Will Durant, the American Historian when he said, “Every science begins as philosophy and ends as art.” This sums it up nicely. Project management is the systematic professional application of processes to lead teamwork to complete projects using available resources. A project can be defined as...
The Art of War, a 13-chapter masterwork written in the fifth century BC, is referred to even now, two-and-a-half millennia later, as one of the definitive texts on military tactics and strategy. Some things never change…. Sun Tzu, its author, may not even have existed,...
Why Project Management? Companies turn to project management to deliver results consistently, reduce costs, increase efficiencies and improve customer and stakeholder satisfaction. Strong, organization-wide commitment to project management yields long-term business value and competitive advantage. Importance of Project Management One of the key aspects of project management is...
101 Common Causes There are many causes of project failure and every failed project will have its own set of issues. Sometimes it is a single trigger event that leads to failure, but more often than not, it is a complex entwined set of problems that...
Classic Mistakes Analysis of the examples in the “Catalogue of Catastrophe” reveals the most common mistakes. Given the frequency of occurrence, these mistakes can be considered the “classic mistakes”. The following list outlines the most common themes and provides links to examples; The underestimation of complexity, cost...
Companies must pay as much attention to the hard side of change management as they do to the soft aspects. By rigorously focusing on four critical elements, they can stack the odds in favor of success. Summary. Everyone agrees that managing change is tough, but few...
Is your next delivery going to be agile or waterfall? Start by considering scope and requirements. Are those fixed? ...
For many years, organizations, researchers, and practitioners have analyzed how to manage technology projects successfully. Among them is the Standish Group, which regularly publishes its findings in its Chaos reports. In 1994, Standish reported a shocking project success rate of only 16 percent; another 53 percent of the...
The Top Nine Project Failures Related to Project Definition from Postmortem Data Do any of these top nine project definition mistakes sound familiar? Business Case The business case and rationale was vague, tactical, debatable, or created in a vacuum. Goals There was some ambiguity between customers, management, project managers, and...
Why human skills and expertise, not technical tools, are what make projects succeed. The project is the basic unit of work in many industries. Software applications, antiviral vaccines, launch-ready spacecraft: all were produced by a team and managed as a project. Project management emphasizes control, processes,...