Project Management

Putting Things into Perspective Great goals need great teams to be achieved. You can’t go it alone when it comes to attaining sustainable and far-reaching change. Now, that does not take anything away from strong leaders and leadership. But strong leadership is always rooted in concerted efforts owned and shaped by project teams. Organizations need to create a work environment in which...

The Next Big Game-Changer in Project and Portfolio Management? When Facebook announced it was changing its name to Meta, it did not go unnoticed. Some relished the news while others took it with a grain of salt. Well, skepticism is a usual by-product of any innovation. People were doubtful when they had to start moving from their desktops to the web. Later on, they moved from the web to...

Introduction Citizen development is one the most recent and most exciting developments in project management. It challenges the established approaches to information systems development through its own professional developers or external vendors. Like with any other professional or bespoke services, application and software development can be very expensive and somewhat lengthy. Project...

Learning Through Differences Public agencies and private sector entities have a lot to learn from each other despite having different strategic goals. Public-private partnerships (PPPs) across the world, including Australia, have proved to be fairly successful. Most often, it is evident to large-scale infrastructure projects. Among the benefits of such partnerships many experts single...

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...

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...

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...

The right project manager can be the real difference between your project’s success and failure despite the governance structures. Unfortunately, even the most experienced managers often make blunders when hiring. The wrong PM will drain your time, money, and resources. Even with the best intentions, hiring managers still miss out on too many things during the hiring process. Look...