Author: Paul Oppong

A typical event in organizations is asking a business professional to manage projects. This professional may have no experience, qualifications, or training. This can be a person from any function such as Marketing, IT, Operations, and Consultancy. You can find accidental Project Managers in all industries including both public and private sectors. It is “Accidental Project...

I recently had the privilege to be interviewed by Tim Butara on The Agile Digital Transformation Podcast on the changes to work in the age of digital transformation, in particular the work of project managers who need to adapt to the digital and hybrid-first reality. Click below to listen to our conversation. Also available on all major streaming services (Spotify,...

Recently I climbed the Sydney Harbour Bridge. If you’re ever visiting Sydney, or if you live here and have never partaken, I thoroughly recommend the experience. I was equally delighted to find that climbing Sydney Harbour Bridge taught me some new lessons and reinforced some existing ones about how to manage projects to achieve success. Here is what I learned on my big adventure: 1. Be...

My interview with Billion Success Media, talking about digital transformation, leadership, and what went into writing my first book. Tell us a little bit about your background and how you ended up writing a book? I started my career as a support analyst in a financial services organization, primarily giving technical support and advice to our clients via phone and email...

Some have touted agile SAFe as being a good solution for the implementation of agile in larger organizations. However, it caused controversy and disagreement in the agile community since the idea was first started. It is helpful to assess whether organizations can play agile SAFe, considering its benefits and challenges. It is also useful to think about practical factors associated with...

Digital transformation is high on the agenda of many organizations. But unfortunately, a very high number of these transformations are believed to fail. The figure commonly cited is 70%. Part of the reason for these failures is that organizations start to transform digitally without considering of what they are doing and why. It can lead to inappropriate spend and uncoordinated...

Digital transformation brings many possibilities, but arguably one of the most important is transforming the customer experience. Yet, digital transformation does not always deliver this. One research study showed that only 19% of customers felt they had a significant improvement in their experiences with companies following $4.7 trillion of digital transformation investment. Many...

Stakeholders have the ability to make or break projects, if they put their minds to it. This makes them a risk to the likelihood of completing the project. The stakeholders of any project should be pinpointed, understood, and managed to increase project success. In this article we will look at who stakeholders are and their interests to understand and manage them effectively. To give a...

Undertaking projects and programs needs to bring about benefits. This is to ensure that return on investment is achieved. This has led savvy organizations to start focusing on benefits realization. Benefits realization management is a process that is undertaken to get ready for and manage planned benefits through change. The fundamental reason for doing this is that it is possible to...

Acommon question that arises is whether the Project Manager should be a Scrum Master. Project Managers are sometimes expected to take up the role of Scrum Master when their organization moves to take an agile approach. This may well occur without providing the Project Manager any training to take on this new and quite distinct role. However, a recent survey by Scrum.org found that fewer...