Writings from the perspective of Gargas Project Solutions.
Across the table, my colleague straightened, a eureka expression crossing his face. “So you offer a ‘Fire and Forget’ service!” he exclaimed. That sounded like something I should know the meaning of, but we all know it’s risky to assume. “To be sure we’re on the same page, can you explain ‘Fire and Forget’?“ I…
It was January 9, a long time ago. Santa, just back from his two-week post-Christmas Sabbatical, was addressing his Elf staff. “I have great news! Next year, we’re going Global!” The elves gasped. Up until then, the Santa Claus operating environment had been localized. They hadn’t even tested a regional model. “Whoa,” said one elf.…
If you’re pondering a Project Manager hire, you fall into one of two camps: 1) Your people have been acting as part-time Project Managers and you’re considering your first hire, or, 2) Your firm has Project Manager as a job title and you’re looking to add another. In either case, here is a relatively new…
If you ever want to feel totally overwhelmed, have them Google “What are the best Project Management Tools?” Three hundred twenty-nine million results later (in 0.85 seconds), you’ll find the top twenty entries, half of which are ads. Google will also feature an article, “Seven of the Best Project Management Tools For Your Business.” And…
I’ve heard that VIDEO is the way to go nowadays, and that only dinosaurs ignore that fact. Seeing as dinos are all extinct and I have more of a forward-looking vision anyway, I’m happy to announce this new feature. It’ll look like this: You will be able to access it from the YouTube icon…
Halloween is near. Time to plan your New Year’s Resolutions. For many companies October is when leaders make decisions regarding next year’s business plan. If you’re in this mode, here’s a simple question: Are you planning your 2019 projects for success? NOW is the time to plan for project success. What does that mean? If…
Any organization’s results are directly created by the BEHAVIORS of the organization’s people. So if you want to have the best project management outcomes, you should create a project environment which encourages the very best project behaviors. So, what exactly are those behaviors? Stop reading for just a moment and write down one to three…
Brace yourself. What follows is sound logic behind using low-side estimates for project plan task scheduling — assuming you also adopt a breakthrough method to deal with project plan uncertainty. Conventional wisdom tells us to protect a project from uncertainty by “adding” EXTRA TIME into each task estimate. That’s often called “safety.” While seeming perfectly…
In Part One of this blog I made a strong case as to why using high-end task duration estimates is not the way to go when scheduling your project. High-end estimates extend project timelines in both planning and practice. To recap, implications of using high-end estimates are: 1) Project end dates are greatly extended from…
When a GPS calculates your destination arrival time, it’s taking into account the remaining route, the speed limits and even the current traffic when adding up the individual routes and providing you a single answer. That would be great for projects too, right? Projects, however, are more difficult to forecast as tasks contains greater uncertainly…