Project managers certainly need to attend to the details in their projects but they also need to see the big picture. As much as anything else, project management is about balance.
Read moreEstimating is fortune telling. When we estimate how long something will take or how much it will cost or how much resource will be needed, we are using the best information available to us and our experience to predict what is required for an event, activity or deliverable before we begin. This is self-evident, particularly when we see it in writing, but it belies assumptions that we usually fail to account for in the way we estimate or plan.
Read moreWe all know Murphy’s Law: Anything that can go wrong will go wrong. It’s thanks to our deep and abiding faith in Murphy’s Law that many of us, and most of the folks on our teams, always add a bit of “padding” to our estimates. We’ve got to allow for Murphy’s impact. Though we joke a lot about Murphy’s Law, we have learned through consistent and often difficult experiences that something will not go as planned so we had better build in some safety to give us a chance to deal with the problems.
Read moreManaging organizational change is not the same as managing project change. It focuses on preparing the organization for the change, creating conditions that encourage the accommodation of the change, and of course, communicating the value of the change to the whole organization.
Read moreRisk management is time consuming and consequently costly but it is often more costly to rush forward without considering risk, because when the unexpected happens, we have to react, which involves delay, rework, and sometimes waste.
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