“Resistance is futile” was the battlecry of the evil Borg from Star Trek. Sometimes I’m sure there are PMO’s who wish they could be as convincing to fellow colleagues who are resisting the deployment of enterprise project management and enterprise project management systems. Getting the job of deploying an enterprise project management environment is not the best news for some people who have to complete that project within an organization where there may be a…
As the economy slowly recovers project teams are facing an unusual challenge. Management is coming to project offices and to product managers and asking them to ”restart“ projects that were suspended due to economic concerns some time ago. Restarting a project can be infinitely more complex than starting it originally. The original project plan might have been created with great care over an extended period but the assumptions that play behind the scenes in any…
Anyone who has worked with project management systems knows that the way you display data can dramatically affect the decions people make from it. This is why we often see GANTT charts with critical activities in red. I’m reminded of one of my very first sales of project scheduling software back in the 80’s. I don’t dare share the name of the organization but it was a large utility. We’d made this sale a few…
How do you change corporate culture? Do you use a carrot? A stick? One of the most effective methods I’ve come across deals with the challenge with more finesse thanks to some thinking from Buckminster Fuller. It’s called “trim tab”.
Dealing with Resource overload is one of the most common challenges in project management. How do you deal with the project workload when the resources just aren’t there?
I’ve been enjoying Scott Adams Dilbert comic strips for years. They’re a treasure trove of laughs for people in the project management or timesheet software business as I am. Adam’s Dilbert website has too many old strips to choose from so here’s just one that had me chuckle today.
We hear the salespitch almost continuously from large ERP/Finance system vendors. “It shoudl alllll be integrated.” That’s a story that sells easier than it implements. Sometimes it’s just easier and more effective to look integrated than to be integrated.
Happy New Year and welcome 2010.
Managing projects is all about risk. If there were no risk, we’d have no need of project managers. When we think about risk though, what kinds of systems can help with collecting, tracking and analyzing risk? Let’s take a look.
Implementing enterprise systems is only partly a technology challenge. This is certainly true with enterprise project management systems. Must more important is managing the culture shock or behavioural change of the organization. What does this mean and how can you mitigate the risks of culture shock derailing your epm deployment?