Learning in the Project System While learning is associated with making errors in most situations learning from successes is commonly forgotten. Let us think about B.F. Skinner and positive reinforcement. Incremental and post-job reviews usually focus on the shortcomings of an activity and project. Instead, we must ask ourselves why we did better at the […]

Risk Management from Front and Back Recently I spoke at a Metrolina PMI Chapter on Risk Management. If we have been managing projects, we know that risk management is significant to ensuring project success. Risk management starts from the very beginning of the project, the scope, and our strategy selection will all impact the risks […]

Our PMTips posts Our column, PMTips Quigley & Lauck’s Expert Column  (Steve Lauck)   is about one year old and we are celebrating 7 of our articles made the Best Content in the PMTips Quarterly Newsletter.   Great way to start 2021.   PMtips Seasonal Newsletter   Dear PMtips followers, Our team complied the best content that […]

Firefighting Hiding things is not a long term strategy We have recently written an article at our Assembly Mag column, Ps and Qs column on the metaphorical firefighter and things we do that encourages this behavior.  There are many variants of this specific failure mode.  To be clear, we are referring to valuing the heavy […]

Reviews of all kinds If you have been in product development for any time, you may have been involved in design reviews, walk-throughs, specification reviews, product reviews, audits and other forms. Recently I was a part of a customer presentation.  The presentation was developed to introduce the customer to a new product design that the […]

Every time we make a decision, we reduce the probability of some risks but may increase the probability of other risks. Consider where the following story may fit into our discussion. We have a project that should have, in fact, started months ago to meet the desired production introduction date.  Unfortunately, that did not happen […]

There are times when the project manager will be subjected to the long list of potential risks brought to them by their team.  Handling these issues rather than summarily dismissing the item being brought to their attention as input from a hypercritical or doom-centric team member is important for project success and team morale.  If […]

We perform risk audits on projects to ascertain whether we are deviating from the desired budget, schedule, and quality levels we specified at the start of the project. At the 50,000 foot level, risk auditing looks like the following: Define the problem Choose an audit team leader Choose an audit team or let the leader […]

A qualitative analysis will generally involve a subjective level of assessment. The classic Kastle-Meyer test uses phenolphthalein to check for blood—it is quick and cheap and eliminating expensive and specious DNA testing save times and money. Quantitative analysis, as the name implies, uses measurements to assess the topic of concern. Both have their place in […]