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 […]
Project Quality Management
Many project managers do not practice project quality management. A lack of attention to quality can inevitably mean more rework and/or a defective product. The more your project requires rework, the more time and money is spent redoing what should have been done properly at first. This jeopardizes your project schedule and cost baselines. A […]
How Your PMO Can Support Benefits Delivery
We start projects because we want something out of them. Those deliverables are supposed to give the project owners the tools they need to achieve the stated benefits. Benefits delivery is something the PMO should support. However, project managers aren’t always involved in the benefits-side of projects. When a project manager is tasked with delivering […]
Duration Estimates and Pure or Gross Worktime
An important distinction when creating duration estimates is whether the time estimated represents pure work time or gross work time. There is a difference between the two. Pure work time is 100% uninterrupted work focused on the respective project. Gross work time, however, includes: project related tasks and non-project related activities. Duration estimates will vary […]
Understanding Schedule Critical Drag
Understanding Schedule Critical Drag Critical activities are all the schedule tasks that cannot delay without postponing the completion date of the project. Therefore, these activities are rightly called critical; you definitely want to pay attention to momentum on these activities. But of all your critical activities, which ones generate the most drag on your schedule […]
7 Specialist Services Your PMO Can Offer
7 Specialist Services Your PMO Can Offer Project Management Offices are all about tracking, right? Well, not really. While supporting teams to track individual projects and monitoring the health of the portfolio overall are key services that the PMO can offer your exec team, that’s not where their work ends. Here are 7 ways that […]
NAVFAC Scheduling Guidelines and Positive Lag
Scheduling guidelines are very common and produced by many organizations. The Naval Facilities Engineering Command’s (NAVFAC) Initial Project Schedule (IPS) checklist item 64 says finish to start (FS) relationships should have zero lag. What is the reasoning for this stipulation? Scheduling guidelines are good to study because understanding the principles behind the guidelines increases one’s […]
Procurement Management Contract Types
Procurement management is typically a major effort in the life of the project and can have huge impact on the project’s final success. As part of planning a project, the scope is analyzed to determine whether or not internal resources can do the project scope. If not, then the work is outsourced. Well, outsourcing project […]
Questions To Ask Before You Set Up A PMO
Setting up a PMO (Project Management Office) can be fraught with difficulty. There’s the challenge of gaining executive support for creating what could be seen as an extra level of administration and bureaucracy. There’s the issue of staffing: train internal resources, buy in expertise or mix the two? Then there’s the practical problem of not […]
The Negatives of Positive Lag
Do you use positive lag? Scheduling guidelines like the Defense Contract Management Agency (DCMA)’s 14 point assessment will fail a schedule of any negative lags (or leads) are found: effectively banning their use entirely. In addition, to DCMA the Naval Facilities Engineering Command (NAVFAC) baseline checklist prohibits negative lags in schedules. This sentiment is also […]