Dear Doctor Project: My project is a constant challenge. Now my Sponsor has just come to me with the most ridiculous request I have ever seen! He wants my project to be completed in 2 months or less. No budget increase. No additional resources added. When I asked how he expected me to do it he snapped back “You’re the project manager. You figure it out”. I don’t know where to begin. How do I manage this new constraint? I am already working long hours. I look forward to your advice
By their nature, all projects induce change on individuals. It may be a change in process, product line, job aids, tools, organizational structure, personnel, or at the least expectations. As you know, not everyone deals with change in the same way. Also, change can be halted or derailed because of the way people respond to it.
Adult children. Jumbo shrimp. Seriously funny. I'm sure you recognize these expressions as oxymorons-self-contradictory phrases, often with an ironic meaning. Should we add "Agile requirements" to the list? Does Agile development fit in with traditional requirements practices? And if so, how?
You will be hard pressed to find a person that has taken some project management training who has not drunk the purple Kool Aid called Earned Value Management (EVM). You may have run into EVM “evangelists” at project management conferences or symposiums. You can recognize them by that glassy stare that comes from rolling up one too many work package cost calculations and you may have even learned to run for the hills when they have cornered some neophyte who expresses ignorance about the whole concept or (worse) challenges its practical applicability.
Faced with an increasingly uncertain world, there are some things every organisation needs to know if it is to survive and succeed. Here are the ten top tips by Dr David Hillson.
Much of the dialog and content of project management improvement is focused on increased knowledge, better processes and the right tools for the project manager. Project by project however, there is another, oft-overlooked element – the project sponsor.
Successful product development projects are often characterized by having an enthusiastic product champion with solid domain knowledge, a visible and proud chief engineer, and a clever and supportive project manager. And of course, the most important thing, a group of exceptional developers. From an organizational point of view it makes sense to require that all projects should clearly identify these three roles.
Effort estimation in software development is complex. Traditional estimation techniques such as COCOMO and Functional Points are fine for traditional development approaches but they are not appropriate for agile approaches where you don't know the entire lifecycle time span in advance and the entire estimation process may seem a bit too overwhelming to the agile, more fluid approaches.
Agile software development methodologies are now widely accepted and utilised within the software development industry. There is however a lot of debate on how to perform effective and efficient software architecture within an agile environment.
These days it seems like there is way too much work to do. Therefore as professionals and leaders, it is our job to look for ways to maximize the team’s productivity. Here are a few examples of techniques to organize the project teams and improve their productivity.
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