To reduce the chances of going too far down the wrong road, we qualify our projects with some sort of business analysis, for example internal rate of return or return on investment or some other fiduciary measurement.  If we are working from a staged-gate project management system, we will relentlessly review our project condition against […]

Not all risks are associated with technology, processes, or missing resources.    Sometimes an individual assigned to your project can be the riskiest aspect of your entire project.  Technology and processes are predictable by their very nature.  And finding resources may be difficult, but the lead-time and process are well understood.  But humans are, in the […]

One of the ways to reduce our risk is to outsource. If we do not have the requisite knowledge or available talent readily available, we can chose to outsource to organizations with this expertise or volume of talent. Outsourcing can improve our chances of success in this regard.  We also have recourse should the outsourced […]

A project comes to an end and now we are in a position to really critique or learn how things went. Ideally, we were learning all along, and now we have the final opportunity to review the project.  If our organization has heavy project management influences, we may have a “white book” that captures the […]

Knowing a risk exists and not taking action is similar to standing on the tracks watching as the train nears.   You must spend time creating alternative plans in the event the train does, in fact, come.   It has been our observation that most project teams, under the pressure to deliver to the current plan, do […]

I have been having a running discussion with one of my colleagues regarding project and cost, specifically the cost of a project that is under consideration for termination.  A project is going through a gate review. During this review we find that the objectives are not met by this phase and further action has little […]

The longer a project is active, the more likely there will be interference with the other projects the organization undertakes. We believe this is one of the attractions of scrum or the other agile project management methods, which are designed to offset the fallacious multitasking approaches. In these agile models, we find the project team […]