Start at the Finish and Work Backwards Towards the Start to Get to Where You Want to Go
9 years 24 weeks agoProject planning is all about figuring out when we are going to finish our project and how much is it going to cost. We typically start with a fixed start date and then figure out what the end date and associated cost may be.Why then, when planning our day to day lives do the very opposite and reverse engineer the plan in order to achieve our goals? For example, “if I need to be at work by 9am
Why Tasks Should be Banned from Project Scheduling Tools
9 years 24 weeks agoMy best friend and I meet up once every year and we invariably end up chatting about our mutual passion for project planning. His view is a little extreme but one with enough merit to warrant discussion: “Ban activities and tasks from scheduling tools…” he says. For those of you who use scheduling tools such as MS Project or similar, you will know this is verging on project planning blasphemy
Planning By Consensus
9 years 24 weeks agoSo much hinges on the project schedule, yet so few team members contribute to it. Whatsmore, they typically don’t care about critical paths, constraints and other building blocks; they just want to know “what, where and when.” We’re overdue for consensus-based planning tools that bridge execution and analytics.
Globally recognized project analytics thought leader and software entrep…
Portfolio Management - The elephant in the room
9 years 25 weeks agoIs this you?
You’re stretched across too many projects.
Not only that, but you’re frustrated that there are quite a few projects in the company that seem to have little benefit, and yet they just drift on.
Worse still, these projects tie up precious time and money that you believe could be diverted to something more worthwhile.
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If the above
The problem with CPM
9 years 30 weeks agoProjects are routinely finishing late. Whilst many have no effective schedule controls a significant proportion do outlay significant amounts of money on scheduling software and people to operate the computer systems and still finish late. The simple fact is most schedulers have no effect on the management of the projects they are working on - they are either there to comply with client
Controlling complex projects
9 years 34 weeks agoComplexity is not a synonym for complicated or large is just one of the dimensions inherent in every project. The four basic dimensions of a project[1] are:
- Its
Why are so many projects set up to fail?
9 years 42 weeks agoProject failure rates have remained steady for at least the last 30 years. Books’ Law was published in 1975[1], Cobbs Paradox was coined in 1995
Predicting project completion
9 years 46 weeks agoWorking out the probable completion date for a project and understanding the risks associated with achieving a target date have always been difficult. This article will take a quick look at the evolution of the techniques through to the current state of research reported at the Project Governance and Controls Symposium earlier this month.
Bar charts have been around for some 200
Risks don’t add up
10 years 2 weeks agoThe way PMI deals with risk in the PMBOK® Guide is simplistic. Calculating the effect of one risk using the suggested probability x severity calculation provides one value. For example, if there is an 20% probability an estimate is under valued by $50,000 the Expected Monetary Value (EMV) for this event will be:
-$50,000 x 0.2 = -$10,000 it is simple but
Breakdown Structures Revisited
10 years 4 weeks agoBreakdown structures are central to the practice of project management and have their origins in the industrial revolution. In the ‘Wealth of Nations’ Smith advocated breaking the production of goods into tiny tasks that can be undertaken by people following simple instructions. ‘Why hire a talented pin maker when ten factory workers using machines and working together can
