Many years ago, the London Tube; the subway system, created a slogan reminding people to look down and step carefully between the platform and the train. It’s become such a symbol of London that we see not only the Mind the Gap symbol on t-shirts but memes of all kinds to “Mind the… Something”. Last week here at HMS, we came across a gap. It was a process gap and because of checks and balances…
Many of us have spent all our energy and attention in the last 3-4 weeks organizing our businesses and organizations to work remotely. Contingency plans that were made long ago have had to be executed. Business Continuity plans you hadn’t completed have had to be finalized and put into action in a hurry. It’s been a lot of adapting on the fly and by all the clients and business contacts we have spoken to, it…
This article appeared last year in the PM World Journal and was based on a presentation I got to give at the University of Texas at Dallas PM Symposium. For some reason, I never posted the article directly so here is “Resource Risk in an Uncertain World”. Life is risky. Thank goodness. If not for the presence of risk, what would we need project managers for? We’d just make an estimate and return on the…
I’m struck by the degree in recent times that our world is filled with uncertainty. Oh there has always been uncertainty. I know that. Control is an illusion but lately so many things that people have counted on have become uncertain. Geo-Politics In the geo-political sphere in the last few months we’ve seen big changes in the way the US Administration works. No matter which side of the American political divide you’re on, I doubt…
In my brief flirtation with Psychology in my first year of university, I learned more than I’d ever want to know about rats in a maze. My distaste for the exercise would come back to haunt me last year when my stepson needed a dwarf hamster for his science project. Wendy is now a part of the family. You can see Wendy and our home-made maze on the right. You’ve no doubt seen the images…
The whole concept of Agile was designed to prevent project bloat. Back in the 1990’s when software development and deployment projects became mega projects a little too easily, the notion of Agile became much more popular. We’ve all heard about Agile. The idea that we’ll develop incrementally in sprints and after each sprint we should have deployable code, each time with a bit more functionality. It’s a great idea. We use Agile project management within…
Next week I’ll have the pleasure of visiting the Minneapolis/St-Paul area to speak at the Minnesota chapter of the PMI as they host their Professional Development Days event. I’ve been asked to speak on two subjects and I’m only too happy to do so. On Wednesday, September 14th I’ll be talking about Creating Business Prioritization for Projects and Portfolios where we’ll discuss how creating priorities for our projects is more about understanding our business imperatives than it is…
One of the most interesting project management reports that evolved after my start in the industry is the “burn-down” report. I mention it because at HMS, we are about to launch TimeControl 7 and we are in the final hours prior to launch where we are at the end of a long reiterative burn down process. If you’ve never been in the IT industry then you may not have seen such a project management report with…
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.…
This seminar has been given at PMI and other project management events all over North America and now you can view it right here on EPMGuidance.com. This on demand webinar is free right here on the site. Go to the Improve Resource Capacity Webinar to see the whole seminar.
