People, Projects, and Organizations
RIP: The Project Triangle
The theorists have won. The latest version of Project Management Institute’s (PMI) Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) has done away with the project triangle, often referred to as the triple constraint. For more than fifty years this simple model allowed people inside and outside the profession of project management to understand the high level...
Haunting Deadlines
Working on projects can be very demanding, taxing our energy and resiliency. There are often spurts of overtime that have to be put in to get a project back on track. Sometimes you have to work months upon months of long hours just to stay a little behind. If you worked on just one project...
End-Users Have Horizon Lines Too
We have been unfair to end-users for far too long. We ask them what they want the application to do for them and they tell us as best they can. Then we get mad at them because they change their mind or bring up additional items later in the project. We have been complaining about...
Don't Forget About the Project Environment
Projects are neither good nor bad: they’re neutral. They succeed or fail because of what team members do to them, the skills each team member brings to a project effect its ultimate success. Most executives understand this and that is why they spend money on training because raising the skill level of team members increases...
Defining Your Project Into a Box
The hardest thing to do when launching a project is to define it into a box. Yes, I said define it INTO a box. When a project starts there are lots of interviews with stakeholders. Every one of them has their vision for what the project should include. This gets added, that gets added and...
The Problem with Getting it "Right"
“If management would only let us do it the right way.” “We can’t do it without the right tools.” “If only we had the right people on this.” Right. While working with executives and colleagues, Project Managers inevitably hear ”right” phrases over-used. Certainly there are bad decisions and illegal actions. But it’s usually not a...
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