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Enterprise Project Management

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In project management, that last 1% before you can say. “We’re really complete now… Honest!” can be a long leap from 99%. I’ve talked about the Ivory Snow project syndrome before where the project becomes almost instantly 99.4 percent complete and then stays there the rest of its life. That’s a condition that often happens in the heady heyday of the early phase of a project. There’s another more sinister scenario when you’re near the…

Years ago, when most of us in the project management software industry were discussing critical path theory and how resource levelling should work, a new paradigm emerged called Critical Chain.  It was developed by Eliyahu Goldratt.  The issues that caused Critical Chain theory to evolve were sound.  The problem with Resource Levelling is that it assumed a perfect world with perfect distribution of resources and a world where when one task was complete, the next…

It’s an old joke that is typically attributed to the people of the State of Maine in the US.  A visitor stops to ask an old timer for directions and says “I need to go to this place.” The old-timer resident thinks for a moment and then says, “Oh sure.  That place.  I know that place.  You can’t get there from here.” The joke almost always gets a laugh but I was reminded of it…

It wasn’t that long ago that the world was a much bigger place. In the olden days (about 10 years ago) we didn’t have to think too much about the real-time impact of global project teams.  The world just isn’t that big anymore. Collaboration challenges Modern communications technology means that every team member probably has a mobile phone and the Internet is available virtually everywhere (well, almost) and the collaboration tools for video conferencing and…

Since I started in the project management software industry in the early 1980s there has always been an interest in managing skill scheduling.  It’s easy to see why.  When you need to build something whether it is a house, a pipeline, an aircraft, a new drug or a piece of software, you are going to require resources who have specific skills.  Skill scheduling has been designed and even delivered in different project management tools…

This year political correctness seems to be everywhere.  In the US it’s a presidential election cycle so perhaps some level of political correctness goes with the territory.  But political correctness isn’t just a political phenomenon.  In the private sector, in public sector organizations, in volunteer or charitable work the insidiousness of being “PC” can wreak havoc.  Project Managers are faced with this every day and are under pressure either to make sure their project reports…

We’ve just published a new free webinar based on seminars that have been given many times in different venues around North America.  Panning for Gold by Data Mining your Project Tracking data is approximately 60 minutes long and covers how to data mine enteprise project and enterprise timesheet data to improve efficiency.  The webinar includes real life examples from some of our HMS Software clients in how they were able to data mine their project timesheet…

I’m in the software publishing business.  I should be all about selling you the tools.  It’s not about the result you want, it should be about the result I want… but that’s never been the way I’ve gone about business.  So this article is about the result, not the tool. I came across an interesting expression recently.  A software salesperson was talking about delivering the entire solution to his client.  “We don’t sell drills.…

Over the years I have received a number of questions from project managers expressing the challenge of sharing bad news with their management.  “No matter what the potential benefits might be,” one said, “I’ll be fired if I share news that bad.” No matter what your work environment, it seems that some people are better at sharing bad news than others and for project managers, being able to share both good tidings and bad is part of the…

In my office recently one of our most experienced employees came to me with a strange question. “How do you know if something is a project management system?” they asked. I opened my mouth to answer then paused… for a long time.  The answer is not obvious. In the early 1980s the first critical path scheduling packages became available for personal computers.  In fact, I find it interesting that history shows that critical-path scheduling software…