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…
Details
The Lead Carpenter approached the General Contractor with a grim expression. “You know how I said we’d begin framing the basement later today? I’m afraid that’s not going to happen. Unless, of course, you want the toilet in the theater.” It was the early construction stage of a custom home. The basement floor concrete had…
Details
Gail, the Project Manager was apoplectic. “How could this happen? This project has gone right into the loo.” (This was a European-based project.) She showed me the project status chart. Even a novice could readily see the project had tanked, suddenly and severely. “Do you have a sponsoring steering committee?” I asked. “Of course!” She…
Details
The project leader, a seasoned vice president, knew they were behind. The project team knew too. Everyone knew the importance of the project, knew how tough it was, knew they were late and knew something had to be done. “I don’t see much choice,” the VP said to his advisors. “I think I have to…
Details
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…
Details
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…
Details
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…
Details
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…
Details
“Are we there yet?” Yes, that was one of my kids from the back seat asking if we were at our destination. But I heard this differently. I heard my boss — and he was loud and clear. “When’s that project ever going to be done?!” Kids are motivated by immediate gratification. Bosses by performance,…
Details
You’ve agreed on your destination: a quaint cabin on a tranquil pond in a remote national forest. The weekend is here and the quicker you get to your retreat, the quicker you get to relax and enjoy the ambience, taking a break from the rat race. You throw your gear into the back of your…
Details