Manage Communication – Large Projects (Part 1 of 2) In a large project, all communication takes place in context of an overall Communication Management Plan. Status meetings and status reporting are required, just as for a medium-size project. In addition, there are many other types of proactive communication that need to be considered. This creative […]
Escalate a Performance Problem with a Formal Plan One of the hardest jobs of a manager is to take an employee down a path that may ultimately result in termination. It is hard enough for most managers to provide performance feedback to begin with – even when the employee performance is good. When the employee […]
Managing Staff Topic 1. Overcome Team Resistance to Project Management It’s one thing to build a Project Charter and the schedule. It’s another thing to effectively manage the project. If you could issue the plan and the work assignments and have everyone complete his activities on time, your life would be much easier. However, the […]
Manage Quality and Metrics – Techniques Gather Subjective Metrics with Client Satisfaction Surveys Gathering metrics is important because it allows you to see how you are performing against the expectations of your clients. If the world were perfect, all of the metrics you collect would be factual, relevant and accurate. However, in many cases it […]
Provide Leadership to Implement Critical Change Requests Scope change is not inherently bad or good. However, the team can react to changes in positive and negative ways, depending on the state of the project. A typical reaction from most project teams is to just go ahead and make the approved changes. However, there is another […]
Remember is that it is impossible to categorize everyone within a profession. You can make some general assumptions about technical people, but this does not mean that the assumptions apply to everyone. As a manager, you must ultimately have multiple techniques that you can apply to different people in different circumstances. One technique will not […]
Remember is that it is impossible to categorize everyone within a profession. You can make some general assumptions about technical people, but this does not mean that the assumptions apply to everyone. As a manager, you must ultimately have multiple techniques that you can apply to different people in different circumstances. One technique will not […]
Many people find quality management to be one of the more difficult project management processes to implement. This is because quality is hard to define, and formal quality management requires you to collect metrics to validate the state of quality. The following process will help create a framework for the quality management process. 1. […]
Have you ever been asked how far along you were on a project? Of course you have. If you do not have a valid schedule, or if you are not keeping the schedule up-to-date, you know that your answer is pretty much a guess. If you have a good schedule and you are keeping it […]
Procurement refers to obtaining goods and services from outside companies. This specifically refers to vendors and suppliers. It does not refer to other internal organizations within your own company. (For the purposes of this discussion, “purchasing” and “procurement” are equivalent terms.) This is an area that project managers definitely need to understand at some level, […]
