There’s lots of talk lately about the project management maturity model but this principle can also be applied to project management systems and software. This article looks at how an organization’s use of project management systems matures over time and how it follows a common pattern in most organizations.
Project management is only one challenge in managing a project with multiple projects. Everything we do for one project, we must consider among many. Which projects should get priority, which projects should get resources first, which projects are prerequisites for other projects. How do executives determine the priorities among projects and what happens when they won’t?
You’d think that project management professionals within an organization would be the biggest asset in an enterprise project management deployment. Surprisingly, it’s not always so. Sometimes knowing how it used to work is a barrier to seeing the latest in methodology, technology and best practices.
I’ve been in a lot of corporate meetings lately discussing various aspects of delivering an “integrated” project management environment. Don’t get me wrong, a corporate-wide integrated system is a wonderful thing to desire. There’s no doubt that the idea of pushing a button on a screen and finding that every element of data across the company is tied to every other element in just such a way that the answers I desire are immediately available…
I’ve had a few wonderful opportunities lately to talk to high-tech CIOs about what costs them the most time. I had thought I’d hear about project management and resource management issues. ‘We need a better scheduling algorithm’ or ‘We need a better resource-leveling engine,’ I figured I’d hear. Not so. The CIOs I’ve met this month in my rather non-scientific survey talked about the simple things. “I’d just like to know if my people are…
More and more these days as I visit project management offices across the country, I end up talking about scorecarding and balanced scorecarding. These terms are part of a popular trend in management at the moment which is based on the simplest of management principles. Scorecarding refers to simply setting goals for certain results in the business and then tracking those results on a regular basis. (See? I told you it was simple). The notion…
We tend to talk about project management systems as an end unto themselves but what help is there for automating or improving project manager’s soft skills? There’s lots. From training to aids and enablement systems, project managers should be aware of what can help them be a good leader, a good negotiator, a good collaborator and a good communicator.
So many people approach me to ask if the EPM system they saw in some demonstration last week will fix their enterprise project management challenges. “Do you have a PMO?” I always ask. The challenge of implementing an EPM system successfully comes with some presumed prerequisites. I’ve listed several in this article.
Purchasing is such a routine of process and procedures in each organization that the effects of the process are rarely challenged. Well, we do so in this article on how standard purchasing practices are applied to the selection of enterprise project management software.
Systems: Planning for Project 2010 We’ve received and will continue to receive information from Microsoft on the upcoming release of Project and Project Server 2010. For those who are making plans to migrate to Project 2010 or who plan to deploy Project 2010, some of this information will enable you to make long term strategic or technical plans. Read more…