Common Pitfalls for Risk Management Once you’ve arrived at the point where you are ready to implement risk management in your business, it’s worth taking a bit of time to identify what needs to happen next. One of the useful things to do at this time is to consider what might trip you up and […]
Copying Tables Between Projects In Microsoft Project
Copying tables between projects in Microsoft Project can be a real time saver. After putting the effort into creating a project schedule table, e.g. an Earned Value Management (EVM) analysis table, you will want to save this table set up and copy it to other projects. Microsoft Project has a neat feature that makes this […]
Agile Project Management – Schedule Purpose and Agility
Agile project management is a well-known term associated with the management of software projects. But what about large construction projects? Is it important or possible for construction projects to be agile? Agile project management appears to overturn traditional project management, which consists of a fixed scope of work. Agile project management recognizes the changing customer […]
How Your PMO Can Add Value To Your Organization
We hear a lot of executives talk about how their PMO can add value add value but people aren’t always clear what they mean by that. And even if they do know what they are striving for, the PMO team sometimes struggle to work out what it really looks like in practice. In this article […]
Schedule Reliability and Buffers
Project schedules tend toward tardiness, but what can be done to make schedules more reliably on time? Schedule buffer similar to a cost contingency helps projects become more reliable. Project plans are generally more optimistic than reality. Reasons for this disconnect are that project plans do not consider: inefficiencies in the handover of tasks between […]
Critical Path Barriers
Critical path barriers obscure and invalidate the true critical path through the schedule. Does your schedule accurately represent the longest path or critical path through the schedule network? Critical path is an important concept in scheduling. It determines the duration of the project. It also highlights where to investigate for schedule optimization efforts; shortening the […]
The 3 Questions Every Project Health Check Should Include
The end of the year and the beginning of the year are times when Project Management Office teams often focus on project reviews and performing a project health check. Yes, a project health check should be built into the regular calendar of events, but we often see that executive teams demand a different level of […]
Ensuring Quality Schedule Updates
A quality Integrated Project Schedule (IPS) is great, but quality updates to that IPS schedule are also very important for measuring progress accurately. An IPS is like a map, and is only part of the reason for accurate progress measurement. Accurate updates are absolutely essential for properly locating where on the IPS map your project […]
3 Layers for Risk Management
Creating a risk management approach and culture in an organization can seem like a huge challenge. However, if you break it down it’s really all about getting these three layers in place for your business: Adequate management process Systems of control Governance Once you’ve addressed those points, you’ll find that your risk management approach falls […]
Copying Views Between Projects In Microsoft Project
Most likely you spent some effort creating the exact desired look and feel of your task table and Gantt chart. You will probably want to save this and then apply it to other projects. Yes, this is possible to copy views in Microsoft Project. Stakeholders want customized views of your project. And once you have […]