams see a range of reasons why organizations aren’t delivering projects on time or on budget, or why project outcomes don’t meet expectations. Unfortunately, analyzing the dollars that are lost as…
The Failing Project: Know When It’s Time for an Intervention
April 19, 2021 by
Rescuing a troubled project is a difficult undertaking. But sometimes there’s an equally big challenge that must be overcome before you can start developing a strategy to pull a troubled project back to life: Knowing when your project is too far gone for a simple fix. Below are some indicators that your initiative’s problems are…
Can You Answer These Project Finance Questions?
January 29, 2021 by
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…
Why You Should Formalize Your Project Intake Process
August 14, 2020 by
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
July 10, 2020 by
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?
July 3, 2020 by
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…
