By Wally Stegall and Jon M Quigley Collecting and Reporting Material One approach to collecting and reporting material content is the International Material Data System (IMDS). IMDS is a computer-based material data system used and funded primarily by automotive OEM’s (Original Equipment Manufacturer of cars, trucks, heavy vehicles, agricultural equipment, construction equipment, industrial equipment, military […]
Sources of Conflict There are challenges aplenty awaiting project managers when it comes to gathering a collection of individuals assigned to eventually become a team and produce the organization’s objective as defined by the project. The business mantra of doing more with less – often less time and certainly less resources (and available talent) do […]
Survival of the fittest is not just a biological concern. Our business must constantly adapt to external stimuli and find better, quicker ways of performing our work. One way to accomplish this growth is through actions sometimes referred to as project post mortem, or an after action report. We have a plethora of tools of […]
Check lists are a time honored way of keeping track of breaking down an objective and monitoring progress. There are a number of benefits to using check lists. Check lists should not be confused with a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS). A WBS is a form of a check list of all of the tasks required […]
What are we trying to accomplish with a communications plan? Effective project management is the efficient achieving of an organization’s objectives. To do that, we have to keep our project team informed and working toward the target. That includes our project sponsor and other stakeholders. Ultimately our plan should be able to quickly answer the […]
We have a running discussion with some project managers and line managers on the topic of responsibility. The organization structure is matrix (weak) with seeming aspirations to strong matrix. The project managers attempting to drive the project are frequently confronted with the line management saying – “it is our responsibility”, or “trust us to deliver”. […]
I know this is way off topic; however I thought we should post this. Below is a letter my brother and I sent to the Veterans Administration. Our father was in the Special Forces and served multiple tours in Vietnam. The US has been in wars for decades now, and we do not know the […]
With the recent brouhaha about working from home at a conspicuous company we decided to contribute to the discussion. We think also that there were probably ways to meet the objectives of this company’s CEO while not fully eroding the work from home idea and irritating some of the employees. We think we have a […]
Risk management is often considered a project management function, but that is not necessarily so. For any sort of endeavor we will be well served if we have some consideration of risk and the management. For example, our previous blog posts discussed configuration management. We saw how a wayward configuration management (or lack of configuration […]
by: Jon M Quigley and Wally Stegall In the last blog post, we discussed how PPAP should be the quality system, although it is not in many cases. One reason PPAP drops off the map after the start of production may have never been a concern during the design is the check box mentality. Check […]