When project managers turn in their weekly or monthly status reports, the real work begins for the Project Management Office. Even if your project management software does a lot of the data crunching for you, there’s still an element of human interaction
Portfolio Management in Small Companies
“Portfolio management – that’s something only big firms do, isn’t it?” Not at all! Even small businesses can benefit from taking a portfolio management approach to managing their projects. In fact, you could argue that portfolio management is even more important
NAVFAC IPS Checklist and Longest Path Considerations
The Naval Facilities Engineering Command’s (NAVFAC) Initial Project Schedule (IPS) checklist has a number of items to consider in relation to the longest path. Scheduling guidelines are worth studying to increase ones
Guidelines for Insertion of Schedule Constraints
Wide usage of constraints in scheduling is discouraged, but what are specific situations when constraints should be avoided and others when constraints are suitable? Constraints describe important dates in the life of the project that
5 Pitfalls of Managing Large Portfolios And How To Manage Them
Managing a large portfolio of projects and programs comes with its own challenges. PMO leaders working with large corporate portfolios face a number of pitfalls, especially where the project management maturity has grown over time and the portfolio
A Brief Introduction to Earned Value
The key to unlocking the door to a plethora of project status metrics is earned value, which is a way of placing a value on the progress of work achieved. But how is earned value specified?
How To Secure Team Support for EVM
Earned Value Management is a tried-and-tested way of managing project performance. But it has a reputation for being difficult to implement and hard to manage. If you’ve made the decision to implement EVM for project
Milestone Types
Milestones appear as little black diamonds on the Gantt chart, and like diamonds milestones are multifaceted; they may mark numerous types of events. Milestones are unique activities; they have no duration or resource assignments. Like other activities
Scope Management
The scope management process defines the work required for the project and makes sure that all that work, and only that work, is completed. Scope management is a very important project manager duty. Scope is one of the three in the triple constraint triangle
5 Red Flags Every PMO Manager Should Watch For
You run a great PMO. Your team are engaged and everything is going according to your three-year strategic plan. That’s wonderful – but it doesn’t mean you should get complacent. As with any business team (especially the ones not directly linked to revenue generation) it’s a manager’s job to stay