By Alicia Trelles-Duckett on October 25, 2014
A few weeks ago I was assisting a project manager with a troubled project. We reviewed the documentation from the beginning, starting with the usual suspects: project charter, WBS, schedule. They all seemed fairly straightforward and understandable. Once we got to his status reporting though, confusion started. This project’s status reports were spreadsheets about 10 […]
By Alicia Trelles-Duckett on June 29, 2014
Quite a few customers are jumping on the ‘Agile’ bandwagon these days, choosing an Agile methodology for specific projects, or for repetitive releases of their product. A challenge they are facing is how to manage and report Agile projects when the processes and templates provided by their PMO have been developed for Waterfall projects. And […]
By Alicia Trelles-Duckett on February 22, 2014
In this ever shrinking business world, it is not uncommon to deploy a project with colleagues from different countries, with cultures different from our own. We can even implement a project in our own country and easily have stakeholders, say, from India, China, Mexico, Canada. Each one will bring different points of view, dependent on […]
By Alicia Trelles-Duckett on July 10, 2013
One of our recent projects involved work to be done on a short, 3-month deadline. According to the project leadership, everything which denoted good project management practices had been performed. The work was scoped, fine-tuned, and broken down into work packages. The work packages were then assigned resources and budget. Budgets and timeframes were confirmed […]
By Alicia Trelles-Duckett on March 14, 2013
An interesting development has been taking place in my international projects, regarding the allocation of time. Many of us in the business of implementing projects have heard of that very useful device, the “triple constraint”, right? Simply put, it is a framework to help us balance the competing demands of the project by having customers […]
By Alicia Trelles-Duckett on September 17, 2012
Time tracking. Invoicing. Success metrics. Key Contacts. Managing a project can become overwhelming quickly. And the tools we use to track these aspects of projects can quickly become too time-consuming. That inclination project managers have to track any critical or risky component requires moderation and thought. As we know, with the addition of every tracker […]
By Alicia Trelles-Duckett on April 14, 2011
Your next project involves implementations here as well as in other countries. Are congratulations in order? Or are condolences more appropriate? No doubt installations in other geographies come with their own inherent set of challenges. Currency fluctuations; centralized versus local procurement; languages; time zones. And those are even before considering difficulties due to the particular […]
By Kevin Lonergan on March 17, 2011
there was a debate for years around whether Project Management is an art or a science. The truth is that neither are correct on their own – it is both. Successful project managers (with a track record of more than one project) typically employ the science stuff (core PM concepts), sometimes religiously. They also harbor […]
By Marc Share on June 20, 2010
Precision and clarity in communication are critical in establishing the foundation for a solid team collaborative environment thus helping avoid common pitfalls and failures.
